Garage/Workshop Insurance

[Satsuma]

Hi all

I have been bleeding my wallet dry on tools lately which makes me warm a fuzzy inside. But the more I'm storing in the detached garage the more I'm sleeping lighter at nights, in fear of a brake in and it all being stolen. Especially as last winter on a stormy night we had a small zodiac and outboard stolen.

Last year we tried to beef up the insurance to cover the tools but the insurance company won't touch it, they cover only £2k for garden and domestic tools.

So anyway my question: Does anyone know of a insurance company that covers domestic garages/workshops contents?

Thanks
Ben

 

[will barker]

Try NFU mutual, insurance designed for farmers, they cover all more workshop stuff up to an agreed value, but this is on a farm buisness insurance.

Hope that of some help

Will

 

[weldequip]

Wire the doors up to the mains Ben!... bleedin Pikeys
weldequip

 

[Satsuma]

haha that has crossed my mind! (and worse!!)

Thanks Will I will give them a try.

If I can't get cover I will have to get a steel door made with a huge lock.

Thanks
Ben

 

[MrFluffy]

Doing that to the exterior doors could be construed as advertising by some of the scrotes ("whys he gone to all that trouble" etc)...
I just finished putting in me silent alarm that rings my mobey and the house when its triggered. Im trying to wean myself off the shotgun mines...

 

[sparky]

steel doors

Had a yard a few years back and the neighbours told me how with the aid of oxy acetalyn cutters a group of sticky fingers made off with three lorries chippers and all the tools through three steel doors and a shipping container.Good job we were living on site in trailers.Anyway insurance is so pricey.I have had so much kit nicked i dont worry that much anymore,more worried about being killed for speakin me mind these days...............

 

[weldequip]

Trouble is it's you in the wrong if you take any action... world's gone mad! Personally, I'd stove their heads in with a blunt instrument but that's "uneccessary force" & you get locked up ... they do the same to you and it's headline news & a "tragic loss"
weldequip

 

[sparky]

big xxxxoff shiney knives

Big xxxxoff swords is better than blunt objects,if ya goin down go down wiv style.

 

[Satsuma]

The door is not visible from the road, so they would have to be looking for trouble anyway before they could see the door. I'm thinking of fitting a sliding bar on the inside with just the handle visible with a big padlock on the outside, with some sort of guard so they can't work the lock.

They got in the garage last time but must have been amateurs/idiots as they only stole engine oil, a £20 tool kit, a K&N filter?? and the most expensive thing being a new set of chain blocks and some Facom molegrips. As I said they took a zodiac on a trailer and the outboard for it from a shed. My concern is that now they know what they left behind they will try again when they are skint.

I live in a fairly close nit community so if it was done over properly I would eventually find out who had done it.

Weldquip you will like this story:

A landlord who is a friend of a friend had a break in and his car keys were stolen, the next night he waited up in case the thief came back for the car which he did. The landlord got the thief inside and beat the crap out of him with a baseball bat. The thief spent three days in hospital and made a complaint of assault with the police, the landlord pleaded ignorance and the police had no evidence so they couldn't charge him. The landlord was happy he beat the s**t out of him though as the thief in the end only got a £60 fine and community service for the burglary!!

Ben

P.S. I think for reasonable force if you use an object it has to be something to hand, i.e. if you are confronted outside and there is a piece of wood on the floor then you can use it, but you can't run inside grab a knife come back out and stab the person. I think that is a newish law?

 

[MarkMG]

Ben

Legal and General cover my garage value at 10% of house contents insurance value.

Mark

 

[performancepolishing]

Buy a Ridgeback! mine does a good job... :-)

 

[rtbcomp]

Have you considered self-insurance? For general goods and chattles it may be cost effective to put the premiums into an interest bearing account, if you included stuff like saving for appliance repairs rather than taking out extended warranties you could be quids in.

A money expert on the radio suggested this, but still take policies out for the big risks, like public liabilites.

 

[kezajones]

P.S. I think for reasonable force if you use an object it has to be something to hand, i.e. if you are confronted outside and there is a piece of wood on the floor then you can use it, but you can't run inside grab a knife come back out and stab the person. I think that is a newish law?

so if someone broke into my garage and i was in there i would be able to pick anything from £30ks worth of snap-on tool box to bash them with?

 

[Satsuma]

Good idea rtbcomp, we were paying £17 a month for dog insurance but decided it was a waste so now we pay it into a savings account instead, if the dog dies peacefully in her sleep then after we stop crying we can afford a nice holiday! Yippee

I thought you had to sign a terms and conditions contract for snap-on tools, stating that you promise not to get them dirty, would blood count as dirt?

Thanks for the advice.

Ben

 

[Baz-Cem]

My dog needed a £1500 pound op when she was 4 months old, I'd only been paying the insurance two months (£26) and they paid out without a problem.

Best cover I've taken out

Baz.

 

[Satsuma]

That was lucky Baz!, we paid for insurance for 2 years then stopped as we were certain the dog wasn't faulty. Physically anyway, mentally I'm still yet to decide.

 

[Towing and trailers]

I had a breakin and lost approx £140,000 in tools and machinery and they only paid £47,000 + VAT there was no way I could stop them getting in as they were getting in through walls. I had 4 bulgurys in the following year ( the insolvency people reconed this was a big factor to why I ended up bancrupt ) eventually I invested in an alarm (redcare GSM) this did cost in excess of £3,000 but I had the police in about a bulgury and they said the standard alarm was a waste of time as the and to get some master blasters and instant bells.

I did this and within a week of it working I got a call at 3:15 in the morning it took me 8 mins to get there and yes you could hear it from about 1/4 mile away I got there and looked around every thing was fine. (faulse alarm I thought)

we all got in to work next day every thing was fine we all set off in the vans on site then just after dinner I got a call from my land lord asking why their was a hole in the wall.

yes I had been broken in again but lost nothing.

the police actually caught some one some time that admitted to it along with another long list of other crimes later and came round about it to see if we lost any thing as they had not heard about it to see what we had lost as this lad had said he had S**T himself and not taken any thing and they did not belive him.

The moral is sod insurance, bared windows and other security just put a cheap alarm on with a master blaster or 2.

Pete

 

[Satsuma]

£140k's worth geeee's, how did they get through a wall, surely that would draw attention?

The garage is alarmed and is loud inside but can only just be heard in from the house. I think I should make it louder, maybe I should get some of these .

 

[Robotstar5]

Hole in the Wall

Hope this raises a few smiles

My sister ran a cigarette shop many years ago and got called out at 0300 by the police due to a break-in.
The thieves had chiselled a hole in a brick wall to avoid doors/windows alarms then started filling bin liners with packs of fags 'til one of them triggered the alarm.
So they bolt through the hole only to find the full bin liners would not fit through! there were fag packets all over the back garden leading off the property.

Some of them would be dangerous if they had brains.

 

[peterd51]

Hi,

the sound bomb is OK but there's another one that looks like a standard 'megaphone' siren...

it's rated at 119dB which is 4 times louder.

Regards
Peter