aqua_sax
Well-Known Member
Certainly an option. But have we established whether there are any insurers who do not weave tangled webs when it comes to lithium batteries on board?
Self install of LifePo4 and what requirements for insurance (UK)
- Thread starter davethedog
- Start date
Certainly an option. But have we established whether there are any insurers who do not weave tangled webs when it comes to lithium batteries on board?
PaulRainbow
Well-Known Member
Yes, we have.
If everyone who has these stupid clauses in their in policies move to a company that doesn't have them maybe they'll stop being stupid.
aqua_sax
Well-Known Member
There is also another option, which I have already put to my insurers: go ahead anyway with the installation, regardless of their endorsement embroidery. My thinking (and that is all it is at this stage) is that I can achieve a safe installation, at least as good as any professional. I'm not a fool, and am good with my hands (once upon a time, a very long time ago, I earned my daily crust opening up people). A simple one battery LiFePO4 installation is not complicated. Now the crucial question is, do I have confidence in my installation? Am I prepared to have not just me, but my friends and family sleeping on board after I have done the installation? Can I reach a state where I have achieved an installation that is so safe that there is in effect zero risk? If I can, then do I really need to insure it against failure? This line of thinking is of course predicated on the idea that insurers can't refuse an unrelated claim on the basis that something else not related to the claim isn't as they would like it to be.
I'm just posting this as a thought at this stage. It does seem to me ridiculous that the marine insurance industry has taken what on the face of it is a most unreasonable line. Yes i absolutely know they can do this, but what about common sense?
I'm just posting this as a thought at this stage. It does seem to me ridiculous that the marine insurance industry has taken what on the face of it is a most unreasonable line. Yes i absolutely know they can do this, but what about common sense?
lustyd
Well-Known Member
Have you met any lawyers ever?
aqua_sax
Well-Known Member
But which ones? We need names...
lustyd
Well-Known Member
Been doing exactly this for several years. It’s obviously not zero risk but it’s about the same as a lead install. I worked with risk assessors in air traffic control for a while so I do understand risk, and a reasonable install gets the risk down to warranty and latent fault type stuff anyway
aqua_sax
Well-Known Member
Yes, as often as not on the other side of the table. Doctors and lawyers famously don't get on very well.
Edited to remove an attachment that may or may not have been publicly visible which I decided not to include...
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PaulRainbow
Well-Known Member
What happens if your self install starts a fire and burns a £2,000,000 boat next to you to the waterline ? Your insurance won't pay, the owner sues you and your family is homeless ?
lustyd
Well-Known Member
That depends. In another thread someone showed an insurance policy that included “negligence” in the cover. Surely this comes under that heading. Same for self installing lead badly, I can’t see the difference.
aqua_sax
Well-Known Member
This is a third party claim, and I may have read somewhere that insurers can't refuse most third party claims, that's the whole point of third party insurance. Looking into this is on my to do list.
But more pragmatically:
(a) there won't be any evidence left after the conflagration and
(b) I probably won't be here either, having been either blown to bits or burst to s shred in the fire/explosion.
Edit: lustyd, I see we cross posted the same point.
billskip
Well-Known Member
Plus the environmental clean up which will be £ telephone numbers.....
PaulRainbow
Well-Known Member
Doing something that is explicitly excluded from your cover isn't negligence.
lustyd
Well-Known Member
Negligence is surely any act you didn’t take proper care in doing. That includes doing things you didn’t realise were wrong because you didn’t know better.
Let’s say i use a hammer to crimp a battery cable and it leads to fire. Obviously wrong and any pro knows that.
Now let’s say I buy a “drop in replacement battery” and do nothing but swap it out for the old AGM. Perfectly reasonable behaviour, especially if I’d asked the battery shop what they recommend.
The real test here, from a legal perspective, isn’t whether LFP is acceptable, it’s whether the insurance terms are reasonable. There are multiple laws in the UK that may negate those unfair terms.
