House Insurance and Solar Panels

brizzledfw

Hi there

thenudeone, saw your response on the other board so here for info:

Positive response from Axa last year when I called to say had had panels fitted. They added them at no extra cost.

Realised after i had posted on another forum last night that I may not have checked again when I took out a different Axa policy this year.

The reply back from Axa, via email, today was:

We provide cover for your solar panels if they are fitted to the property and accidentally damaged by a listed cause eg. Storm, fire etc

This is covered by your buildings policy as long as the panels fall within your limits ( my note, this I am taking to mean the limit per listed cause or basically the sub categories of limits within the policy)

Hope others find this useful

Brizzle

zeupater

brizzledfw wrote: »

.... ( my note, this I am taking to mean the limit per listed cause or basically the sub categories of limits within the policy) ...

Hi

And more importantly, the overall sum insured ... ie the rebuild cost.

HTH
Z

Brian99_2

A crucial question to ask these insurers is: if a panel is damaged, will they pay for the WHOLE job including scaffolding, labour etc; or do they just cover the cost of the panel ?

It is hundreds of pounds, just for scaffolding

Doc_N

Brian99 wrote: »

A crucial question to ask these insurers is: if a panel is damaged, will they pay for the WHOLE job including scaffolding, labour etc; or do they just cover the cost of the panel ?

It is hundreds of pounds, just for scaffolding

The standard policy will cover the full cost of the repair - including labour, scaffolding etc..

Brian99_2

Doc_N wrote: »

The standard policy will cover the full cost of the repair - including labour, scaffolding etc..

But I'm sure insurers will all have varying small print. Beware.

And I bet they won't cover installations which have brackets simply "hooked over the tiles" (and some installers really do it this way !!!)

VictorM_2

A side note with these solar panels is that they add a lot of weight to your roof where it may not be designed to take it - your insurer would not pay for any damage due to this.

In a similar way if you had a slates on your roof and had them replaced with heavier concrete tiles you may face the same problem.

John_Pierpoint

VictorM wrote: »

A side note with these solar panels is that they add a lot of weight to your roof where it may not be designed to take it - your insurer would not pay for any damage due to this.

In a similar way if you had a slates on your roof and had them replaced with heavier concrete tiles you may face the same problem.

There is an official report on this done for the building control departments of local authorities.
[Job protection or sensible precaution?] I would like to think that all the installers of solar panels could check the need for roof strengthening before recommending the roof - but that wish is a triumph of hope over experience.

Many Victorian roofs are identified as over engineered in terms of rafter sizes and spacing. The introduction of "Truss Frames" (Those "W" shapes clamped inside the triangle by steel plates) were ruled to be largely sufficient).

For those of us who have homes built between about 1920 and 1970, we should be aware that builders were trying to stretch the amount of house covered by a given amount of timber rafters, and some of these roofs have been recovered by heavy concrete tiles. Some of these roofs are held together by inadequate amounts of smooth nails, not bolted together with timber connectors.

The report suggests using a weight of 20 kg per sq meter (?!?) extra loading to allow for panels retro fitted to the roof.

Has anyone got stories of panels blowing away or roofs collapsing in the recent gales?

Martyn1981

John, heard of one story from last weeks storms, one panel smashed when neighbours chicken coop decided to show the chucks what they were missing out on.

Insurance to pay out. No damage to the roof structure underneath, or resulting weather damage / intrusion as panel took the impact.

Mart.

Edit: Quick check of panel specs, and most 1m by 1.65m panels seem to weigh about 20kg, so with brackets, rails, clips etc 20kg per m2 seems a logical guess. Around 500kg total distributed. Don't know what the additional snow load requirements for a roof are, or whether panels will help or hinder its removal. M.

VictorM_2

I have never dealt with them blowing away, only the aforementioned weight issue.

thenudeone

Doc_N wrote: »

The standard policy will cover the full cost of the repair - including labour, scaffolding etc..

I wouldn't bet on that at all.

I don't know whether you were referring to insurance in general or solar panels in particular, but in general some policies do not cover the cost of trace and access. A friend of mine had a burst pipe over winter. The insurers would pay for the repair to the pipe itself but not for removing part of the wall to find the leak and access to the pipe.

This exclusion is common and described here: http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/ombudsman-news/58/58-home_insurance.htm

So even if an insurer says "we cover solar panels" it does NOT necessarily mean that they will pay all costs involved in accessing the panels.