insurance on your project

Joe Parish · Post by **Joe Parish** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 7:36 pm

Wondering what everyone else did or is doing for insurance on the project? Why did or didn't you insure and if you did, at what point did you buy it? Been tossing this around in my head, time to get it out. Thought I would see what everyone else was doing.

hydroguy2 · Post by **hydroguy2** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 9:04 pm

tossed this decision around for a while during the final year of the build. I kept thinking I have all this money and effort sitting here. What if a fire, theft, etc? But I live out of town, dead end road sleepy county, so not likely to have anyone causing problems. Fire was a big concern since I heated the shop with wood.

As I got ready to paint, I shopped for builder coverage. BUT never activated it...not sure why. I never did get builder insurance, but activated my full hull coverage during final assembly.

FYI- I hate buying insurance might have influenced my decisions.

newtech · Post by **newtech** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 9:07 pm

I didn't insure my project until I brought the engine home. At that point I had spent approximately 2/3 of the total cost of my project. I actually made the phone call to Travers Aviation Insurance the day after we had a major tornado go through our area.

Bob Barrett · Post by **Bob Barrett** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 7:27 pm

The first few years I was building my airplane, my home owners insurance covered it. Some but not many homeowners insurance coved it at the time. Ours was St. Paul Fire and Marine, which a friend of mine pointed out to me they covered airplanes until flyable, However for other reasons we changed to Travelers Insurance and they did not cover it. Therefore I started insuring with Falcon Insurance (EAA) Travelers purchased , took over etc. St. Paul Fire and Marine and I don't know if they cover it now. Fire, Flood, tornados, vandalism were the giggest reasons I carried insurance while building. I knew that if if any of those would have totaled out my project there was no way I could write out a check to replace the cost of kit, engine, prop, avionics etc. I really sweated when moving from our house to the paint shop and then to the airport. I am not sure what coverage you have in transite.

lancef53 · Post by **lancef53** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 8:22 pm

I had builders risk thru Chartis(old AIG). They just rolled it into flight coverage when I was ready to fly. I think it was about 800 bucks, then went to a couple grand when i started flying. I built in a farm shop, and was most concerned with fire. State Farm does not cover any aircraft parts.

cjensen · Post by **cjensen** » Tue Aug 23, 2011 7:22 am

Lance is right, State Farm will not cover the parts in your garage. My aunt is my SF agent, and she could not get an underwriter to agree to cover the parts under any portion of our homeowner's policy.

I did buy builder's insurance nearly from the beginning. I insured with Jim Pappas when he was doing insurance, then switch to AIG/Chartis when he got out of it.

Premiums ran $150 or so for the emp/wings, all the way up to $780 for $50,000 in builder's risk coverage for everything up to first flight. Then it jumped to $2300 for full flight, but rolled right over to it with a phone call.

I used Aviation Unlimited Agency for everything after Pappas.

hydroguy2 · Post by **hydroguy2** » Tue Aug 23, 2011 1:54 pm

I trying hard to reach 90hrs on N155BK. That coupled with my transistion training to go over 100hrs in Type should give me a decent drop in insurance cost....or so they told me last year.

lets' see burn another $400 in 100LL to save $250 on insurance....yep that looks like a sweet deal to me.

i was never good at math, but always good at fun.