PaulRainbow
Well-Known Member
Negligent is "failing to take proper care over something"
Fitting LFP when your insurance forbids them is not negligent, it's stupid.
Of course the terms are reasonable, you don't have to take the insurance out, you can go somewhere else.
Momac
Well-Known Member
I just checked my insurance policy. The word ''battery'' does not appear in it.
Is it not the case with your boat insurance?
lustyd
Well-Known Member
No they aren’t. Insurance companies are chancing here in the hope they get away with it. This is a one sided contract with unfair and unreasonable terms and would likely be thrown out by a court as such if a claim were made.
Given how safe LFP is, it’s unlikely that will ever be tested.
PaulRainbow
Well-Known Member
It is, and if mine had the ridiculous conditions being imposed by other companies i'd be moving, pronto.
aqua_sax
Well-Known Member
Neither you nor anyone else so far as I know has named an insurer that doesn't have lithium battery restrictions. What if 'somewhere else' doesn't exist? What if in effect insurers operate a cartel whereby they all only offer unreasonable terms?
I have looked at my policy wording and it does not explicitly exclude negligence for third party claims. The only relevant exclusion is 'wilful misconduct' which is defined as 'A deliberate or planned action that You actively undertake that causes loss or damage' ie there has to be a deliberate wilful intent to cause damage. Good luck to insurers trying to prove you or I had that intent. Negligence is more nuanced, an act or omission that you might reasonably know might cause harm, but without deliberate wilful intent. Negligence in ordinary language is carelessness, and it is not an exclusion for third party claims. Indeed, as i said earlier, one of the main reasons for third party insurance is to cover negligence.
But we are rather losing sight of reality here. I can assure you that if I install a LiFePO4 battery and associated kit I will only do so after careful research, and I will make sure the installation is done competently, and document everything. There is no way such an installation is negligent. If it were, then even just owning a boat is negligent, because it might hit someone, and as for putting to sea, well, it is obviously foreseeable that something might go wrong, and therefore all passages of any kind are negligent. Surely it is time to step back from this madness.
aqua_sax
Well-Known Member
I've been meaning to ask: if you supply as well as fit lithium batteries, presumably you only supply to 'professionals' since supplying amateur owners with dangerous kit which they can only fit against the terms of their insurance, conduct which you have described as stupid, is clearly negligent? You would be supplying dangerous equipment to idiots and it is entirely foreseeable there will all sorts of loss and damage.
Dockhead
Well-Known Member
The whole purpose of third party cover is to protect third parties from negligence of the insured.
What may be excluded is GROSS negligence, and wilful misconduct is always excluded, AFAIK.
It is not necessarily negligent to take some risk. The legal standard is the failure to take that degree of care to avoid damaging others, which a "reasonable person" would take.
If your lithium power system burns your boat, and burns down a £2 million boat next to you, you may not even be liable at all, which means your insurance will not have to pay anything, if you exercised reasonable care in installing and maintaining the system and there was no wilful misconduct.
In my opinion, if you have the design checked and approved by an EE, and have your installation inspected by a reputable professional marine electrician, and it passes, you have abundantly fulfilled the duty to exercise due care, going far beyond what almost anyone does with ordinary lead acid systems.
What may be excluded is GROSS negligence, and wilful misconduct is always excluded, AFAIK.
It is not necessarily negligent to take some risk. The legal standard is the failure to take that degree of care to avoid damaging others, which a "reasonable person" would take.
If your lithium power system burns your boat, and burns down a £2 million boat next to you, you may not even be liable at all, which means your insurance will not have to pay anything, if you exercised reasonable care in installing and maintaining the system and there was no wilful misconduct.
In my opinion, if you have the design checked and approved by an EE, and have your installation inspected by a reputable professional marine electrician, and it passes, you have abundantly fulfilled the duty to exercise due care, going far beyond what almost anyone does with ordinary lead acid systems.
