Is frost damage covered?

Short answer

Barely any wording names frost as an insured peril. It is covered where an all-risks policy does not exclude it, and that is a difference.

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Frost damage is the quiet winter guest. Water in the cooling circuit, a seacock, the watermaker or the domestic system expands as it freezes and splits whatever surrounds it. It is usually noticed in spring, and rarely at the split part alone but at the water that has run in over the winter.

In insurance terms frost is a special case because almost nobody names it. In the wordings reviewed the term ice pressure does not appear at all, neither as cover nor as exclusion. Frost itself is covered where an all-risks policy does not exclude it, that is, by silence. Legally that holds, but it does not help you compare, because a benefit that arises only from the absence of an exclusion appears in no summary.

So check three things in your policy before the first frost. First, whether frost, ice pressure and drift ice appear at all, and if so as a peril or as an exclusion. Second, whether consequential damage is covered, meaning the water that enters through the split part and not only the part itself. Third, whether there is a separate limit for it. The consequential loss is almost always the larger one.

Is the engine included in frost damage?

That is the decisive question, and across the market the answer is usually no. Frost damage to machinery is excluded throughout.

And if the boat sinks because of it?

Then it turns on consequential damage. Check whether your policy covers water entering through a frost-split component and whether a separate cap applies.

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