Once upon a time, our home was separated from our barn by 20 feet +/-. Someone poured a concrete pad there and built a connecting structure which is half garage and half our kitchen. Once upon a time, the bank barn foundation (stone no footings) was straight. It no longer is, and has pushed (is pushing?) the longest sill off of the top of the foundation.
For $12-13,000 I can have the barn structurally stabilized. After that, it would need $10-12,000 worth of roofing, plus a whole bunch of cosmetic repairs, and paint. Having done that, I would have a dirt floored structure of questionable utility (to me). It is known locally as “The Sheep Barn” and was obviously once a huge run in shed which was later enclosed in a manner less professional than the original construction. Its location blocks a portion of a beautiful view from our home. I’m all for preservation, but I don’t believe this is the most desrving or significant historic structure in the county. Not by a long shot.
My dear wife, on the other hand, is much in favor of saving the barn. Nuf said.
A friend recently said to me that, should the barn catch fire, we would inevitably loose the house. It is incomprehensible to me that the possibility didn’t occur to me when I first saw the house, but I make no special claim to intelligence. Now, to me, the deal breaker on saving the barn is its potential to take our home in a fire.
Where best to turn for data/info/help? What do they do about this in New England, where a connected barn is more common?
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Where best to turn for data/info/help?
Insurance companies, the main offices, have many people, called underwriters, on the payroll who do nothing but work with just the kind of data you need.
Underwriters evaluate the risk and exposures of the prospective clients. They decide how much coverage the client should receive, how much they should pay for it, or whether to even accept the risk and insure them.
a couple of pics might give us more of an idea what you're dealing with...