General liability
Look hard at the completed operations limit and at any exclusion for damage to the work itself versus resulting damage to other property.
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HVAC contractors
HVAC insurance that accounts for the work after you leave the site.
An HVAC contractor's biggest exposure is rarely an injury on the jobsite. It is the unit that fails at two in the morning eight months after installation, and the water or smoke damage that follows it.
The problem
Where HVAC claims actually come from
Completed operations is the coverage that responds after the job is finished, and for HVAC it is the coverage that matters most. A condensate line that backs up into a finished ceiling, a heat exchanger that cracks, a unit that fails in a server room. None of those happen while your crew is on site.
Brazing and soldering put you in hot work territory, which affects both eligibility and what a carrier will ask you to document. Some programs require a fire watch period after the torch goes off.
Commercial refrigeration and anything touching a walk-in cooler, a restaurant line or a data room is rated differently from residential change-outs, because the consequential loss from a failure is much larger than the equipment itself.
The residential versus commercial split drives the whole submission. Carriers price those two books very differently, and a contractor drifting from one into the other mid-term is a common source of audit surprises.
Workers compensation class
5537
Heating, ventilating, air conditioning and refrigeration systems, installation, service and repair
Covers both install and service work. Sheet metal fabrication performed in your own shop may be separately classified, which is worth checking before the audit rather than after.
Coverage
What we place, and what to read before you rely on it.
Workers compensation
Class 5537. Shop time and field time can be classified differently depending on your operations.
Tools, equipment and inland marine
Recovery machines, gauges, vacuum pumps and torches, covered away from the shop.
Commercial auto
Service vans carrying refrigerant and torches. Disclose the cargo, because some auto forms treat it differently.
Installation floater
Covers equipment you have bought and delivered but not yet installed, which is a gap commercial property does not fill.
Umbrella
Commonly required once you take on commercial or property management accounts.
Submission
What underwriters will want on an HVAC submission
Having these ready is the difference between an indication in two days and a submission that sits for three weeks.
- Residential versus commercial split, by receipts
- Percentage of work that is new installation versus service and repair
- Whether you perform commercial refrigeration or walk-in cooler work
- Whether brazing, soldering or any open flame work is performed, and your hot work procedure
- Whether you work on data centers, restaurants or medical facilities
- Payroll split between shop and field
- Three to five years of loss runs
Related
Send the declarations page and we will tell you what is actually covered.
No fee to shop your coverage. If the standard market will not write it, we go to surplus lines and explain the difference before you sign anything.
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