Pump Installation and Service Insurance

Pump work has a severity mismatch that is easy to underestimate when quoting a service visit.

A sump pump in a basement plant room costs a modest amount and protects switchgear, lift equipment and a building's services. A car park pump protects vehicles and a structure. A foul pumping station protects an estate from backing up and a watercourse from a discharge. A booster set keeps water above the fourth floor of a tower block. When any of them fails and the failure traces to an installation, a repair or a service, the claim is the thing that flooded or stopped, not the unit.

So two things matter. The limit of indemnity needs to reflect what the pumps you work on protect rather than your turnover, because a small business servicing basement installations in commercial buildings carries a large exposure. And the service record needs to show what was tested: that the pump ran under load rather than being started, that float switches and level controls operated at the right levels, that the alarm was triggered and received, and that duty and standby both ran. A service sheet saying the pump was checked is not evidence that it worked.

Every trade that isolates things has this failure, and in pumping it floods a building.

A pump is isolated to work on it, a control panel is switched to manual, an alarm is silenced to stop it sounding during a visit, a float is lifted and clipped out of the way, or a valve is closed to change a seal. If any of those is not restored before the engineer leaves, the system is not protecting anything, and nobody finds out until it rains or the building fills. The service record will show exactly who was last there and what they did, which is why this is the hardest failure in the trade to defend.

So the end of visit check is the control and it should be a procedure rather than a habit. Every isolation restored and verified by operating the system rather than by looking at a switch position, the panel returned to automatic, alarms re-enabled and tested, valves confirmed open, floats returned to position, and a signed confirmation that the system was left operational. Where a system has to be left out of service because a part is awaited, that needs to be in writing to the customer with the consequence spelled out rather than mentioned to whoever was on site.

The employers' liability exposure in this trade is one of the most serious on this site, and it is well documented.

A foul water wet well or a sewage chamber contains decomposing matter that generates hydrogen sulphide and depletes oxygen. Hydrogen sulphide at higher concentrations deadens the sense of smell and then incapacitates, which is why people have died going in after a colleague. The space is confined, access is a narrow cover, there is water of unknown depth, and the atmosphere can change when sludge is disturbed by a pump being lifted. Add electricity, lifting a heavy pump up a shaft, and in many cases a remote location.

So the controls are the full confined space regime and an insurer will expect them described rather than summarised. Permit to work, atmospheric testing before and continuously during entry rather than once, forced ventilation, harness and rescue equipment rigged before anybody enters, a top man who does not enter under any circumstances, a rescue arrangement that does not rely on the emergency services, and an absolute rule that nobody enters to help a colleague. Check the policy permits confined space entry too, because a restriction removes the core of this work.

Where a pump business specifies as well as installs, which is normal, the exposure moves from workmanship into advice.

Somebody decides the pump duty, the number of pumps, whether there is a standby, the control philosophy, the alarm arrangement, the storage volume in a station and the pipe sizing. Those decisions are made on inflow assumptions, and inflow is where it goes wrong: a station sized on figures that did not allow for a connected development, a sump sized for ordinary rainfall rather than a storm, no standby on an installation that cannot tolerate a failure, or a control philosophy that cycles a pump to destruction. The system then performs exactly as designed and still floods.

So the basis needs recording and the assumptions need stating. The inflow or demand figures used and where they came from, the duty point selected, whether a standby was recommended and whether the client took it, the storage volume provided, and the alarm arrangement proposed. Where a client declines a standby pump or a telemetry alarm on cost, that refusal in writing is the defence when the single pump fails. And where the inflow figures came from the client, make clear that they did.

The flood is the claim, not the pump. We are an FCA regulated broker and will not tell you we are the best choice. These are the questions that decide it.