The short version
- Make it safe first. Nothing here is worth an injury or a second loss.
- Film before you touch anything — the damage, the room, and the cause.
- Then mitigate to prevent further damage, and film that too, keeping every receipt.
- Itemise the contents: make, model, age, and what it would cost to replace.
- Keep damaged items until the insurer has seen them or released you.
- Log everything — calls, names, reference numbers, dates.
Film first, clean second
The instinct after a burst pipe or a storm is to start clearing up, and the policy usually requires you to prevent further damage. Both are compatible with five minutes of filming, and the order matters: once the water is pumped out and the carpet is in a skip, the only record of the extent is whatever you captured.
Walk the affected rooms continuously, then go close on specific damage, then film the cause — the split pipe, the missing tiles, the tree, the scorched socket. Cause evidence is what decides whether a loss is covered at all, and it is frequently repaired or removed within hours.
The sums involved are not small, and they are rising. UK insurers paid £3.4 billion across more than 560,000 home insurance claims in 2025, with the average claim reaching about £6,000 — up 15% year on year, according to Association of British Insurers figures. An average of that size is settled on documents: what was damaged, what caused it, and what it was worth beforehand.
Source: Association of British Insurers 2025 property claims data, as reported in February 2026.
What an adjuster is looking for
The damage
- Each affected room, wide and continuous
- Close-ups with something for scale
- Water lines on walls, ceilings, under units
- Flooring lifted, and what is underneath
The cause
- The failed component, before it is replaced
- Point of entry: roof, window, door, pipe
- Weather or incident context outside
- Any emergency repair as it is carried out
The contents
- Item by item, with serial numbers where they exist
- Model plates on appliances and electronics
- Sets and pairs — what is now incomplete
- Anything of unusual value, in place
The paperwork
- Receipts, valuations, warranty cards
- Mitigation costs: drying, boarding, hotel
- Contractor quotes and invoices
- A dated log of every call and reference
Pre-loss condition — the part everybody misses
The single hardest thing to prove after a loss is what the property and its contents were like beforehand. Insurers apply wear, age and betterment, and in the absence of evidence they will assume the less generous version: the kitchen was dated, the carpet was old, the roof was already tired.
The answer is a home inventory recorded while nothing is wrong. A walkthrough of every room once a year, plus clips of anything expensive as you buy it, takes an afternoon and converts an argument about age into a matter of record. If you are reading this after a loss and have nothing, look for incidental evidence: photos from parties and birthdays, a house sale listing, a survey, a previous claim, a tradesperson's invoice for the same room.
Mitigation and keeping damaged property
- Do what is reasonable to stop it getting worse — turn the water off, board the window, get dryers in — and film the state that made it necessary.
- Keep every receipt. Reasonable mitigation costs are usually recoverable, and unreceipted ones usually are not.
- Do not throw damaged items away until the insurer has inspected them or confirmed in writing that you can. Photograph them, label them, and store them somewhere dry if you can.
- Do not start permanent repairs before the claim is agreed unless the insurer says so, and film everything if urgency forces your hand.
Doing it with CompareAI Inspect
- Keep a home inventory project, with a Before scan per room, refreshed annually. That is the pre-loss evidence nobody has.
- After a loss, record the After against the same rooms, and the pair is compared automatically — the AI lists what changed, with a location and a severity per finding.
- Export a dated PDF report with per-room findings, thumbnails, capture dates and an optional location stamp, which is a far easier thing to send an adjuster than forty phone videos.
- SHA-256 on every clip and on the report, with the report hash recorded at generation and checkable at compareai.work/verify — relevant when a claim is scrutinised months later.
- Works offline, which matters when the power and the broadband are out.
Not legal advice. Policy wording decides what is covered, what notice you must give, and what you must do to mitigate further damage. Nothing here overrides your policy or your insurer's instructions — if they conflict, follow the policy and ask the insurer. This is also not a substitute for a loss adjuster or a public adjuster where one is warranted.
Questions people ask
Should I clean up before the adjuster visits?
Film first, then do what your policy requires to prevent further damage — that duty is real and ignoring it can reduce a settlement. What you should not do is dispose of damaged property or start permanent repairs before the insurer has seen it or told you in writing to proceed.
I have no photos of the property before the damage. What now?
Look for incidental evidence: family photos that happen to show the room, an estate agent listing, a survey, a previous claim file, a tradesperson's invoice for work in that room. It is weaker than an inventory but far better than nothing — and record a full inventory of the undamaged parts of the property now.
How detailed does a contents inventory need to be?
Detailed enough to support a number per item: what it is, make and model, roughly when it was bought, and what an equivalent costs now. Serial numbers help for electronics. A video walkthrough that shows items in place, plus a list, is more persuasive than either alone.
Do I have to keep the damaged items?
Usually yes, until the insurer has inspected them or released you in writing. Photograph and label them, and keep them somewhere they will not deteriorate further. Disposing of proof early is a common and avoidable reason for a reduced settlement.
Is video better than photographs for a claim?
They do different jobs. Video shows extent, context and continuity — how far the water travelled, what the whole room looks like. Stills are easier to annotate and attach to a schedule. Do a continuous walkthrough for context and take stills of each specific item.
Does a timestamped, fingerprinted report actually matter to an insurer?
It is not a magic key, and no insurer is obliged to accept anything. What it does is remove an obvious line of challenge: the file can be shown not to have been altered since it was generated, and the capture dates are part of the record rather than a claim about it.