[TowerTalk] More on Insurance and Towers

Gareth gareth at capecod.net
Sat Jan 1 10:49:43 EST 2005


garyejones at cmaaccess.com wrote:

> 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


Thanks for that very informative post. Gives you something to think about.
Wishes for a safe and joyous New Year to all!

gareth   N1MSV


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