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Homeowner's Insurance Question...kinda long
A little background info first:
We closed on our home at the end of April, had the home inspection, everything was great...the house is only 5 years old.
We have a mudroom/breezeway which connects our garage to our house...its completely finished off; sliding glass door on one end, storm door on the other end.
The problem:
The other day, we noticed that in front of the slider and in front of the storm door felt "squishy"...then last week, it seemed to get progressively worse..every time we walked in the door, it seemed squishier and like we sunk a little more. So, DH pulled back a corner of the linoleum and saw that the sub-floor was all rotten. Saturday he pulled everything up, everything down to the floor joists were rotten, and there's mold & mushrooms growing on the floor joists (lovely).
I call our homeowner's insurance company on Saturday, after he's all done, and the person who filed our claim sounded like this was something that they deal with all the time (I realize she doesn't have any say in the situation), and led me to believe that this would be covered under our homeowner's policy. She informed me that I should be hearing from an adjustor no later than Tuesday.
I get a call from an adjustor yesterday..rude guy, basically says flat out, this isn't a claim that you can file. "You just bought the house in April...well rot doesn't happen that quickly...but...if you want, we can send someone out to take a look..." so I said, "we had a home inspection but there were no "symptoms" of a problem at that time...its not like the inspector is going to go around ripping up seemingly perfect flooring.."
Basically, I'm being told that this isn't covered under our homeowner's but I have a hard time swallowing that! It wasn't the home inspector's fault..there didn't seem to be a problem at the time. Aren't there other things that go wrong in homes, like leaky pipes, that are problematic for a long time, but don't show up as problems until there's damage??
If anyone can shed some light on this, or has had experience dealing with an homeowner's insurance company, who doesn't want to pay their claim...please, some advice 
TIA!
Re: Homeowner's Insurance Question...kinda long
We have something kind of like this too. Our bay window is about ready to fall out of the house! Haha! It is completely rotten, because it is wood and 20 years old. It's considered wear and tear and it isn't covered.
Also, not 2 hours after our closing, our 5 year old water heater sprung a leak and leaked 40 gallons of water, most of it onto our carpet in our finished basement. The only thing that the insurance will cover, is the carpet because the water heater is wear and tear. But because we have a $1000 deductible, it would be stupid to make a claim since carpet for a 10x10 area is a lot cheaper than that. (Thank God it was only a small portion of the basement.)
We had our house inspected back in mid May, but because this was a short sale, we didn't actually close till July 30th. So apparently the water heater had rusted out from the inside, there was no way the inspector could have seen it. And since the house was sold as is because of it being a short sale, we couldn't get any compensation from the sellers.
The area didn't flood or have poor drainage...we're actually not sure where the water came from...we're thinking maybe from around the door frame, but its not like water was pooled up there or anything..the ground underneath is completely dry...the adjustor is coming out this afternoon, so we'll know for sure, then
My insurance will cover what happened to our basement. When we called them about the water heater to see if that was covered, they said no, but the damage it caused to the basement was. I had put that extra coverage onto my plan. But we are not going to make a claim, it's too small of an amount to do so.
Flooding itself (as in an act of God) is not covered. You always have to get flood insurance separate from homeowner's insurance. The same with earthquakes.
So the adjustor came out this afternoon and it looks like we're on our own for the repair
We have a mold/fungi/rot rider on our policy, but because this happened over a period of time, its not covered...its just irritating...unless the perfect situation presents itself, they deny it. Even if we'd owned the house since it was built, I doubt that we would've known about this...by the time a problem started presenting itself, it was too late.
Oh well, we could have bigger problems, for sure....just a "joy of homeownership" as they say....thanks for sharing your stories/experiences