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1) GRAND PIANOS,
2) UPRIGHT PIANOS,
3) EXPENSIVE PAINTINGS,
4) TREADMILLS,
5) HOT TUBS,
6) GRANDFATHER CLOCKS,
7) LARGE GUN SAFES,
8) SLEEP NUMBER BEDS,
9) POOL TABLES,
10) MECHANICAL BEDS,
11) BIG GLASS TABLE TOPS,
12) CURVED GLASS CURIO CABINETS,
13) IKEA DESK
14) TRAMPOLINES
15) BACK YARD PLAYHOUSES
16) VERY FRAGILE STATUES,
17) CHANDELIERS,
18) HUGE THINGS,
19) CRATING,
#1) GRAND PIANOS
GRAND PIANO CHECK LIST
___ 1) Liability waiver, have customer sign insurance choice & limits before starting job.
___ 2) Bring piano board, fixed-wheel piano dolly, straps, 6' ramp, nicer blankets, X big bolt socket set for leg lag screws. Note: it's more dangerous to move a grand piano with a swivel wheel dolly.
And if there are wooden floors, you need near-flat bottom rubber wheels (a real piano dolly).
___ 3) Bring certified (on grand pianos) crewmen.
___ 4) Ask customer about full route of piano on both ends (stairs, outside ground, paved etc).
___ 5) Decline moving piano at any point it's not very safe. That's better than an accident.
___ 6) Set up video camera/phone on tripod to video whole piano process.
___ 7) Photo document every inch of piano, add lighting, some showing room.
___ 8) Run fingers over keys to verify no sound problems. Check foot pedal function.
___ 9) Pad-wrap piano stool, hold lid closed tight when flipping.
___ 10) Remove music sheet holder, pad-wrap, screws in baggie.
___ 11) Remove & pad-wrap piano lid.
___ 12) Remove hinges (mark L & R on underside), put in baggie.
___ 13) Pad-wrap piano body. Leave access to legs & pedestal.
___ 14) Put folded blanket under pedestal.
___ 15) Take off left front leg.
___ 16) Position piano board on floor to expected drop position (L to heavy end).
___ 17) Slowly lower into position, last second adjust board, tip up.
___ 18) Remove & pad-wrap legs & pedestal, hardware in bag.
___ 19) Strap body to board, extra blanketing or cardboard under strapping corners.
___ 20) Lift lighter end of piano to put on fixed wheel piano dolly. Strap in.
___ 21) Wait till right time in truck loading process to bring to truck.
___ 22) Find carpeted area in house for Lead to test tip both lateral directions of the piano.
___ 23) If you ignore instructions, be aware of non-fixed wheel instability if tip sideways.
___ 24) Re-Park truck back wheels in gutter to lower back end, & level truck laterally, no sideways tilt.
Or re-park truck with truck ramp on front porch. And/or use 6' ramp to help with steps.
___ 25) Position piano to heavy/larger side going up ramp first. Video going up ramp.
___ 26) Advise to not do ramp ascent or decent on swivel wheel dolly, unless ramp not steep.
___ 27) two men push it up ramp from below, make push constant & straight up, not diagonal.
___ 28) Propulsion up ramp is shared by strap-pull of 3rd man verifying steering is centered from up top. A fourth man can push the backs of the two men pushing from below.
___ 29) Be ready to quickly stabilize laterally if starts to tip. By far the most risky part of job.
___ 30) It's safer to take off dolly to place in truck, but with enough major support it can be left on dolly.
ADDITIONAL DETAILS
Here's how to disassemble and prep a grand piano for moving.
The most dangerous part of moving a grand (or baby grand) piano is going up or down the truck ramp.
The largest three contributors to that danger is not using a fixed wheel piano dolly, too steep of a truck ramp, and not leveling the truck ramp horizontally. One reason swivel wheels are dangerous is because a swivel wheel, when it rolls sideways, changes its outer support point to nearly two inches further in towards the center of the dolly (A), instead of maintaining the furthest out support point of the outer edge of the wheel (B) as is always maintained by a fixed wheel.
