Home Insurance with bike cover

Home Insurance requires me to say if my bike is over 3k and it will raise my insurance. and doesnt cover me outside the home.

I've had a great expirience, including when I crashed (not my fault) with ETA insurance. its more expensive, but the bike is covered and I am covered.

In response to your question 1 - if you don't have a receipt, try your nearest bike shop (ideally one that stocks that brand) and ask if they will do you a written valuation for it to give to the insurers. You may be charged a nominal fee, but I've got them in the past FoC.

Alternatively, see if you can get any details for the bike from the website and print that - if it's a few years old, some brands, like Giant, have an online archive with specs and prices.

I do my insurance through a brokers. I've used them for many years for house and car insurance, mainly because my Uncle was one of the directors, so I can trust what I'm being sold - he's also a cyclist. Over the years, I've built up a good rapport with a couple of members of staff who know and understand my insurance needs and can therefore advise me on exactly what cover I need and recommend policies accordingly. Bit more expensive than online, but worth it for the peace of mind and they also deal with all claims in-house. PM me if you want details.

House and contents insurance is currently with a company called Cherish. All the bikes are covered under the single claim limit. Despite not being a condition of insurance, all the bikes are chained up in the garage with an assortment of ground anchors and motorbike chains.

As an aside, the thing to watch with home contents insurance is whether or not the bikes are covered when they are away from the house (i.e. in/on the car / in a hotel room / airline baggage) or you're actually using them and be careful with policy exclusions in the small print, like "organised events" - there's sometimes a distinction here which may affect whether you can claim if you total your bike, which may fall foul of a claims advisor that doesn't understand the differences and tells you it's classed as a "race" and you aren't covered. I have a similar issue with my kayak - needed to make sure it's covered if it gets broken or swept away and lost during use.

I'm amazed that so many people buy insurance just on price.  I'd suggest, before you buy, making a dummy call to the claims line and see (a) how easy it is to do (b) how long it takes them to answer (c) what sort of reception you get.  They are generally quick to pick up the sales line, the claims line not so much.

I have my bike added to my home insurance with Morethan. The cover is up to £1500 at home. No receipt required. Only stipulation is that it must be locked. This also covers me away from home worldwide up to £3500 new for old which also increases with inflation each year.  For this cover they have added £40 to my annual premium. 

I have Nationwide home insurance and added my best bike separately and my other bikes were just on the standard policy, last summer coming back from a day out i had one of my 'other' road bikes on a bike rack on the back of the car, whilst traveling along the M3 @ 70mph the bike and my daughters Disney bike decided they had had enough and jumped off, bouncing down the middle carriageway, luckily some highway maintenance guys travelling behind saw what happened and managed to recover the bike before a serious accident occurred, now the ‘other’ bike  was a road bike I had built from parts bought on Ebay and over the web, it was a nice bike but upon speaking to the insurance company, they put me in contact with their bike specialists who got me to list the parts and the value to build came to around £900, however as they could not find a like for like replacement at that price they found one @ £1700 and asked me to choose one to that value from a well-known online retailer they used. I pay £16 a month for the insurance for home contents with no demands for gold plated this or that that includes my carbon baby separately insured along with the other bikes. Shop around people its not that expensive.

I use NatWest private house insurance, not cheep, but bikes are simply covered for the policy contents sum assured, which is £100K minimum. No listing of items or specific security requirements. Were exemplary when we had tools stolen from our shed, but never had to claim for any of the bikes.

Hiscox have £10k shed cover as standard in their contents policy and are rated for customer service, and terms seem very reasonable. I've never had to claim though. I switched from 'protect your bubble' to these guys as it was getting very expensive to have a stand alone policy.

Oh and they always answer the phone quickly too.

My home insurance is due this month and I'm in the same boat as you.
I'm fed up with insurance companies that offer cheap prices, but when you come to claim you get bargain basement service - so I'm prepared to pay more in the promise of decent service.
I've been talking to the guy who runs pedalcover.co.uk and they've taken an Axa policy and stripped out most of the crap around cycles.
While the policy is very expensive, it is coming in as competitive with John Lewis & M&S.
The owner seems to want to work like an old fashioned broker with personal service. His staff are all cyclists and he seems to know what he's talking about when it comes to bikes.
I will be going with him despite the cost.

I have been throwing a couple of hundred quid at butterworths for the past 20 years, never claimed, but they do do specific bicycle insurance and have done for a long time.  It's why I joined the CTC.  Some home insurance do not understand the retro and upgrading thing.

Pfffft.... minefield.

So many variables in this, so its hard to give advice beyond "heres what I did"

The bike specific insurance I have requires me to have sold secure silver rated locks as a minimum, which in my sheds means ground anchors into concrete, shed shackles and some serious chains and padlocks. The home contents insurance we had was okay with "locked shed".

For lower value fleets, you may well be fine including them in your contents insurance but if you're going to the shed, make sure you spend a few quid on decent security such as that mentioned above and also make sure you harden the shed a bit eg replacing external hinge screws with coach bolts, extra locks etc etc.