Window Shutter Installer Insurance

General Liability Insurance for Window Shutter Installers

Commercial general liability, usually written on the ISO CG 00 01 form, may respond when a third party is hurt or property that is not yours gets damaged. A ladder foot slides and takes out a flat screen. Dust from a jamb cut settles across a client's piano. Limits commonly start at $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate.

Interior work is intimate work. You are inside occupied homes, moving furniture, carrying 100 inch panels past plaster corners, drilling into casings without seeing what is behind them. Claims here tend to be frequent and irritating rather than catastrophic. Our piece on jobsite accidents and liability shows how they develop.

Expert Insight: Read exclusion j. on your CG 00 01 before you assume the customer's belongings are covered. Paragraph (4) removes personal property in the care, custody or control of the insured. Paragraph (6) removes that particular part of any property that must be restored, repaired or replaced because your work was incorrectly performed on it. No ISO endorsement buys care, custody or control back. A few carriers write their own version, so ask.

I cracked the window while drilling the frame. Is that covered? Often not, and the reason is technical. Exclusion j.(5) removes that particular part of real property you were performing operations on. Damage to the rest of the house is a different question than damage to the opening itself.

Tools, Equipment and Installation Coverage for Window Shutter Installers

Inland marine covers property that moves. A contractor's equipment or tools floater handles what you own and haul. An installation floater covers the materials you put into someone's building until the job is finished and accepted.

Your kit is small and expensive. Laser measures, track saw, shutter jigs, hinge templates, impact drivers. It lives in a van overnight. Our tools and equipment guide covers how these forms are built.

Are the customer's shutters covered while they sit in my garage? Only if the form says so. Many floaters limit or exclude storage at a location you own. Tell your agent where the product actually waits, because the honest answer is usually a shop, a garage, and sometimes a truck.

Professional Liability Insurance for Window Shutter Installers

Professional liability, sometimes sold as contractor's errors and omissions, may respond to claims about your measurements, specifications, and advice rather than an accident. Wrong deduction. Wrong frame for the opening. A recommendation the customer says cost them money.

This is the exposure that defines custom window coverings. Every order is manufactured to the numbers you supplied, and nobody else checks them. Our breakdown of general liability versus professional liability shows where the two policies split.

Expert Insight: Two details decide these claims. First, check whether ISO form CG 22 79, Exclusion, Contractors, Professional Liability, is attached to your general liability, because that is exactly the claim it removes. Second, remember that the CGL definition of "your work" pulls in warranties and representations about fitness, quality, durability and performance. Promising a perfect fit in writing is a coverage decision, not just a sales line.

Isn't a mis-measure just a warranty problem? To the customer, yes. To your policy it is usually a contract loss, not property damage, because the panel was never physically injured. That distinction is why a separate errors and omissions policy exists.

Workers' Comp Insurance for Window Shutter Installers

Workers' compensation pays medical care and lost wages for employees hurt on the job, and it is required in most states once you hire. In this trade the predictable injuries are step ladder falls, hand lacerations and back strain from tall panels.

Classification is worth a real conversation. Interior shutter and blind work can fall under more than one category, depending on the state and how your operations are described. See our state by state workers' comp guide for thresholds.

My installers are 1099. Do I still need coverage? Frequently yes. State law and the auditor decide worker status, not your agreement. Collect current certificates from every sub before the first job. See W-2 employees versus independent contractors.

What Window Shutter Installer Insurance Does Not Cover

Most pages in this category list what you can buy. Few explain what gets excluded, and that is where shutter installers get hurt. Exclusions vary by form and carrier, so treat this as a list to verify, not a verdict on your policy.

• Your own work and your own product. CG 00 01 exclusion k. Removes property damage to your product, whenever it happens. Exclusion l. removes property damage to your work, but only where it falls inside the products completed operations hazard. Exclusion l. has a subcontractor exception, which is one reason carriers sometimes attach CG 22 94 or CG 22 95 to avoid it. Look for CG 21 44 as well, Limitation Of Coverage To Designated Premises, Project Or Operation, which narrows where your coverage applies at all.
• The particular part you were working on. Exclusions j.(5) and j.(6) carve out the specific piece of real property you were operating on or performed work on incorrectly. The casing you drilled is different from the wall behind it.
• Customer property in your hands. Exclusion j.(4) removes personal property in the care, custody or control of the insured. There is no ISO endorsement that provides this. Solutions live in inland marine and bailee forms, or in a carrier's own proprietary endorsement.
• Redoing a mis-measured custom order. A panel manufactured too narrow was never physically injured, so there is often no property damage to trigger the policy. Redoing your own work is generally treated as a business risk rather than an insured loss under a CGL, though courts differ on how faulty workmanship gets analyzed and outcomes turn on state law and policy wording. Damage the bad install causes to other property is a different question.
• Lead and other pollutants. The pollution exclusion is included in nearly every general liability policy. Drilling into painted casings in a pre 1978 home is exactly the fact pattern that raises it. Contractors pollution liability is a separate purchase.
• Employee theft from a customer's home. Standard ISO crime forms reach property you own or hold for others. A ring that goes missing from a client's dresser is neither. Look at CR 04 01, Clients' Property, which adds an insuring agreement for theft of a client's property by an identified employee.
• Liability you assumed by contract. CG 21 39, Contractual Liability Limitation, narrows what your policy picks up when you sign a hold harmless. Send us the contract before you sign, not after a claim.
• Professional services. CG 22 79, Exclusion, Contractors, Professional Liability, removes measurement and specification claims from general liability.
• Wear, settling and cosmetic complaints. A panel that will not close square two winters later because the house moved is usually a warranty conversation, not a claim.