When a swivel wheel dolly rolls sideways, it moves the outer support point inwards by several inches, AND it allows the piano to gain momentum sideways, which when impacting the side rail of the truck ramp suddenly stops the bottom but causes the momentum of the upper end of the piano to continue pushing the piano over. The sideways motion can be caused by many irregularities of the movers pushing the piano up the ramp, particularly the sideways motion of the leading side of the piano.
If you add that sideways momentum to a not perfectly leveled truck ramp, the center of balance is even further off.
Once you have a tilting problem, when you try to push it back from tilting, swivel wheels allow the bottom to roll out from under you instead of holding the bottom so you can push the piano back upright.
Fixed wheels maintain a much further out, wider, support point.
They don't allow the unit to roll sideways, and so don't allow any sideways momentum to build up.
If any tilting does begin, they stop the bottom from rolling sideways, and so allow tilting to be corrected.
If any tilt-correcting pushing needs to be done, the movers can concentrate on only pushing the top back upright instead of also fighting the bottom from slipping out sideways.
A real piano dolly with fixed wheels also has flatish bottom rubber wheels and so can't damage wooden floors.
The steepness and levelness of the ramp makes a big difference on the ease and safety of getting the piano up and down the ramp.
The less steep the ramp, the less struggle and less danger of the operation. Also, make sure to level the ramp horizontally, and prop the bottom if there's any slop.
The two main ways of decreasing the steepness of the ramp are to either put the back wheels of the truck in the street gutter. Or put the ramp right up onto the porch. Only if you have a very favorable not-steep ramp incline should you move a grand piano up & down a ramp on a swivel wheeled dolly, unless you knowing accept the added risk.
Modern improvements to the old style fixed-wheel piano dolly widen the wheel base in both directions, spread out the weight onto six tires, and add a little give to the tires to flatten out the bumps. The added stabilization of the wide and long wheel base makes up for many of the other worries you might have. It is more foolproof. And note that it still retains the fixed wheels. This longer wheelbase also makes clearing the bottom of the ramp much easier. These big tires also allow this and other units to be rolled over lawns and back yards without plywood. the spread out weight also makes it impossible to make indentations in a wooden floor. This is a very good tool for the job, it turns the dangers into a breeze, and is one of the better choices of what should be used by any movers who do grand pianos enough to make the purchase price worth it. Or check with your job source service to see if they can lend you theirs for special jobs.
Whether you're going up or down a ramp, an incline or stairs, you usually want the heavy side of the grand piano to be on the uphill side, like this, to center the weight over the dolly. The counter argument would be that you can lean your shoulder into the high flat part better than the round-low end. Weigh the pros & cons.
Note that in this last picture the movers are going up the ramp with the heavy side of the piano on the down side of the ramp, tipping the whole thing over onto the lower mover, with the guy in the front needing to actually hold the front end down. This looks way unbalanced to me. In this case I would have said the heavy side should have been on the high side of the ramp to put the center of balance over the dolly.
Note here in this last picture that the movers have the heavy side tipped over on the lower side of the stairs, putting some extra weight on the lower guys. It is more likely to tip towards them. However, there wouldn't be much to grab onto (and it would be down low) if the rounded lower end were on the down side of the stairs, and they wouldn't be able to lean their shoulders into like this, so there is legitimacy to having the big end on the lower side of the stairs in this case. It's a trade off of pros & cons.
Another main area of damage risk is to a wooden floor. One time, the dolly used by a mover I knew pressed its wheels into the customer's wooden floor leaving shallow grove indentations and a $4,000 repair bill. It was probably not as hard of a wood as it could have been, but you never know what wood type is going to be on a customer's floors. That mover was using the wrong type of dolly casters.
This kind of "Flat Tread" rubber (soft) dolly caster spreads the weight out and doesn't press into wood floors.
This kind of hard plastic "rounded tread" dolly caster creates a pinch point that can press into wood floors with enough weight.
Better take a look at your dolly wheels.
Another great option is the Snap-Lock dolly. It's very stong, and has snap lock fittings on all sides for quick attachment and release of straps.
But for the best results you'd swap out the wheels for the Flat Tread soft rubber, FIXED WHEELS (not swivel). Then you don't even have to steer going up the ramp, nearly removing any chance of accidents.
