4 ms·

DIYers and enthusiasts should still worry about their house burning down because one of these boards started a fire. An insurance company would investigate and

by ktm5j 8mo ago

DIYers and enthusiasts should still worry about their house burning down because one of these boards started a fire. An insurance company would investigate and find any excuse they can to deny payment.

Dan_- 8mo ago
Should is doing a lot of work there. The reality is most don’t. These are people who don’t understand minimum conductor size trying to DIY a solar system.
mindslight 8mo ago
Insurance covers the insured's own gross negligence. This is a trope up there with believing the "warranty void if removed" stickers. The real reason this should give you pause is that you don't want your house to burn down regardless of an insurance payout. That is how your incentives remain aligned with the insurance company.
- thedougd 8mo ago
  The other one that drives me nuts is “sensitive electronics” in generator discussions.
  - mindslight 8mo ago
    Do conventional synchronous generators not cause the problems they purportedly do? I've got an inverter generator simply for fuel usage. I've certainly had my fair share of square wave UPSs and devices that don't work on them.
    - thedougd 8mo ago
      This could be because of a floating neutral. There are certainly cases where harmonic distortion is a problem for a device. It’s just that everyone is left guessing, and there’s an overblown fear of devices being harmed.
  - 1970-01-01 8mo ago
    You don't think RF noise comes out of the generator?
    - thedougd 8mo ago
      Sure. It’s just rarely what lay people associate with “sensitive”. Most customers are worried about small electronics with switching mode power supplies that wouldn’t have a problem with just about any power source. I wouldn’t run some AC motors, old AC clock, ham radio, or many other things on some generators. The line is open to interoperation and never defined by the manufacturer. It’s blanket liability avoidance that confuses customers.
- danw1979 8mo ago
  I’m not sure about your home insurer, but here in the UK, most home electrical wiring, including solar for example, is “notifiable” to building control and requires a qualified tradesperson to implement. If you want to DIY everything you need self-build insurance. I’m definitely not covered if I were to burn my house down with a dodgy inverter installation.
  - fc417fc802 8mo ago
    In many (most? all?) jurisdictions in the US there's a carveout to exempt DIY work from licensing requirements and to require insurance to cover it. Many things you still have to get a permit and have it inspected afterwards just like a professional would. But if you skip that no one will ever notice unless it's major structural work (such as a new deck). That said, if it's electrical and you skip the required inspection and then your house burns down and your work was at fault that might nullify your insurance but I'm not sure.
- ktm5j 8mo ago
  IANAL but I don't think that's true at all. Electrical work needs to comply with code standards (NEC). I'll eat my hat if an insurance company pays for a fire that was caused by using homebrew electrical systems.
  - mindslight 8mo ago
    I'd really like to see citations to the opposite. After all, the main function of most homeowners' insurance policies is to keep banks whole regardless what happens. In my experience insurance companies just ask you a bunch of big-picture or specific questions (eg swimming pool), reserve the right to inspect even though they never do, and then jack the rates rather than trying to grok more unknowns. I've never read an insurance policy where anything like this is explicitly mentioned. I suppose there is a legal path of being criminally charged by fire investigators for having performed unsafe wiring (non-Listed power handling equipment as part of the fixed wiring), and then the insurance company denying you because of that criminality. Or in states where DIY wiring is not illegal, perhaps declaring that the wiring itself is "illegal" (as it goes against the NEC (despite the NEC not being openly published as we generally expect from laws!)) and then hanging their hat on illegality regardless of criminality? But does any of this happen in practice? Surely if insurance companies were concerned about fires caused by dodgy electronics, they'd address all of the people using non-NRTL-tested GENSYM brands from Amazon et al? They've got no ability to post-facto deny based on this (said devices aren't illegal), but they could surely make it an explicit condition of policies.
    - ktm5j 7mo ago
      Like I said, I'm not a lawyer.. and I'm no longer a homeowner so I don't have an insurance policy. So I don't have a citation for you. I may be wrong about this, but I don't think that I am. If anyone who's in the know can help then I'd be okay with being proven wrong.

