No actuarial with an IQ any larger than that of a walnut would agree to insure a serious wine cellar in an earthquake zone at anything less than utterly confiscatory rates [like, say, $0.10 per $1.00 of valuation per year].
Oh dont worry some of us on here already know how outrageous wine insurance is. While other’s keep calling it “cheap peace of mind” because they confuse “cheap” (which means VALUE) as the same as low nominal dollar of premium
I will say it again… Wine insurance is not “cheap” given the risk of peril. I have never really thought about if earthquake should be included or not, but i would not be surprised if it was…because wine insurance is not “CHEAP”.
Does wine insurance typically include damage from earthquakes, or would you need a separate rider for earthquakes or add wine onto an earthquake specific policy?
Almost no policy that I know of covers earthquake damage. Here in California you’re option is to buy a policy backed by the California Earthquake Authority, generally through your homeowners carrier. That policy will have a large deductible (ours is something like $60k), and probably has limits on exactly what it will cover. But really, if we have a quake that does enough damage to trigger my policy, the whole area will almost certainly be a widespread disaster.
I have a passive cellar in my crawl space with several thousand bottles. Because it is a crawl space the racking is only 8 bottles high. During the Nov 30th 7.1 earthquake we had here I had over 100 bottles fall from the racking and not a single bottle broke. I attribute this to three things:
The racking is securely attached to the overhead floor joists so the racking itself did not topple over. They certainly would have toppled had they not been secure.
Because it is a crawl space and I literally must crawl around to access the wine, I have covered the floor with carpet remnants. As a result the falling bottles hit carpet instead of a harder surface. If the bottles had fallen on tile or concrete I am certain I would have had significantly more breakage.
Dumb-a$$ed luck. I was amazed that bottles falling on other bottles did not result in breakage. I took it as definite sign that God gave us wine because he loves us.
CA earthquake insurance is primarily for the house and foundation. It doesn’t cover contents of the house. Meanwhile, look at the fine print on you home owners insurance to see if insures anything damaged by an act of nature or military conflict.
Example A: A friend has CA earthquake insurance and his house was trashed. He paid $1,100 a month to reduce his deductible to 40K. Damage to the structure was 45K, so he was out 5K on the structure. None of the appliances, electronics, glassware, liquor, wine, etc. were covered by either the Earthquake Insurance or the standard insurance property.
Example B: We know a number of people who lost their homes in the recent fires in Napa and Sonoma. There was some push and shove early but in the end, most if not all of the insurance companies cut checks for the maximum amount insured plus the cost to rebuild the home, temporary housing, etc. Several people we talked to were given thousands in cash for immediate necessities.
All of these posts make me think I was overly optimistic regarding what the wine rider on my homeowners policy and earthquake insurance actually cover. It’s time to call my insurer for details.
they have very high relative density, compared to single bottle racks yet are easily tracked and organized
they have a door that closes to prevent wine from shifting during the sinusoidal waves of an EQ.
they are easily connected together and anchored- I used engineered stainless steel cable, lb rated crimps, stainless steel H/W, etc.
Insurance is good, and necessary (I recommend Chubb), but: it is important to recognize that many of us have wine that cannot be replaced - DRC is easily replaced because it is traded so heavily, but geeky small production unicorns are often not available for any amount of money and many of them are never seen at auction.
How many weinboxes would you feel comfortable stacking? I’m thinking of making my under stairs closet into an active cellar and using a bunch of weinboxes.
I am 10 high in various parts of the cellar, 8 high in others, 4 high for the island. If I recall, they are rated for something like 1100lbs.
Of course, mine are grouped into 4s and anchored to the walls as a grid.
I’ve considered cross-bracing the walls.
One thing to watch is the plastic connectors when you snap them together - there is one particular location where a small u-shaped plastic piece extends from the edge that can arrive defective/broken from the factory - you’ll see some of these if you buy enough of them.
Ply on the walls is a good idea, Alan. I wish I had done that.
I had my floors ripped up to the dirt, excavated down a few feet, then put in 72’ of additional footings, then 4x12s every 12" on top of the footings with no more than 4’ spans - and I had existing footing under there already…my floor was designed for 10,000lbs per sq ft, dead load. . You can park a tank in that room…so floor is fine and it doesn’t have any deflection at all…I put slate on it as well.
However - I worry about the walls coming down in an Earthquake, which is why some sort of cross-bracing would be nice…something that spans across the room that basically connects opposite walls to each other in the mid-spans. All the walls are lined with weinboxes and the room is about 300 sq ft.
I also have some walls that are doubled up and up to 1’ thick, but I wish I had used ply on the walls for shear - I did not do that…
I used 4" of closed cell foam, densarmor, denscoat, so that should help to stabilize them a bit.
This is a strong statement belied by my 20+ years of experience purchasing stand-alone wine insurance that includes earthquake coverage for my So Cal based collection. Wine insurance with EQ coverage is expensive but nothing like 10 cents per dollar of value. It is more in the range of 60 cents (o less) per $100 in value – about 1/16 of the cost you suggest.
. You can park a tank in that room…so floor is fine and it doesn’t have any deflection at all…I put slate on it as well.