And you'd buy a set of the quick release straps too. Then you'd have a masterpiece.
Ooops. Bottomed out on the front edge.
How many times have you bottomed out going up the ramp, or at least worried about damaging the ends that might bottom out? But what if you took your step ramp, and laid it where the black line is in this last picture? You wouldn't and couldn't bottom out. You'd go up easy as can be. You do however have to trim a hair off the front edges of your step ramp to fit between the big ramp edges.
Of course a grand piano can probably be moved fine without any of this knowledge, technique or special equipment, even using a "crappy" old harbor freight dolly. But the point isn't to "probably" get it done fine nine out of ten the times without problems. The point is that a problem one out of ten times or even one out of thirty times isn't good enough. Without special technique, knowledge & the right equipment, that one out of thirty problem can cost $12,000, and that's not good enough.
This last picture happens to be of a $1,000,000 piano.
It needs to be less than one out of a hundred for the person actually taking responsibility for the problems, for a real long-term business person, and that does require all the extras. We're not in this business to be taking crazy chances of huge losses.
Those movers who are not aware of all this don't know what they don't know. And they should know these basics if they're going to do this professionally, with tens of thousands of dollars on the line.
#2) UPRIGHT PIANOS
One of the most important things to remember about moving pianos, is that if you move them over a wooden floor, using the wrong kind of dolly wheel can press an indentation into the floor and cost many thousands of dollars.
This kind of "Flat Tread" rubber (soft) dolly caster spreads the weight out and doesn't press into wood floors. This is the type required for wooden floors.
This kind of hard plastic "rounded tread" dolly caster creates a pinch point that can press into wood floors with enough weight.
Better take a look at your dolly wheels.
Officially, an upright piano is supposed to be strapped to a piano board, and then strapped onto floor dolly, so that when you get to a "scuff" spot, where the piano might make scraping contact with the ramp or ground when going up or down a ramp, it would instead scrape the piano board and protect the piano. piano boards also give a good place to attach the straps that secures the piano. It's true that movers sometimes skip a piano board and take these extra risks, but if you do, just be aware you are taking extra risk of damage that could be avoided in exchange for a minute or two of saved time.
One way to reduce the risk of scuffing the ends of the piano (without a piano board) is to use a higher floor dolly with larger wheels. Another way is to add a step ramp at the low spot of the larger ramp, to lessen the "dip" at the bottom edge of the ramp.
PIANOS GOING OVER STAIRS
If a piano is light enough to be easy to carry on black-straps over stairs, then that can be the easiest and quickest way. But if a piano is heavy enough to make the black-strap method more of a strain than you want on your body, then the piano should be put on a piano board and slid up the stairs.
This way, the weight is mostly on the stairs instead of on your body, and the propulsion up the stairs can be shared by the person (or multiple people) pulling on the straps of the upper end of the piano board, along with the push from the person below. Far easier, more comfortable, safer and less strain than using black-straps. Piano boards are not only for grand pianos, which is why they're called "piano boards" and not "Grand piano boards". This same piano board technique applies to heavy gun safes going up or down stairs.
Part of safety and not risking injury is being able to stop and rest at any time, and when the piano board is resting on the stairs it grabs the stairs so that it either won't slide or only takes a minor pressure to keep it from sliding, allowing the crew to rest as needed.
Having the piano board straps be pulled by the crew on the upper end allows half or even more of the propulsion force to come from the upper end so that all the lifting isn't left to just the guy on the lower end, like it can be with black-straps. If its too much of a strain for two men to slide a piano on a piano board up a length of stairs, you should get one or two additional men to pull extra straps from the upper end, giving you two or three men pulling from above, making it much easier for the whole crew. If anyone is straining to an extreme, it's being done incorrectly.
ALTERNATE METHOD OF USING AN APPLIANCE DOLLY
An appliance dolly can be used instead of an official piano board.
You just need to center the piano correctly and strap it down good.
