A note on the insurance Tempe tried to sell us to protect against breakage of our water lines

Contribution by Toby Duffell, reproduced with his permission from NextDoor

WARNING! To any one considering the Tempe Service Line/SLiPP payment plan.

Like most Tempe residents, we received a solicitation to insure against breakage of our water line. This will replace the current SLiPP program that insures against sewer line breakage which I have heard elsewhere on ND that Tempe is abandoning, like other services. This replacement program is supposed to insure you in the event of a loss of the water service into your home as well as sewer line breakage. However, the limit the insurers will cover is 30 pounds per square inch (PSI). I called the insurer to check, and yes, they confirmed that it ONLY covers water pressure up to 30 PSI. Given that the pressure Tempe delivers is about 60 PSI, or twice as much again, the insurance is valueless. The representative was uninterested in my telling them that the usual water pressure was more than the (very low) limit they had set. Remember, that an insurer looks for a reason not to pay when receiving a claim, and Tempe’s delivered water pressure is way over the limit insured. I challenge anyone on the City leadership to chime in with a reply – perhaps Jennifer Adams, whose election canvassing literature states that she loves solving problems. In the absence of this, I advise against the program. +++Note for Engineers: I am a licensed engineer, with more than 40 years of experience. I used a Westwood diaphragm manometer to measure static water pressure (no draw) at our home on December 17th. The gauge read 60 PSI. Even allowing for a +/-20% measurement accuracy, that indicates a minimum delivered pressure of 50 PSI, about 170% of the limit the insurance will cover.+++