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[TowerTalk] More on Insurance and Towers

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] More on Insurance and Towers
From: garyejones@cmaaccess.com
Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2005 05:41:29 -0800
List-post: <mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
Here is an issue that you may need to think about also. 

At my last QTH, I owned ~ 9.5 acres. I had two towers up in the 2
acres
behind my house. One tower was 120 feet of Rohn 45 and the other was a
HyGain 70 foot crank up.  I also had two wooden barns (horse stables)
with concrete floors. One was about 20 x 50 with three outside horse
stables, and the other was about 20 x 40. I had a wooden fence around
the back area which a previous owner had for horses. 

I had a detailed talk with my insurance agent. The conversation
generally went like this. 

"Are my towers and antennas covered by my homeowners insurance?  Yes,
they are."

"And are my barns covered by my homeowners insurance?  Yes, both barns
are covered too."

"What about my fence and my farm tractor?    Yep, they are covered
also. "

"So everything out back is covered, is that right?    Yep, no
problem"

Several years later, a large and relatively "friendly" tornado passed
directly over my house. I was in the house with my wife at the time.
The tornado lasted a few seconds. I had fortunately, no serious damage
to the house, and it needed only a new roof several weeks later.
However, two 70' pine trees were felled by the winds and hit guy wires
for my Rohn 45 and when they hit one guy, they sheared the guy
insulator cable clamps on the opposing guy wire which then buckled the
tower right above the bottom set of guys. A total of 35 70' pines were
either felled or snapped off mid-trunk. A tree fell on my big barn,
several damaged the wooden fence, one tree fell on top of my tractor,
and a big one fell beside my house creating amazingly little damage to
the house itself but touching the house, so insurance gladly paid for
the removal of that one and the one on the barn (it pays nothing for
trees that fall or are ruined if they don't fall on an insured
structure (that was news to me.....))  . 

Now, the point of my story. When I called the insurance agent to start
the claim, and the adjuster got there, I discovered that all "non
attached structures" were totaled into one figure and the limit of
that
figure was 10% of the value of my house insurance. My exterior damage
to the barn, tower, tractor, fence was way, way in excess of 10% of
the
value of my house, however, all they paid was 10%. So each thing was
covered, but the aggregate of the coverage is tied to the insured
value
of your house. The assumption is that you may lose the tower and
antennas, but everything else is OK, or you lose the barn to a fire,
but the antennas and towers are OK, but if you have a fairly massive
problem like a tornado or straight-line winds, and lose a bunch of
stuff, you may well get reimbursed far less than you lost. 

I changed companies and then got additional coverage (I thought my
agent was an idiot)  for each of the outbuildings or structures so
that if I lost them all at the same time, all would be covered. It
cost
more, but I felt it was worth the additional coverage. 

With insurance, my experience is that you are never covered for what
you think that you are covered, and you are always disappointed in the
settlement when it occurs. 

    73

            Gary    W5FI
_______________________________________________

See: http://www.mscomputer.com  for "Self Supporting Towers", "Wireless Weather 
Stations", and lot's more.  Call Toll Free, 1-800-333-9041 with any questions 
and ask for Sherman, W2FLA.

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