Income Protection For Commercial Boiler Engineers

This trade has an unusual working pattern, and it is the part that quietly affects health rather than the part that causes accidents.

Breakdowns happen when systems are under load, which means cold snaps, and buildings need heat restored before people arrive in the morning. So the pattern is normal days punctuated by unpredictable nights, which is harder on sleep than a consistent shift rota because the body never settles into either.

Declare anything that has come from it. Disrupted sleep is associated with effects on weight, blood pressure and mental health, and those appear on an application as conditions in their own right rather than as a working pattern. Our pages on insomnia and high blood pressure cover what we would ask.

This is a hazard the domestic side of the trade meets far less often, and it is worth describing accurately.

Legionella bacteria grow in water systems held at the wrong temperature, and the risk arises when water is aerosolised. Opening up calorifiers, flushing systems, draining and refilling, and working on cooling plant all do exactly that, in a confined space you are breathing.

The controls are a matter for your employer's procedures and the building's water safety arrangements. The insurance point is narrower: any pneumonia or serious chest infection in your history belongs in your answers, and if you have ever been investigated after an occupational exposure, say so.

Engineers employed by mechanical services or facilities contractors often have death in service, sometimes a decent multiple, and may never have asked.

Self-employed engineers holding their own maintenance contracts have nothing beyond what they have arranged, and their earnings are usually higher than the employed equivalent because the callout work is theirs.

Either way the gap worth covering is the mortgage plus the years your household would need, measured against total earnings rather than a basic rate.

The ending here is usually a back, a cardiac diagnosis or a respiratory condition that rules out confined hot work specifically.

That leaves somebody employable in domestic heating, estimating or building management on noticeably less money, which is the permanent downgrade income protection handles least well once suitable alternative work exists.

A lump sum funds the move properly. Plant room experience goes into building services design, commissioning, energy management and contract supervision, all of which value the knowledge and none of which need the knees.

A self-employed engineer with a handful of commercial maintenance contracts has a business with real value and real obligations.

Those contracts carry response times, and a client whose boiler fails while you are signed off will call somebody who can attend. Van finance, insurance, calibration of gas analysers and any employed engineer's wages continue meanwhile.

Cover can be sized to include the cost of subcontracting the contracts so they are still being serviced, which protects the asset rather than only the month's income. Where you trade through a company, executive income protection lets it hold and pay for the cover.