Plumber insurance

The price depends on your turnover, the work you do, your headcount and the excess you choose. At Insify, Public Liability for a plumber starts from €21.84 per month. Plumbing is rated on our construction basis, which is why it starts higher than trades that carry less risk of injury and property damage. A personalised quote takes a few minutes online, and you can adjust the excess to see how it moves your premium.

Public Liability is not required by law in Ireland. In practice you will be asked for it constantly. Main contractors will not let you on site without a certificate, letting agents and facilities managers ask before handing over keys, and local authorities and public tenders set their own minimum limits. Plumbing sits on our construction rating, which carries a single cover limit of €2.5 million per claim and €5 million per insurance year, so the €1.25 million, €2.5 million and €6.5 million choice available on our general rating does not apply here. If a contract asks you for more than €2.5 million, tell us before you buy so we can check whether we can cover the work.

Water damage caused to other people is the core of this cover, and where it sits depends on whose property got wet. Damage to the building you were working in and the belongings around you falls under third-party objects and sites, up to €25,000 per claim if you work on your own or €50,000 if you employ anyone, and up to twice that per insurance year. Damage to property that was never in your care, such as the flat below the one you were in, is ordinary third-party property damage and responds at the €2.5 million cover limit instead of the sub-limit. Damage to your own tools, van or stock is not covered.

Construction, installation, modification, maintenance and repair of in-house gas pipelines is one of the activities included on this policy, so injury or property damage arising from that work is covered in the same way as the rest of your plumbing. Tell us at sign-up that you do gas work, because your cover matches the activities you declare and nothing else. Gas work outside the building, and anything you have not declared, is a different question, so ask us first rather than assuming.

No. Work on solar cells, solar collectors, solar panels and collectors for water heating is excluded, and so is work on sprinkler systems and work on sewers outside a building. That matters more in plumbing than it looks on paper, because solar thermal and hot water cylinder work often arrives on the same job sheet as a boiler swap. If any of it is part of what you do, tell us before you buy rather than after, because a claim arising from excluded work is not covered. We would rather turn the work away than leave you thinking you are covered for it.

Not as standard. Public Liability covers injury and damage to other people and their property, not the cost of redoing your own work. The optional cost of additional work cover pays the necessary and reasonable cost of putting faulty work right, up to €25,000 per claim if you work on your own or €50,000 if you employ anyone, after a €500 excess. So if a soldered joint fails, stripping out and re-running the pipe is cost of additional work, and the soaked ceiling underneath it is Public Liability.

The excess is the part of a claim you pay yourself. If a claim settles at €4,000 and your excess is €500, you pay €500 and Insify pays €3,500. The options are €0, €250, €500, €1,000 and €2,500, with €0 and €250 available up to €500,000 annual revenue; above that the minimum is €500. A higher excess usually lowers your premium but means more out of pocket when a claim happens. The optional cost of additional work cover carries its own €500 excess.

Yes. Employers' Liability is a separate optional cover with a limit of €13 million per claim, and it is not part of your policy unless you add it. Employers' Liability is not compulsory in Ireland, unlike the United Kingdom, but you are still liable as an employer, and a second pair of hands on a hot water system is exactly where that bites. Your headcount also changes your third-party property limits, which move from €25,000 to €50,000 per claim once you employ anyone.

Your cover follows what you declare, so the questions are worth reading properly. You tell us which work you do. For a plumber that includes whether you install sanitary facilities, whether you work on internal gas pipelines, whether you carry out roofing work, and whether you carry out fire-hazardous work. Fire-hazardous work means all work involving heating, and flame soldering is on that list, so read that one twice. Those four affect your price. You also tell us whether more than 50% of your revenue comes from subcontractors, and whether more than 50% comes from outside the European Union. If you have been trading for less than 36 months, we ask about your experience as well. At sign-up you confirm that no insurer has refused or cancelled cover for your company in the last 5 years, and that there has been no situation involving a crime in the last 8 years. Some answers mean we look at your application by hand before we can quote. That is not a decline and it is not an automatic yes. Work you have not declared is not covered, so tell us now rather than find out at claim time.