ARCHADECK

Archadeck Franchisor, LLC is the entity behind your franchise agreement. It is a Delaware limited liability company formed in 2021, based at 2426 Old Brick Road in Glen Allen, Virginia. Its parent is Outdoor Living Brands Holdco, LLC, and above that, Empower Brands. The exact legal names matter, because they all belong on your certificate of insurance.

Start with the document itself. Your certificate of insurance lists your own business — your limited liability company or corporation — as the named insured. The named insured is the business the policy actually covers. Your franchise agreement then requires you to add the franchisor and its related companies as additional insureds. An additional insured is a separate party who gets the protection of your policy for claims that arise from your work.

The 2026 Item 8 names several parties for that additional insured line: Archadeck Franchisor, LLC; its parent, Outdoor Living Brands Holdco, LLC; Empower Brands Franchising, LLC; their affiliates; and any other party the franchisor designates. The agreement also requires you to name National Guarantee Corporation, the company that backs the Archadeck structural warranty, as an additional insured under a separate shareholder agreement. Your policy must waive subrogation against the franchisor and give thirty days written notice before any cancellation. Waiver of subrogation means your insurer gives up its right to sue the franchisor to recover what it paid on a claim.

The required limits are below.

A franchisee in the Southeast built a raised deck with a screened porch for a repeat customer. The job passed inspection. Eighteen months later, the family hosted a graduation party. The deck held more than two dozen people, a ledger connection let go, and a section dropped four feet. Three guests were hurt, one seriously.

The lawsuit named the homeowner, the franchisee, and Archadeck. The bodily injury claim alone reached past $1.4 million once a back surgery and lost wages were added up. The franchisee's general liability policy responded, but the limit was $1 million per occurrence. The defense costs and the verdict together blew through that limit. The franchisee was personally on the hook for the difference, and the franchisor's named-insured status pulled them into the case too. A $1 million umbrella sitting over the general liability policy would have absorbed the overage; it costs a few hundred dollars a year for a builder at this stage.

One sentence of prevention: a commercial umbrella priced to your real worst case — a loaded deck full of guests — turns a business-ending verdict into a covered claim.

Archadeck franchisees rarely build alone. You hire framing crews, a concrete sub for footings, sometimes a licensed electrician for porch wiring. Each of those workers is a question your policy has to answer.

Your general liability policy may contain a subcontractor exclusion. That exclusion removes coverage for damage tied to a worker you hired on a 1099 basis. Check your policy before the next subcontractor job, not after a claim. The second issue is the certificate of insurance you collect from each sub. If a framing sub causes a property loss and carries no coverage, your policy is the only one left standing — and only if it has not excluded their work. Make sure your general liability policy includes independent contractors liability, which extends your coverage to the work of the 1099 crews you bring in.

One sentence of prevention: confirm independent contractors liability is on your policy and collect a current certificate from every sub before work starts.

Archadeck does not just build outdoor structures. Franchisees design them, pull permits, and specify materials — composite decking, fasteners, framing lumber, structural connectors. That design role is where a different exposure lives.

A franchisee in the Midwest specified a composite decking board for a large multi-level deck. The product was rated for residential use but not for the span the design called for between joists. Two seasons later the boards sagged and cracked across the whole surface. The customer did not claim anyone was hurt. They claimed the franchisee's professional specification was wrong, and they wanted the $38,000 cost of tearing out and replacing the deck surface.

General liability is built for sudden accidents and bodily injury, not for a financial loss caused by a design judgment. The carrier reviewed the claim and pointed to the absence of any covered accident. There was no fire, no collapse, no third-party property damage — just a specification that did not match the load. Contractors errors and omissions coverage, which responds to financial loss from professional design and specification mistakes, is the policy built for this. The franchisee paid the replacement out of pocket. That coverage runs in the low four figures a year for a design-build operation.

One sentence of prevention: carry contractors errors and omissions coverage sized for design work, because your rendering and your material spec are professional services your general liability does not insure.

The most dangerous gap for a builder is time. You finish a deck, the customer is happy, and the certificate goes to your franchisor. 

The risk does not end there — it follows the structure for years.

Completed operations coverage is the part of your general liability policy that responds to claims arising after a job is finished. For a deck builder, that is the whole game. A footing that heaves, a ledger that pulls away, a railing that fails — these surface months or years after the final walkthrough. Two things have to be right. First, your general liability must be written on an occurrence form, which covers an incident based on when it happened, not when the claim is filed. Second, your franchisor must stay listed as an additional insured for completed operations, not just for the work while it is in progress. Many policies grant additional insured status only for ongoing operations and quietly drop it once the job ends. 

For a structure that can fail years later, that ending is exactly when the claim arrives.