Then you wheel it just like you would a refrigerator until you get to the stairs. Or if the piano is crazy heavy you could put the appliance dolly on a 4 wheel dolly to roll it until you get to the stairs. At the stairs, you use it like a piano board, adding hump straps for the pull grips. This method has the advantage of making it much easier to get it "half way" up the stairs before you even set it down on the stairs, avoiding that first hardest part of getting it flat on the stairs. If the stairs aren't carpeted, or are wooden, you should add a "carpet board" on the back/under side of the appliance dolly so that it won't damage the stairs as it slides.
Check out this next video to see a good example of how to move a heavy piano up stairs.
Next is a video showing how to use a pair of specialty piano dollies
#3) EXPENSIVE PAINTINGS
#4) TREADMILLS
#5) HOT TUBS
#6) GRANDFATHER CLOCKS
Grandfather clocks are too expensive for it to be worth it to us to risk a needed repair. So don't touch a grandfather clock if you aren't going to follow the following instruction to the letter, and haven't at least read through them before starting.
#1: Search the grandfather clock for pre-existing damage, and take pictures of that damage, also showing room surroundings. Also verify that the clock even runs properly before starting.
#2) Find the mouse,
#3) the hand crank,
#4) and the door key.
#5) take off the Finial (loose decorative post that is sometimes on top), and the spires, if there are any.
#6) Then put the hand crank, door key, mouse, and all decorative top posts into a small box, and put it inside on the floor of the grandfather clock.
#7) Check to see if access to the insides is through the side doors.
Or, see if the whole hood comes off.
#8) Determine if it's a chain driven or cable driven. The fact of whether it's a chain or cable will change the way you go about this.
#9) Stop the pendulum from swinging, but use a clother or piece of paper, don't touch it bare handed.
#10): If it's a chain driven, use the hand crank to wind the weights up to no higher than about 3/4 the way up.
#11) When the term "metal wheel" or "pully" is used, this is what is being talked about.
#12) Note how the hook is on the weight, and the hook hooks onto the extension hanging below the pully wheel. Here's how you would lift the weight off the wheel, but don't do it just yet.
#13) ONLY If it's a chain driven grandfather clock, the weights should then be lifted off, but the weights should not be touched directly by bare hands, only by paper or glove contact, to keep the metal from being smudged with finger prints.
#14) After the weights are lifted off of the chain-type of clock, each pair of chains should be secured snug against the top box mechanism with wire twists, or zip ties, so that the chains can't come off the spools. Chains won't unspool by just lifting off the weights, like can happen with the "cable" type. The chains can get jammed up in the mechanism if jostled around, which is why we use the wire-ties.
#15) Then the loose chain below can be gathered together, wrapped in bubble wrap or plastic wrap, and secured so that it won't flop around.
#16: If it's cable driven, the cable should be secured before lifting the weights off the hooks, to prevent the cable from unspooling off the spool in the upper mechanism. The unspooling can happen the second you lift the weights off if you don't keep tension on the cables.
#17) On the type of clocks that don't have a "clear Spool guard" over the spool, you have the option to create tension on the cable by putting tape directly on the spool, before taking the weights off.
#18: Another option is to create tension on the cables by placing either a foam block above the pully wheel before cranking the pully up into a snug position.
#19) This kind of foam block is the type that comes with the clock. Note that the wheel fits into a cut or groove, where the sides hold the wheel from flipping over. However, these foam blocks are rarely still available with the clocks, customers usually throw those away.
#20) One of the best options is to use 3" lengths of pool noodle with a small slit put in the noodle for the wheel to slip up and into, and hold the wheel from flopping over. Note how the metal wheel in this picture is sitting far up into the cut in the pool noodle, almost entirely surrounded by the noodle, so the wheel and cable is tight and can't flip over.
This is the metal spool/wheel slipped up into the cut made into the noodle, with the cable cranked snug, so the wheel can't move. The pool noodle technique works particularly well for making the removal of the foam support much easier, as you can just tear it off when you're done.
#21) The metal spool should not be outside the pool noodle like this, because when done like this there can be no tension or support to keep it from just flopping over and loosening,
#22) Meaning, NOT like this.. What ever you do it should not be an option to proceed without the tension on the cables, on way or another. Without this tension, do not move the grandfather clock at all, or you're begging for a problem.
