Flooring and Tiling Contractors Insurance
Most flooring disputes are decided by a piece of paper that costs nothing to produce, and most flooring contractors do not produce it.
When a floor lifts, cups or debonds months later, the cause is almost always moisture in the subfloor rather than anything you did with the covering. Whether that becomes your problem depends entirely on whether you tested before laying and wrote the reading down.
Test and record, and the liability sits with whoever provided the slab. Do not, and you will carry it, because the failure was checkable and you did not check. That single habit is worth more to a flooring business than any policy feature.
How Much Is Flooring & Tiling Insurance?
Cover for a sole trader flooring or tiling contractor with public and product liability typically starts at about £8.25 a month, roughly £99 a year. That is the entry point rather than the average: one person, liability only, with nothing for tools, employees or the job itself. Employ anyone and employers' liability becomes a legal requirement, and from there the price is driven by wageroll and by the work you take on rather than by the trade.
What moves the price is the same in every trade: turnover, how many people work under your direction, the work you take on, and your claims record. We are a broker, so we take it to several insurers rather than quoting one. Call 02382 000820 for a realistic figure.
What Flooring & Tiling Insurance Covers
Public Liability Insurance
Injury and damage to property belonging to other people, including the water damage that follows a struck heating pipe. £2m for domestic, £5m on commercial and main contractor sites.
Employers' Liability Insurance
Required by law and included as standard. Lifting, kneeling and silica dust from cutting are the exposures that turn into claims, the last of them years later.
Contract Works Cover
Work in progress and materials on site. Flooring is high value per pallet, ruined by a leak and easily moved.
Tools & Equipment Cover
Grinders, sanders, tile saws and moisture meters. The larger machines are worth listing individually.
The Moisture Reading Is Your Defence
You did not lay the slab and you are not responsible for how wet it is. You are responsible for checking it before you cover it up, and that is where these arguments are won or lost.
If you tested, recorded the result and either proceeded on an acceptable reading or put the problem in writing, you have somewhere to stand. If you did not, the answer to why not is difficult, because it was a five minute job. Keep the readings with the job file, not in your head.
Note also what insurance will not do either way. Lifting and relaying a failed floor is a rectification cost and no policy pays for it. That is most of what customers ring about.
Pipes And Cables Under What You Are Fixing Into
Drilling or fixing into a floor with heating in it is a straightforward way to create a large claim from a small job. The pipe is nothing; taking up the floor you just laid to reach it, and drying what the water reached below, is not.
Some wordings restrict cover where services were not located first. Scanning before you fix, and keeping the scan, both prevents the claim and protects it if it happens anyway.
Sanding And Lacquering Is A Fire Job
Some floor lacquers give off flammable vapour while they cure, and the dust and rags from sanding can heat up on their own and ignite with no source at all, sometimes hours after you have locked up an empty house.
It is a genuinely different exposure from laying carpet, and insurers treat it that way, often with conditions about products, ventilation and how waste is disposed of. If you sand and finish, declare it rather than describing the business simply as flooring.
After A Floor Failure Claim
Flooring failures tend to arrive in groups, because whatever caused the first one was probably happening on other jobs at the same time. That is what makes them awkward at renewal.
The fix is documentary. A moisture testing procedure applied to every job, readings kept with the paperwork, and a written note to the client where a subfloor was not ready. Show an underwriter that and the history reads as something that has been dealt with.
If you are being loaded for failures that were really somebody else's slab, that is worth arguing properly. Call 02382 000820.
What We Need To Quote
- Turnover across domestic, commercial and industrial
- What you lay: timber, vinyl, carpet, tile, resin or screed
- Whether you test subfloor moisture and how you record it
- Whether you work over underfloor heating
- Whether you sand and finish, and with what products
- How you control dust when cutting and grinding
- Five years of claims including failures settled directly
Cover that often goes with this
The gaps we most often find sitting next to this policy.
- Kitchen and bathroom installersWet room tanking sits across both trades and is the biggest rectification cost in either.
- Plasterers and drylinersScreed and levelling usually falls to whichever of you gets there first.
- Tradesman insuranceTools cover, and the conditions on theft from a van overnight.
- Contractors all riskCover for the job itself while it is in progress, before it is handed over.
Common questions
A floor I laid has lifted. Will my insurance replace it?+
No. Lifting and relaying the floor is a rectification cost and no liability policy covers it. What is covered is damage the failure caused to something else, and in most flooring failures there is none. This is the single biggest misunderstanding in the trade. Your protection is not the policy, it is the moisture reading that shows the subfloor was fit when you laid on it.
Who is liable if the subfloor was too damp?+
It turns on whether you tested. The slab is not your work and its condition is not your responsibility, but covering it without checking is. Test, record, and either proceed on an acceptable reading or put the problem in writing, and the liability sits with whoever provided it. Skip the test and you will normally carry it, because it was checkable in five minutes.
Am I covered if I drill into underfloor heating?+
Normally yes under public liability, and the claim is bigger than people expect because reaching the pipe means lifting the floor you just laid, on top of drying whatever the water reached below. The caveat is that some wordings restrict cover where services were not located beforehand, so scan first and keep the scan.
What insurance do tilers need?+
Public liability at £2m domestic or £5m commercial, employers' liability wherever anyone works to your instructions, contract works for materials on site, and tools cover including saws and grinders. Two things specific to tiling: silica dust from cutting, which is a long term employers' liability exposure, and wet room tanking, where a failure puts water into the structure and becomes far bigger than the tiling ever was.
Can I get cover after a run of floor failures?+
Yes, and it is worth presenting properly rather than resubmitting the numbers. Failures usually cluster because the same cause was live across several jobs, so showing a moisture testing procedure now applied to every job, with readings kept, tells an underwriter the cause has gone. Call 02382 000820 before accepting a loaded renewal.
Other trades we cover
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