Pennsylvania Flooring Contractor Insurance

Pennsylvania licenses no flooring trade, but a flooring business that works in homes must register with the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Bureau of Consumer Protection, because the state’s home improvement consumer protection law lists flooring by name in its definition of home improvement. That registration reaches residential work only; beyond it, EPA certifies firms for lead-safe renovation, two state departments share an asbestos program that reaches floor tile, and workers’ compensation is compulsory, written by private insurers and by the State Workers’ Insurance Fund.

Of those four, the registration is the one an owner feels first. It is a consumer protection filing rather than a trade test, and it comes with an insurance condition attached, which makes it as much an insurance question as a licensing one. The residential and commercial halves of a flooring business also land on opposite sides of it, so a firm that does both keeps two sets of paperwork in mind from the first estimate.

What follows stays with Pennsylvania’s rules. Policy responses to a flooring claim are laid out on the flooring contractor insurance page, whether your business is a residential flooring crew in occupied homes, a commercial flooring firm working for general contractors, a carpet installation company or a tile and stone setter.

Pennsylvania’s home improvement registration and the flooring work it names

Pennsylvania has no state contractor license for flooring work, but it does require home improvement contractors to register with the Bureau of Consumer Protection in the Office of Attorney General, and the law’s definition of home improvement names flooring. The registration reaches work on private residences; the state issues no license or registration for commercial flooring work.

Authority: 73 P.S. § 517.1 et seq. (Home Improvement Consumer Protection Act), §§ 2, 3(a), 4(a)(1)(ix), 12

Registration, not licensure, is the right word here, and the state says as much about its construction trades generally:

“The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania currently has no licensure or certification requirements for most construction contractors (or their employees).”

The registration duty comes from the definition of home improvement, which opens with where the work happens:

“The term includes all of the following done in connection with land or a portion of the land adjacent to a private residence or a building or a portion of the building which is used or designed to be used as a private residence for which the total cash price of all work agreed upon between the contractor and owner is more than $500:”

Among the kinds of work the definition then lists, flooring sits beside roofs, siding and patios:

“Construction, replacement, installation or improvement of driveways, swimming pools, pool houses, porches, garages, roofs, siding, insulation, solar energy systems, security systems, flooring, patios, fences, gazebos, sheds, cabanas …”

Nothing in that list separates carpet from plank or tile from sheet goods; the word is flooring, and it covers installation and replacement alike. The duty itself is written in two halves, and either one is enough to trigger it:

“No person shall hold himself out as a contractor, nor shall a person perform any home improvement without first registering with the bureau, as provided for in this act.”

Holding yourself out counts on its own. A flooring company that advertises home installation is inside the rule before it has laid a single floor, so the registration belongs at the start of a residential line of work, not after the first job comes in.

Two parts of the definition mark where it stops. One is a volume exclusion for very small operators:

“A person for whom the total cash value of all of that person's home improvements is less than $5,000 during the previous taxable year.”

The other is the commercial carve-out, and for most flooring firms it is the line that matters more:

“The sale of services furnished for commercial or business use or for resale, if the service takes place somewhere other than at a private residence.”

A flooring contractor that installs or replaces floors in homes registers with the Attorney General before holding itself out or doing the work, unless its home improvement volume falls under the law’s small-business floor, and the registration application requires proof of liability insurance at the levels the statute sets. Commercial work is outside the law, and there the rule is set locally: Philadelphia, for one, requires a city contractor license for construction, demolition and repair work, and sends a business that works only on the existing small homes its page describes to the state registration instead.

Here the registration becomes an insurance matter. The application the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Bureau of Consumer Protection takes asks for proof of coverage at levels the statute prints:

“Proof of liability insurance covering personal injury in an amount not less than $50,000 and insurance covering property damage caused by the work of a home improvement contractor in an amount not less than $50,000.”

Those are the minimums the registration asks you to show, not a recommendation for a flooring program, and the general liability page explains what that kind of policy responds to on a flooring job.

Local registration takes a particular shape here, because the state law claims the home improvement registration field for itself:

“Registration under this act shall preclude any requirement of payment of a fee or registration or licensing of any home improvement contractor by any political subdivision.”

Commercial work falls outside that preemption, since the law never reaches it. The City of Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections is the record’s example, covering businesses doing construction, demolition or repair work in the city, which plainly includes commercial flooring contractors; a business working only on the existing small homes the city’s page describes registers with the state instead. The city states the rule in a line:

“A Contractor License is required for any business doing work that: Involves construction, demolition, or repair.”

A registration regime rewards a few habits:

• Register before the website, the truck lettering or the yard sign goes up, since holding out is part of the trigger.
• Label each estimate residential or commercial. The label decides whether the state registration applies to the job at all.
• On commercial bids, call the municipality where the job sits and ask what it requires of a contractor; the state answer does not carry over.
• Keep the certificate you file with the registration current, so the proof on record matches the policy you actually hold.

Certificates, additional insured wording and the rest of what a general contractor asks for are on the commercial flooring contractor insurance page; homeowner requests are on the residential page.

