Your work exclusion and property coverage: Your general liability policy has an exclusion in the common declarations pages that excludes “your work” from property damage and products coverage. Kind of like a homeowners exclusion where you can’t be liable to yourself.

Say you are building an addition and have framed a few walls. That night there is a fire and it destroys your new framing and part of the existing home. The cause of the fire is determined to be your fault. Your liability insurance will provide coverage for the existing portion of the home but not your new walls. Your work/product is excluded. Same is true of the artisan sub contractor. The addition is framed and the plumber and electrician have installed their rough. A fire burns down the addition and the cause is determined to be the plumber’s negligence. The plumbers General Liability will provide coverage for the existing home, the framing on the addition and electrical rough, but not for the plumbers own rough.

Solutions: have an agreement with the homeowner and make sure he has acquired property coverage for the addition. Most homeowner insurance companies require the home owner to contact the carrier when the improvements are starting. On a new home a course of construction policy is the way to go and I like to name all the owners and contractors as named insured’s so everyone has property coverage for their work product.