#23) However, some grandfather clocks don't allow the cables to wind up high enough to pull the pully wheel up into the slot of a pool noodle, sometimes stopping up to an inch short of fitting properly against the noodle. In these cases, you need to add one or more spacers of blocks of wood, by squeezing them in and underneath the noodle from the side to fill the space and create the pressure. Short sections of paint stir sticks also work well for this.
#24) An alternate method, of providing the needed tension on the cables is to use a set of wood blocks, as shown above and below.
#25) Yet another option is to use the cheap little Harbor Freight clamps. Just flip the arm around backwards and you have a clamp that expands instead of contracts. You hook the arm into the wheel, put the other side against the frame, and expand the clamp to create the pressure on the cables.
#26) Another option is that you can use bunched up wads of paper as shown above. The drawback to this method is that there's more of a risk of the wheels flopping over and the cables coming loose, which can let the cables unspool. And it can be much harder to get the paper back out when reassembling on the other end, because the cables don't crank back down, they only crank up. That means the paper wads need to be torn or wiggled back out, and that's a real hassle, which is why this is a "back up" way for only when you've forgotten to bring your foam noodles. There's also a few models that aren't made to crank up that high, and so you can't get tension this way sometimes.
#27) After the tension is placed on the cables in one of the ways shown above, crank the hand-crank up SNUG against the top, with a little pressure stopping the hand-crank from cranking further. Only after cranking the hand-crank snug is the mechanism then ready to have the weights lifted off. After doing this, lift the weights off, but only while touching the weights with paper, newspaper, plastic, or gloves, not bare hands.
#28) When you lift off the weights, look under the weights as you lift them off, and check them for markings, "Left, Center, Right" .
or " L or M or R" or "1, or 2 or 3", These marking designate the order the weights must be replaced, to keep them in the same places they were originally placed.
#29) Keeping this same order is important because the weights are often of different weight than each other, that is specifically designed to be the correct weight for the function its doing (as shown above).
There's a few rare weights that aren't marked on the bottom to show their placement order. If you run into these, you need to mark them "left, center, right", with painter's tape on the bottom.
#30) After wrapping each weight in a nice bundle of either paper or bubble wrap, write these location indications onto each weight package, as shown next.
#31) Place these weights in their own box, not in the bottom of the grandfather clock, because that weight can break the bottom board.
32) After the weights are taken off and are out of the way, take off the pendulum.
#33) Note that the Pendulum GUIDE does not come off the clock, and only the Pendulum HOOK unhooks from the Pendulum Guide. This means you are not taking what looks like the whole pendulum off, only the part down from a certain point, about four or five inches down from the top of what looks like the pendulum arm.
#34) This is the most common looking pendulum "hook".
#35) Notice how thin the piece of metal is that extends below this hook and attaches to the larger fatter part of the pendulum . That foot long piece of thin metal is made of a special metal that is so bendable that simply touching it can bend it. A common problem that can develop is that when this pendulum is simply placed in a box, the simple touching of the upper pendulum arm to the box bends that thin piece of metal, and leaves the bend in the metal (it doesn't straighten back out on its own), which then later makes the pendulum rub or be hit by the chimes, stopping the pendulum from swinging. Be aware of this, both to stop it from happening, and/or to fix it if it does happen.
#36) With the above warning in mind, wrap the pendulum in some bubble wrap, paper or stretch wrap, & then protect it inside some extra stiff cardboard. Make the box so stiff that it can't bend. The U-Haul dish-wrapping paper boxes can work well for this, although sometimes you have to add two boxes together to make it long enough. In a pinch, you can just find a place to lay it flat, if it's a protected area.
#37) Cut a piece of cardboard that's a good bit longer than the width of the chime rods, but only about the depth of the space of the chime rods. Then cut two slits in the cardboard that are about as wide as the two rows of chime rods. Then insert that piece of cardboard up over the chime rods, to make it look like the above two pictures. This is to hold the chime rods stationary, and prevent them from banging into each other and ringing the whole way to the destination. Even bubble wrap can work for this in a pinch.
#38) For some types of grandfather clocks, the whole top mechanism can come out and be boxed up separately.
