Since fire is one of your insurance company’s primary concerns and makes up the base rate that you pay, your building construction affects your premiums by telling the insurance company how big of a fire risk your building is. As you might expect, a higher risk building will carry with it a higher premium.
In the insurance industry, there are five general types of building construction we look at:
- Fire Resistive: your building is constructed with materials that can withstand a controlled fire for 2 to 3 hours in a laboratory setting
- Non-combustible: your building’s structural members are made of non-combustible materials
- Heavy Timber: your building’s structural members are made of heavy wood
- Ordinary: only the load bearing walls are non-combustible
- Frame: even the supporting walls and load bearing structures are made of wood
This list is ordered from the safest to riskiest type of building construction. If your building is constructed using materials lower down on the list, that will almost certainly translate into higher insurance premiums.
This article was originally written for Insuranceopedia