Home studio builds run through more trades than most owners expect. A rack of interfaces, monitors, and outboard gear can run past $15,000 before anyone touches a wall. Soundproofing a room, running new circuits for that gear, framing a vocal booth, each one puts a stranger with tools next to equipment worth more than the renovation itself.
Contractors Liability, an agency licensed in all 50 states and in business for more than 20 years, points homeowners toward the one coverage most people never ask about by name: property damage. A standard general liability policy carries $1 million per occurrence and $2 million total, and that limit is what responds when a contractor’s mistake wrecks something on the property that isn’t the actual construction. Your gear included.
General Liability Covers Your Gear, But Not The Bad Workmanship That Damaged It
If a wiring fault starts a fire that destroys a rack of gear, the damage is a property damage claim. The bad wiring itself is a different story. Most policies carry a workmanship exclusion, so the cost of redoing the electrical work that caused the fire typically isn’t covered at all. The fire is covered. The mistake isn’t.
Ongoing Operations And Completed Operations Are Two Different Coverages
Insurance that protects a job while the crew is on site is not automatically the same insurance that protects the same job after they’ve packed up and gone home. Ongoing operations coverage responds to accidents that happen while work is actively underway, a dropped tool, a spill, a ladder through a wall. Completed operations responds to problems that surface after the invoice is paid, which is exactly what a wiring fault three weeks later looks like. Not every policy carries both. Ask which one is on the certificate.
Picture a producer in Nashville who spent $22,400 replacing mixing gear after an electrician’s wiring fault sparked a fire three weeks after the job was finished. The contractor had handed over a certificate before starting. Nobody had checked which of the two coverages above was actually on it. The certificate looked fine. It just wasn’t the one that mattered.
Property damage insurance is what actually pays for the gear
Property damage insurance is the piece of a contractor’s policy that responds specifically to damage the contractor causes to a client’s belongings during the job, separate from bodily injury and separate from the contractor’s own tools. It’s the line that pays for scorched equipment, a monitor knocked off a stand, a slab that cracks under new framing. Named specifically, it’s a policy. Left unnamed, it’s a guess.
The Contractor’s Tools Are Covered Somewhere Else Entirely
Homeowners sometimes assume a contractor’s insurance is one big umbrella that covers everything on the job site. It isn’t. The contractor’s own tools and equipment usually sit under a separate inland marine policy, which protects the contractor if their gear gets stolen, not the client’s. Your studio monitors and audio interfaces fall under the contractor’s property damage coverage instead, a different line on a different policy entirely, and assuming otherwise is how a homeowner discovers the gap only after something breaks. Two policies. Not one.
Three Questions Cost Nothing And Close Most Of The Gap
Ask for the certificate straight from the issuing agency rather than a forwarded PDF, since a forwarded document is easy to alter and impossible to verify on sight. Confirm the dates cover the entire project and a reasonable window afterward, past the day the crew shows up. And ask directly whether property damage and completed operations are both included on the policy, not assumed to be there because the certificate looks official enough to end the conversation. A contractor who hesitates is telling you something. A clean invoice never does.
The producer in Nashville got his gear replaced eventually, months later, after two rounds of back and forth about which policy was supposed to respond. A certificate doesn’t cover a rack of gear. A policy does. Only the one that got checked first.