Guide to Floating Home Insurance

This guide to floating home insurance is designed to give you an outline of what to consider when buying insurance for your floating home and what cover it provides. Floating homes, or floating lodges, offer a unique lifestyle. They combine the benefits of being on the water with more spacious accommodation than many narrowboats or barges can offer.

Choosing an insurer for your floating home 

Do they understand your requirements? Clearly, floating homes have their own risks, which are very different to conventional bricks and mortar homes and different to other crafts. Therefore, they require a different type of insurance. Here at Park Home Assist, we have been insuring leisure homes for almost two decades, so we fully understand the risks involved as well as the needs of our customers. Can you tailor your insurance policy to meet your needs? Not being over-insured, as well as not being under insured is important for value, money and peace of mind. Check that you can tailor your policy to meet your needs – so you have the insurance you want, without paying for the extras that you don’t need. What insurance cover is provided as standard for your floating home? Please note that all insurance cover is subject to acceptance of terms and conditions so the following is a general guide to floating home insurance. Does the insurer provide the following as standard?

  • Cover for both your floating home and the pontoon on which it sits
  • Cover for using your floating home or lodge as holiday accommodation – for yourself, your family or when rented out
  • Insurance cover for loss or damage by accidents and/or deliberate acts of others, including fire, explosion, collision, sinking, grounding, malicious acts, arson, vandalism
  • Faults and gradual deterioration
  • Theft or attempted theft
  • Your floating home hitting an object under water or partly under water
  • If the worst happens and you suffer a total loss, or if your floating home needs to be moved to avoid a total loss, are salvage, towage and assistance charges included?
  • Are siting costs included?
  • What is the level of Public Liability cover?
  • Is Occupier’s Liability included?
  • Are you covered for short-term alternative accommodation if your floating home cannot be lived in?
  • Are your freezer contents covered in the event of a power failure?
  • Can you get replacement keys and locks?

What optional extras do you need as part of your floating home insurance? For example, you may want to include the following:

  • Cover for contents up to £75,000
  • Increased public liability cover
  • Legal expenses cover
  • Worldwide cover for items away from the home
  • Cover for valuable and specified items
  • Protected no claims discount

There may also be additional benefits or discounts that you can get if your floating home is sited in a marina, for example. Ask the insurance company when obtaining a quote. What service will you receive if you have to make a claim? You only really appreciate the value of your insurance when you need to make a claim. So how can you tell that your floating home insurer will deliver when you need them most? At Park Home Assist our customers come back to us year after year because they know they can depend on our service. We have achieved a Feefo Platinum Trusted Service Award – rated by real customers, for four consecutive years. The Platinum award is the ultimate accolade and recognises businesses that continue to deliver exceptional customer service year after year. We have also won insurance industry awards for the personal service and care that we provide to our customers. In addition, it’s always a good idea to check out customer testimonials when choosing an insurer for your floating home. We hope that you have found this a useful guide to choosing your floating home or floating lodge insurance. If you have any questions, then please call our office on 01604 946 796 and one of our insurance advisers will be happy to help. Please note that you will have certain obligations to maintain your floating home or floating lodge and that all insurance cover is subject to acceptance of terms and conditions. This is a marketing article from Park Home Assist, multi award-winning providers of residential park home insurance.  If you would like to speak to an advisor regarding insurance for your park home, please contact our friendly team in our Northampton office on 01604 946 796. To stay up to date with similar topics like this, please like and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. For more information about any of our other insurance products, please choose your product of interest below:

Published – 03/02/23