Lead paint on Pennsylvania floor jobs: EPA’s renovation rule and the state’s abatement program

Pennsylvania leaves the lead renovation, repair and painting (RRP) program to EPA, so the lead-safe certification a flooring firm needs for covered renovation work comes from EPA.

Authority: Act 44 of 1995 (Lead Certification, as the Department of Labor and Industry cites it); EPA Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Program

EPA keeps the list of states that run their own renovation program, and Pennsylvania is not on it:

“EPA administers the RRP Program in most Tribes, states and territories, but has authorized the following to operate their own programs: Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe-Boise Forte (Nette Lake).”

Lead abatement is a different matter: the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry certifies lead abatement contractors, workers, supervisors, inspectors, risk assessors and project designers and must be notified of certain abatement jobs. That notice duty does not reach lead paint removed as part of a renovation, so flooring work that disturbs painted trim or baseboards in an older home falls under the federal renovation rule rather than the state abatement program.

The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, Lead Occupations page sets out when the state program applies:

“Act 44 of 1995 and its regulations require that the Department of Labor & Industry (Department) be notified of work where lead-based paint is present and that persons certified by the Department perform this work whenever the following will occur”

Its own parenthetical then separates renovation from abatement:

“(If the removal is part of a renovation/alteration project, no notification is required.)”

That line is why a floor replacement in an older house lands with EPA rather than the state. Floors themselves are seldom painted, but the baseboard pulled so a new plank floor can run to the wall, the door casing trimmed to clear a thicker floor and the painted threshold often are, and they come off as part of the renovation, not as a separate abatement job.

Settle a short list of points before the price is final:

• The year the house was built, written on the estimate, since it is the first thing anyone asks about lead.
• Which painted pieces will come off, and whether your crew or another trade removes them.
• The name of the certified renovator in your firm who will be responsible for the job.
• Whether anything about the job looks like abatement rather than renovation, a question for the Department before work starts rather than after.

Older homes stack several of these on one job, which is why the residential flooring contractor insurance page spends time on them. How a policy treats a claim involving lead is worked through on the general liability page.

Old floor tile and Pennsylvania’s two-department asbestos program

Two Pennsylvania agencies share the state’s asbestos program, and it reaches flooring removal. The Department of Environmental Protection enforces the federal asbestos emission standard it has adopted as state law, under which resilient floor coverings and vinyl asbestos floor tile are Category I nonfriable material that becomes regulated once it is sanded, ground, cut, drilled or abraded, and a building must be inspected for asbestos before renovation. The Department of Labor and Industry certifies every asbestos occupation and requires advance notice even of work on asbestos material not found to be friable. Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties add their own rules.

Authority: Asbestos Occupations Accreditation and Certification Act, §§ 2, 3, 8(b); 25 Pa. Code § 124.3; 40 CFR 61.141

The environmental half starts with a single adoption. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection takes the federal standard whole:

“National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants promulgated in 40 CFR Part 61 … are hereby adopted in their entirety by the Department and incorporated herein by reference.”

Its fact sheet for contractors then names the materials a flooring crew handles most:

“Category I includes asbestos-containing packings, gaskets, resilient floor coverings or vinyl asbestos floor tile, …”

“Category I nonfriable ACM that will be or has been subjected to sanding, grinding, cutting, drilling, or abrading”

Read the verbs in that second passage against a tear-out. Intact tile lifted whole is one thing; tile that is ground off a slab, cut into pieces or sanded down is another, and the method a crew picks decides which side of the line a job sits on. An inspection comes ahead of the work in that fact sheet:

“The building must be thoroughly inspected for ACM prior to any renovation or demolition.”

It also marks where the emission standard stops:

“The EPA and DEP do not regulate the removal of ACM from single family residences or apartments with four or less units unless they are part of an installation.”

That carve-out is narrower than it looks, because the certification half of the program is written for any building. The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, Asbestos Occupations program rests on this sentence of the certification law:

“It shall be unlawful for any person to engage in any asbestos occupation in any building without proper certification for that occupation from the department.”

The notice duty reaches past friable material as well:

“All contractors performing work on asbestos-containing material not initially determined to be a friable asbestos-containing material as defined under this act shall notify the department at least five days prior to the start of the project.”

“The department may exclude this notification requirement for projects on private single-family residential units.”

The wording there is may, not must: the waiver for single-family homes is the Department’s to grant, so ask rather than assume. Two counties add their own layer:

“Additional regulations exist for demolition and renovation of any building containing ACM in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties.”

For an owner, the result is a program with more than one door. A commercial tear-out can involve the emission standard, the certification law and a county rule at once, while a house job can still touch the certification law after the emission standard drops away.

• Ask for the asbestos inspection report before pricing removal on any commercial or apartment job, since the fact sheet puts the inspection first.
• Before pricing, test the proposal’s removal method against the sanding, grinding and cutting language quoted above.
• Decide at the bid whether your firm holds the certification the work calls for, or whether that part belongs to a certified contractor.
• Brief whoever runs the tear-out to stop if an older layer or a black adhesive turns up that nobody tested.

