Upholsterer and Furniture Maker Insurance

This is the technical point that catches upholsterers out, because compliance is easy to assume and hard to reconstruct.

Fire safety requirements for upholstered furniture work on the combination of cover and filling. A fabric may be suitable only when used over a particular interliner, a filling has to be treated, and the piece as made has to meet the requirement rather than each component in isolation. Use a compliant cover over an untreated filling, or a fabric that needed an interliner without one, and the finished piece does not comply even though every invoice says the materials were fine.

So the paperwork is part of the product. Keep supplier declarations for covers, fillings and interliners, record per job which materials went into which piece, label the finished work as required, and keep those records rather than throwing away the sticker and the certificate. Where a customer brings their own fabric, that is the moment to be clear in writing: either it is tested and suitable, or it is used over an interliner, or the job is declined. An upholsterer who cannot evidence compliance after a fire is in a very difficult position regardless of what was actually used.

Underwriters look at an upholstery workshop and see a building with a very high fire load for its size, and they are right.

Foam, fabric rolls, wadding, feather, timber frames, offcuts, dust and contact adhesive in open containers are all combustible, and in a busy workshop they are everywhere rather than in a store. Ignition sources are ordinary: an electrical fault, a staple gun compressor, a heat gun, smoking near a loading door, and spray adhesive overspray on surfaces. Once alight, foam produces dense smoke extremely fast, which is why these fires tend to be total losses rather than partial ones.

Which makes housekeeping the thing that actually earns terms. Offcuts and dust cleared daily rather than accumulating under benches, foam and fabric stored in a separated area rather than against the work space, adhesive containers closed and stored in a metal cabinet, spray residue cleaned, electrical installation inspected, and a rule about smoking nowhere near the building. On business interruption, remember that patterns, templates and work in progress are part of what is lost and part of what takes time to replace.

The property figure that matters here is not stock. It is the furniture sitting on the floor waiting to be worked on.

A workshop in a busy period holds pieces stripped and waiting, pieces part re-covered, finished work awaiting collection or delivery, and sometimes a contract batch. All of it belongs to somebody. Standard public liability excludes damage to property in the insured's care, custody or control, which is the whole floor, and a fire in a foam filled workshop destroys everything at once rather than selectively.

Traditional and antique work adds the harder problem. A Georgian frame, a Victorian chaise or a family chair being re-covered for the third generation has no equivalent to buy, and frames do break during stripping and re-webbing because the damage is in joints nobody could see. So confirm customers' goods cover and set the limit on a busy week including uncollected pieces, check the single article limit separately, photograph and record every piece on arrival including loose joints and woodworm, and tell customers in writing where a frame may not survive the work.

The frequent claims in upholstery are not fires or compliance failures. They happen at the front door.

A three seat sofa, a wing chair or a headboard has to come out of a workshop, go in a van, and get into a house with a narrow hall, a turn at the bottom of the stairs, a bannister, a painted door frame and a wood floor. The realistic claims are a scraped door frame, a gouged wall at the turn, a damaged bannister spindle, a scratched floor, and a piece that does not fit and has to go back. Commercial deliveries add lifts, glazed entrances and other tenants.

So protection and measurement are the controls. Measure access before accepting a job rather than discovering it on delivery, protect door frames and floors before the piece comes through rather than carrying carefully, use enough people for the weight, and photograph the route before and after. Where a piece plainly will not go in, say so at quotation. A damaged hallway is a small claim with a large effect on a relationship, because the customer was expecting a nice sofa and got a decorator's bill.

Products liability and the workshop fire load decide this one. We are an FCA regulated broker and will not tell you we are the best choice. These are the questions that decide it.