A median of $470,300 with 83.4% ownership, on properties where stored feed is ordinary. Hay is one of the few things on a residential property that can start a fire without any source of ignition at all.
Baled hay stored damp generates heat as it cures and can ignite on its own. Carriers know this and ask.
Three things about storing feed near buildings.
Bales stored with too much moisture generate heat as they cure, and in the wrong conditions that process reaches ignition on its own. It is well documented, it is the reason barn fires happen without an obvious cause, and it is why carriers ask where feed is stored and how much.
Storing hay in its own structure, away from the house and away from equipment and fuel, is what limits a fire to one building. Carriers rate the distance between structures for exactly this reason, and a feed barn attached to a garage is a materially different risk from a detached stack.
Hay and feed are farm property rather than household contents, and a homeowners form covers them barely or not at all. On a property carrying a season of feed that is a real value sitting outside the policy unless somebody arranged otherwise.
Feed, structures and distance.
Quantity and location are both rated.
It decides whether one fire becomes several.
Usually not, on a homeowners form.
Tell us where feed is stored, roughly how much, and how far it sits from the house.
We ask about the hay, because carriers do and owners do not expect it.
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