Tear-out claims are a policy matter rather than a state one: the general liability page deals with asbestos claims and finished work, the commercial page with what a general contractor’s subcontract adds, and the tile and stone page with tile demolition.

Pennsylvania workers’ compensation and the State Workers’ Insurance Fund

Pennsylvania requires workers’ compensation of the employers its Act covers. Every employer liable under the Workers’ Compensation Act must insure the payment of compensation, either with the State Workers’ Insurance Fund or with an insurance company or mutual authorized to write the coverage in Pennsylvania, unless the Department of Labor and Industry exempts it to carry the risk itself, and failing to comply is a crime. The State Workers’ Insurance Fund is a fund of the Commonwealth, administered by a board of state officers within the Department of Labor and Industry, and it writes the coverage alongside private insurers.

Authority: Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act, §§ 305(a)(1), 305(b); art. XV, §§ 1502, 1504, 1505

The duty sits in one sentence of the Act, which names both routes:

“Every employer liable under this act to pay compensation shall insure the payment of compensation in the State Workmen's Insurance Fund, or in any insurance company, or mutual association or company, authorized to insure such liability in this Commonwealth, unless such employer shall be exempted by the department from such insurance.”

“Any employer who fails to comply with the provisions of this section for every such failure, shall, upon conviction in the court of common pleas, be guilty of a misdemeanor of the third degree.”

The State Workers’ Insurance Fund is continued by its own article of the Act, which continues it as a fund:

“Certain sums to be paid by employers, as provided in this article, are hereby continued as a fund, hereafter to be known as the State Workers' Insurance Fund, for the purpose of insuring such employers against liability under Article III of this act and of assuring the payment of the compensation therein provided”

“Such fund shall be administered by the board, without liability on the part of the Commonwealth, except as provided in this article, beyond the amount thereof, and shall be applied to the payment of such compensation.”

The board that administers it is made up of state officers:

“The State Workers' Insurance Board is hereby continued, consisting of the Secretary of Labor and Industry, the Insurance Commissioner and the State Treasurer.”

“SWIF operates as an enterprise fund within the Department of Labor & Industry and is managed by the Director.”

So a Pennsylvania flooring employer has two kinds of market to compare: private insurance companies and mutuals authorized to write the coverage, and the fund. Which suits a given business, and how an underwriter treats payroll and installers paid as subcontractors, are placement questions taken up on the workers’ compensation page.

Pennsylvania offices a flooring business may deal with

The Pennsylvania Insurance Department regulates insurance in the Commonwealth. You can check our agency’s license, as you can any insurance agency’s, on NIPR.com.

The other bodies named on this page, each with the role the record verified:

• Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, Bureau of Consumer Protection: home improvement contractor registration (residential work; no state trade license for flooring)
• Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry: parent department of the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation and the State Workers’ Insurance Fund; grants self-insurance exemptions; certifies asbestos and lead occupations
• Bureau of Workers’ Compensation: workers’ compensation administration within the Department of Labor and Industry
• Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection: state environmental agency; enforces the adopted federal asbestos emission standard and receives asbestos notifications
• Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, Asbestos Occupations: asbestos occupation certification (contractor, worker, supervisor, inspector, management planner, project designer) and notification
• Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, Lead Occupations: state lead abatement certification and notification; RRP itself is EPA-administered

Where Pennsylvania flooring crews work: the largest metro areas and their counties

The cards below show the largest metropolitan areas on Pennsylvania’s list, as the U.S. Census Bureau delineates them; beneath each name are the Pennsylvania counties it takes in. The registration line repeats on every card because the state sets it; the commercial line points to the municipality because that is where the rule for commercial work is set.

Matching Pennsylvania flooring work to the right coverage pages

With the state rules placed, the rest is the set of policies a flooring business carries anywhere, and each has its own page:

• Harm to other people and their property, tear-out and completed work fall to general liability.
• The crew, and installers paid as subcontractors, fall to workers’ compensation.
• Saws, sanders, scrapers and stock that ride from job to job fall to inland marine for contractors’ tools and equipment.

Which of them carries the most weight depends on the floors you install. A residential shop that registered with the state, a commercial firm answering to a general contractor, a carpet installation company and a tile and stone setter each meet different owners and different tear-outs, and the service pages take them one at a time. With those pieces sorted for your Pennsylvania work, a quote request is the next step.

What the state sets

Where we discuss it

Contractor license A state license or registration can reach this work

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General Liability

Lead-safe renovation The federal program applies in this state

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Residential Flooring Contractor Insurance

Asbestos flooring and mastic A state program reaches flooring removal

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General Liability

Workers’ compensation Open market or the state fund

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Workers Compensation

A panel for Pennsylvania in rows. Contractor license: a state license or registration can reach this work. It connects to the General Liability page. Lead-safe renovation: the federal program applies in this state. It connects to the Residential Flooring Contractor Insurance page. Asbestos flooring and mastic: a state program reaches flooring removal. It connects to the General Liability page. Workers’ compensation: open market or the state fund. It connects to the Workers Compensation page. Each row pairs a state rule with the page on this site that discusses it. No figures are shown.