Is your shop at home or a business? I tried to insure my tools and the insurance company wanted over $1000 a year to insure them, that's Statefarm. So I'll take my chances with the things in my garage.
Todd
Todd, my equipment was in my garage at my residence. Because of the acreage we own we had to get a "farm" policy when we bought this place years ago. Never thought much about it (who really studies their homeowners policy?) but after the fire I found that I was very fortunate to have a "farm" policy. It seems that these types of policies assume that farmers (I'm not, and have never been a farmer) have a lot of stuff in their outbuildings. For me this meant that although the policy limit on the
structure itself was only $17,000 or so the
contents of the building had a limit of ~$100,000. Everything in the structure was therefore covered at the high limit.
My adjuster never quibbled about whether something in there was covered or not. He almost immediately told me that he considered everything in the garage was a total loss even though much of it was hardly damaged other than some smoke damage. Both he and State Auto, the ins co, have been remarkably good to me throughout the process so far. I have nothing but praise for State Auto.
We'll see how the valuation phase plays out but I'm confident that I'll be well taken care of.
My rough valuation of the contents is ~$40,000-$50,000.
I'll put some of that towards making up the difference between the $17,000 I got for the structure and what the structure actually ends up costing but I presume that I'll have plenty of money left to begin replacing some of the stuff that was lost.
I think I'm going to like attending some online machinery auctions with a $20,000 wad in my pocket! I'm going to carry it in an envelope and pretend that I'm Tony Soprano.