One sentence of prevention: confirm your general liability is occurrence-based and that additional insured status extends to completed operations, so a deck that fails in year three is still a covered claim.

The Archadeck 2026 FDD does not disclose a specific insurance cost estimate in Item 7. It refers to quarterly insurance premiums as part of start-up working capital, but it does not publish a dollar figure for the insurance itself. Coverage requirements are in Item 8 of the franchise agreement. So the honest way to plan is to understand how the two largest lines are built.

Your general liability premium for a construction business is usually rated on your revenue, and sometimes on payroll or subcontractor cost. The carrier charges a rate for every $1,000 of receipts. They estimate that exposure when the policy starts, then run an audit at year end. An audit is the carrier's review that compares the revenue or payroll you estimated against what you actually did, and adjusts the premium up or down. Say you estimate $400,000 in revenue and finish the year at $700,000. If your general liability is rated near $8 per $1,000 of receipts, the audit adds about $2,400 (300 × $8), billed as a lump sum a few months after the year closes.

Workers' compensation works differently. The premium is your payroll divided by 100, multiplied by a state rate for your class code, multiplied by your experience modification. The per-$100 rate is set by your state's rating bureau, not by the insurance company. The carrier simply applies the state's number and audits your payroll the same way. For a deck-build crew, the governing class code is carpentry on detached private residences (the standard code is 5645), and the rate runs higher than a light service trade because the work is at height. If your plumbing-light estimate said $200,000 in payroll and you actually ran $300,000, the audit charges the difference at your construction rate — that can be several thousand dollars.

There are two subcontractor risks here, and they are not the same. The audit risk is financial: any 1099 payroll without a current workers' compensation certificate is treated as your payroll at year end, and you get a premium bill. The injury risk is more serious: a sub hurt on your job who carries no coverage of their own may have their medical bills and lost wages become your direct obligation. Both risks disappear with a current certificate collected before the work starts. A lapsed certificate and no certificate produce the same result at audit.

The practical move is to estimate your revenue and payroll close to reality, and if a strong season pushes you well past your estimate, ask your carrier for a mid-term adjustment. Spreading the increase across your remaining payments avoids one large audit bill landing months later. An audit is not a penalty — it is the carrier collecting premium that was always owed once your real numbers are known, and it can refund you if you overestimated.

Insurance premium for an Archadeck franchise is not a single number. Your state, your zip code, your payroll, your fleet, and your claims history all move it. A quote built for your operation, your state, and your specific service lines is the only number that applies.

The franchise agreement is the floor. The numbers below are calibrated to a newer franchisee's operation — your revenue, your payroll, your crew size, and how much commercial work you take. They scale up as the business grows. These are not always required by your agreement, but experienced builders carry them for good reason.

Start with the umbrella, which your franchise agreement only recommends. For most trades an umbrella is a judgment call. For Archadeck it is closer to essential. A loaded deck or porch is one of the few residential structures that can injure many people in a single instant. When the realistic worst case is a collapse with several hurt guests, a $1 million primary limit can be exhausted by one claim. A commercial umbrella adds a layer of limit on top of your general liability, auto, and employers liability for exactly that loss. As your jobs get larger and you take on commercial or multi-unit work that demands $2 million or $5 million certificates, the umbrella stops being optional dressing and becomes the layer that keeps one bad event from reaching your personal assets.

Next is contractors errors and omissions coverage, sized at $1,000,000. Because you design structures and specify materials, your professional judgment is itself an exposure. This coverage responds to financial loss when a design or specification turns out to be wrong, which is the one thing your general liability is built to exclude.

Workers' compensation deserves a closer look than the agreement gives it. Employers liability is the sister coverage that sits on your workers' compensation policy. It responds when an injured worker sues you as the employer rather than simply collecting benefits. The standard for a construction operation is $1,000,000 each accident, $1,000,000 disease per employee, and $1,000,000 disease policy limit. The agreement defers to state law on workers' compensation; make sure the employers liability limits underneath it are set correctly.

A few more worth looking at. Cyber liability at $250,000 covers a fraudulent wire transfer or a breach of the customer data in your design portal; the standard build includes a social engineering sub-limit, because a spoofed vendor email is the most common loss for a small builder. Commercial crime at $250,000 with a third-party endorsement and a loss discovered form covers theft, including theft from a customer's home by an employee. 

Employment practices liability at $250,000 covers a discrimination or harassment claim from one of your employees, and scales up as you pass ten employees or $750,000 in revenue. And an inland marine equipment floater, sized to the actual replacement value of your tools and trailers, covers your equipment wherever it travels — in the truck, at the job site, in storage — which your standard property coverage does not.