Home Workshop/ Garage Insurance - Higher Value Contents.

[Richard-59bam]

Hi All, hope you are well.

I am having some issues with home insurance (shock!). We have a small house and a detached garage which is a timber clad steel building.

In the boring world of home insurance, this is classed as an "Outbuilding" - situated a massive 4 meters from my house - crucially not attached. Like a lot of car guys who tinker/restore cars, I have built up a large selection of tools and associated workshop kit over a period of around 30 years +.

So the value of contents for a total loss would be somewhere around £40k id say, and probably the same for the building to be replaced. The highest value cover I have found so far for "Outbuilding Contents" is via the AA and they offer £7500.

Has anyone had a similar experience or better cover?

Thanks in advance

Richard.

[Richard-59bam]

PS - To be clear any vehicles that are being stored or worked on in the Garage are covered under their own policy's so I am just talking about "Contents"

Cheers

[jeremyh1]

I have a similar situation where my workshop is next to our cottage but has separate deeds .

It would be worth talking to Coversure who might insure the garage as a separate policy

[arguti]

house insurers don’t typically cover outbuildings so one of the options would be to speak to some of the agricultural insurers which are very used to dealing with outbuildings - we have an annex/triple garage and separate barn apart from main house - each building is valued differently and the main farm insurers have specific valuation criteria with respect to different type of barns, buildings, etc. Contents is of course added on. Operators such as NFU mutual, ritsesure etc. Look in the classifieds in any tractor magazine!

The other option is to go down the enhanced cover available via some classic car brokers such as footman James where you can value tool / spares collections but not sure what the maximum amount possible. Last time I looked it was around £10k but any decent insurer/broker might be able to tailor a quote for you.

I would try NFU mutual as they I sure houses and the additional good thing about them is that they are apparently easy to deal with claims wise which is not the case with some of the other classic car brokers.
HTH

[kambites]

As implied above, I think you'll probably need take out a separate policy on the workshop with a specialist.

[Dog Star]

I have the same - however I found out the hard way that detached garages had limited contents cover, in my case £2000 and I had about £20k of stuff stolen plus two motorbikes.

I’m impressed that you managed to find £7500 of cover - currently my garage cover is the maximum I can have at £2500. What I have done is cover a lot of power tools under their own “named item” same as you would with a camera for example.

[The spinner of plates]

arguti said:

house insurers don’t typically cover outbuildings so one of the options would be to speak to some of the agricultural insurers which are very used to dealing with outbuildings - we have an annex/triple garage and separate barn apart from main house - each building is valued differently and the main farm insurers have specific valuation criteria with respect to different type of barns, buildings, etc. Contents is of course added on. Operators such as NFU mutual, ritsesure etc. Look in the classifieds in any tractor magazine!

The other option is to go down the enhanced cover available via some classic car brokers such as footman James where you can value tool / spares collections but not sure what the maximum amount possible. Last time I looked it was around £10k but any decent insurer/broker might be able to tailor a quote for you.

I would try NFU mutual as they I sure houses and the additional good thing about them is that they are apparently easy to deal with claims wise which is not the case with some of the other classic car brokers.
HTH

Agreed, friends of our lives rural and this is how he insures his outbuildings. Can't remember exactly who, but the farmer next door gave him the broker.

OP, it's like when we want to insure our older / special / modded cars... as you stray beyond the normal boundaries of mainstream insurers their algorithms aren't set up for the marginal cases. You need to go off-piste a bit and find the niche specialists.

[peew]

I am with Avivaplus which I understood to cover contents of outbuildings

Car parts are not covered though, so only tools/bicycles

https://www.aviva.co.uk/faq/answer/home-insurance/...

[Dog Star]

peew said:

I am with Avivaplus which I understood to cover contents of outbuildings

Car parts are not covered though, so only tools/bicycles

https://www.aviva.co.uk/faq/answer/home-insurance/...

Oh! We are insured with Aviva for everything - house, cars, e-bikes. I need to investigate whether we have plus.

[Baldchap]

Speak in person to an insurance broker.