BC (Canada) Home insurance questions.

I just had to switch insurance companies for a house in New Hampshire that I rent with my brothers. Its much harder to find a company to insure a rental house that has a wood stove. Rates did not go up at all, I don't think, and we were lucky to have good insurance broker look around a find the company. Since its a rental, we decided to build in the cost of a couple cords of wood and annual chimney sweep into the rent. That way, we can order wood early in the year, and know that the renter will be using dry wood - and then to chimney sweep can tell us if it looks like the renter was burning it relatively well.

Twalt87 said:

To anyone living in bc. I have a few questions.

I'm about to install my woodstove and am wondering a few things before I go ahead with it.

What insurance companies do you all use?
How many cords is considered primary heat?
How many of you actually claim it ad primary heat Vs lying about it?
How much do your rates go up when claiming secondary or primary heat?

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Hey.

I'm from BC. I didn't know all the answers to your question so I phoned my insurance broker this afternoon to get some answers for you.

We're using Optimum West.

We're insured to burn up to four cords of wood a year as a secondary heat source.

We truly do supplement our furnace. I work from home and we usually have a fire going from when we get up until a small re-load before bed. The natural gas furnace is set to come on at about 16C and it does run every night. If we're away for the day or long periods we just let the fire go out and the furnace take over. In a new house (1 year old) our gas bill is usually under $30.00 a month during the coldest part of the winter. During the shoulder season it jumps to $60.00 when it's just easier to let the furnace handle things instead of building a fire. We only use gas for cooking and the furnace as our hot water is electric.

The increase in insurance cost is about 10% which works out to about $150.00 for us.

Hope this helps