If this is the case, it's just setting there in the top box, not screwed in, just loose. But most modern clocks are one-piece, not removable.
#39) You want to double check to see that the glass panels are all very secure in place. If any of them are not, then take them out and wrap them individually, & put them in a box.
#40) Now you can just wrap er up.
#41) Or add some cardboard on top.
#42) If you do add cardboard, also mark the areas that are glass.
#43) A high end job includes wrapping the blanketing under the bottom edges.
#44) It's not always needed, but it does protect the item better if it has a cardboard covering, with marker-pen warnings "glass" that let people know there's glass under it.
#45) Always put the hand-truck on the back of the unit, to avoid putting pressure on the glass front.
#46) It's always better if it can be secured to the side all by itself with nothing else up against it.
#47) Keep the clock upright while transporting.
#48) When you set it up, level the unit to remove any wobble, by screwing in or out the leg-height-adjusters underneath.
#49) You should also consider recommending to the customer that they consider securing their clock to the wall, for superior stability if there might be children around.
#50) When you're ready to remove the foam blocks or pool noodle sections (if you used them), just tear them apart to remove them. This is because the mechanism only cranks in the tightening direction, and so you can't loosen the cable by hand, it just has to run down by the clock running.
#51) When you set the clock back up at the other end of the move, you can reset the time on the clock, but don't move the hour hand, only the minute hand. Most grandfather clocks need the minute hand to be moved only in the counter clockwise direction. However, there are exceptions, so if you can check the manual for the clock, that's always better. If there are no instructions, do a small very short test in each direction and feel for which direction allows an easier turn.
#52) The most common problem grandfather clocks have after being moved is that the upper pendulum arm gets bent during the move. You can tell if this is the case by just seeing if the arm is bumping up against the chimes, as shown in this picture. If this is the case, remove the pendulum, and straighten the bent section of metal. It bends back as easily as it bends in the first place, which is with a light touch. If you're a real pro, you will examine the pendulum arm for straightness before placing it back in the clock for reassembly, so you can fix it right away if it needs it, when it's easiest to do.
#53) The second most common problem clocks have after being moved is that the minute hand gets stuck on the hour hand, because it was bent in just enough to catch the hour arm. Just bend it back.
#54) The third most common problem causing the clock to not work at the unload end is that the cable lost tension and became unspooled, as shown in the previous picture. In this case you're probably better off paying for a real clock expert to fix it and rewind the spool. The time and place to hand this was to have put tension on the cables in the first place, as directed, and it would have then been impossible for this to happen.
#55) The fourth most common reason Grandfather clocks can stop working after a move is that a pre-existing build up of dust became shifted just enough to gum up and jam the internal mechanism. In this case, it just needs to be cleaned with some good blasts of air over the mechanism. Do not ever use WD-40 or such oils. Oils make dust stick to it and will gum up the works.
#7) BIG GUN SAFES
#8) SLEEP NUMBER BEDS
If the grandfather clock has a particularly vulnerable glass front, or curved glass, the unit
TEETER TOTTER LIFTING TOO HEAVY TOO HIGH
This item needed to be lifted about two feet off the ground and set on top of another unit two feet off the ground.
However, this thing weighed about five or six hundred pounds, and so couldn't be just lifted straight up that high. So we put some planks of wood underneath to use the "teeter totter" technique.
Once we had some planks put underneath near the middle, we lifted one end just high enough to pull out the floor dolly. That allowed us to drop that end down, teetering on the middle support, which raised the opposite end high enough to put supports underneath at the desired height of that end.
Then, one man used a hump strap to lift that end only a few inches, while the other man put support planks underneath. This was repeated in two inch increments, so that the lifter only had to lift a couple inches at a time. Once this other end was lifted to the right height, we slid the top unit over onto the base.
IKEA DESK
When disassembling an Ikea desk, the trick is to take out the dark screws shown in this next picture, and then to take out 6" wooden "support" bar situated UNDER the side section. That's the key because the side section of the desk will not drop down to be removable unless the 6" tall support bar is removed first.
SLIDERS
Sometimes "sliders" are the easiest way to move heavy items that are only being scooted within a house. These can even be used for gun safes and such.
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