by ktm5j 8mo ago

Dan_- 8mo ago

Should is doing a lot of work there. The reality is most don’t. These are people who don’t understand minimum conductor size trying to DIY a solar system.

mindslight 8mo ago

Insurance covers the insured's own gross negligence. This is a trope up there with believing the "warranty void if removed" stickers. The real reason this should give you pause is that you don't want your house to burn down regardless of an insurance payout. That is how your incentives remain aligned with the insurance company.

thedougd 8mo ago
The other one that drives me nuts is “sensitive electronics” in generator discussions.
- mindslight 8mo ago
  Do conventional synchronous generators not cause the problems they purportedly do? I've got an inverter generator simply for fuel usage. I've certainly had my fair share of square wave UPSs and devices that don't work on them.
  - thedougd 8mo ago
    This could be because of a floating neutral. There are certainly cases where harmonic distortion is a problem for a device. It’s just that everyone is left guessing, and there’s an overblown fear of devices being harmed.
- 1970-01-01 8mo ago
  You don't think RF noise comes out of the generator?
  - thedougd 8mo ago
    Sure. It’s just rarely what lay people associate with “sensitive”. Most customers are worried about small electronics with switching mode power supplies that wouldn’t have a problem with just about any power source. I wouldn’t run some AC motors, old AC clock, ham radio, or many other things on some generators. The line is open to interoperation and never defined by the manufacturer. It’s blanket liability avoidance that confuses customers.
danw1979 8mo ago
I’m not sure about your home insurer, but here in the UK, most home electrical wiring, including solar for example, is “notifiable” to building control and requires a qualified tradesperson to implement. If you want to DIY everything you need self-build insurance. I’m definitely not covered if I were to burn my house down with a dodgy inverter installation.
- fc417fc802 8mo ago
  In many (most? all?) jurisdictions in the US there's a carveout to exempt DIY work from licensing requirements and to require insurance to cover it. Many things you still have to get a permit and have it inspected afterwards just like a professional would. But if you skip that no one will ever notice unless it's major structural work (such as a new deck). That said, if it's electrical and you skip the required inspection and then your house burns down and your work was at fault that might nullify your insurance but I'm not sure.
ktm5j 8mo ago
IANAL but I don't think that's true at all. Electrical work needs to comply with code standards (NEC). I'll eat my hat if an insurance company pays for a fire that was caused by using homebrew electrical systems.
- mindslight 8mo ago
  I'd really like to see citations to the opposite. After all, the main function of most homeowners' insurance policies is to keep banks whole regardless what happens. In my experience insurance companies just ask you a bunch of big-picture or specific questions (eg swimming pool), reserve the right to inspect even though they never do, and then jack the rates rather than trying to grok more unknowns. I've never read an insurance policy where anything like this is explicitly mentioned. I suppose there is a legal path of being criminally charged by fire investigators for having performed unsafe wiring (non-Listed power handling equipment as part of the fixed wiring), and then the insurance company denying you because of that criminality. Or in states where DIY wiring is not illegal, perhaps declaring that the wiring itself is "illegal" (as it goes against the NEC (despite the NEC not being openly published as we generally expect from laws!)) and then hanging their hat on illegality regardless of criminality? But does any of this happen in practice? Surely if insurance companies were concerned about fires caused by dodgy electronics, they'd address all of the people using non-NRTL-tested GENSYM brands from Amazon et al? They've got no ability to post-facto deny based on this (said devices aren't illegal), but they could surely make it an explicit condition of policies.
  - ktm5j 7mo ago
    Like I said, I'm not a lawyer.. and I'm no longer a homeowner so I don't have an insurance policy. So I don't have a citation for you. I may be wrong about this, but I don't think that I am. If anyone who's in the know can help then I'd be okay with being proven wrong.