You can save yourself quite a bit of money if you are able to move a fridge by yourself. Chances are that you may least need a hand just to tip the fridge over onto a hand trolley. Being heavy and cumbersome items, they are almost a specialty item if big enough….

You can save yourself quite a bit of money if you are able to move a fridge by yourself. Chances are that you may least need a hand just to tip the fridge over onto a hand trolley. Being heavy and cumbersome items, they are almost a specialty item if big enough. similar to your smaller pianos but not quite as heavy. Although they can be reasonably easy under the right conditions! Having no stairs or steps to deal with being a big start. If you do have these to deal with you may be better off ringing the professionals, as these can be very tricky and have an increased risk of damage to your appliance, walls and even yourself. Below I will lay out our step by step guide on how to move a fridge.

Things You Will Need:

  • Hand trolly
  • moving blankets
  • tape
  • rope
  • two people
  • moving truck

1.  Defrost your Fridge

When planning how to prep a fridge for moving, fist priority is to empty your contents. Try meal prepping in the weeks leading upto the move. Thus making sure there is as minimal food left to deal with come when you have to empty the fridge. Have an esky ready to put your leftover food from your fridge and freezer in.

Once your Fridge is completely emptied out, you will need to defrost your freezer, this can be done by either, using a hair dryer. leaving the doors open and waiting for the ice to melt. Or try placing pots of boiling water with thick tea towels onto for a steam effect that will help speed up the defrosting process. Defrosting your freezer will help ensure there are no water leakages when it comes to moving.

Once ice has all melted, clean up water left behind with a mop or rag and your tree good to go.

2. Disconnect Fridge

If your fridge has been tapped in to the water supply be sure to disconnect these in advance, as most moving companies won’t be able to do this.

After the fridge has been unplugged, roll up the power cord and either tape it to the back of the fridge or at the bottom where the motor is.

3. Measure Doorways And Plan Your Route

Measuring doorways will help make sure you know which doors your fridge will fit thru. Making sure you are not left damaging your fridge or holding the heavy appliances any longer than you need to be. If you’ve measured your preferred route and you have room than you are almost set to go. On the other hand if you have measured and its not fitting, you may need to improvise. This is where you may need to either take household doors off hinges, or completely remove the doors from the fridge.

4. Apply Moving Blankets To You Fridge

Be sure to have a couple moving blankets to go onto your fridge to stop any chance of damage coming their way. This can be done by grabbing a nice think moving blanket. Be sure to open your moving blanket right up, once opened fully grab either corner of the moving blanket on the longer edge. wrap around the fridge horizontally, then once you have overlapped the fridge with your blanket, grab your tape and make sure it doesn’t come off.

5. Get Ready To Lift

once you have figured out your route and the fridge has been blanketed, Its time to lift. Grab your hand trolley. If the trolley has a strap built in, strap your fridge onto the trolley. If not you can make your own strap by using a rope. Next you may or may not need help to tip the fridge over depending on the size and weight. Once tips back you want to have hold of the fridge on your trolley at a 45 degree angle. This will be the most comfortable position and will keep the weight feeling lighter.

6. Going Down Stairs

When going down stairs only use a hand trolley when you have a straight staircase. Be sure to always go down facing forwards, never backwards downs stairs. when going down stairs with a fridge on your hand trolley, always pull back towards yourself at 45 degrees. Also be sure to have your offsider at the front of the fridge to push back towards you, making sure it cannot go anywhere.

7. Get Fridge Into Moving Truck

When figuring out how to move a fridge, the main objective is to get it into the truck. Depending on if you have a truck with a lifter or ramp you can do this either of two ways:

For Lifter: Drop your fridge slowly onto the tailgate lifter. Take your trolley out and catch the lifter up with your fridge. Take your trolley and place it back under the fridge and reverse back onto the truck and bam its in.

For Ramp: approach the ramp walking backwards towards it, have your offsider at the front of you guiding you along the ramp. They can also give you a push up the ramp for added help.

Once you are in the truck all that’s left to do is securely tie it down so it can’t move during transit. Be sure to grab rope long enough, and tie the fridge in an upright position. When tying make sure not to use to much force that you don’t dint your fridge. just be sure that there is no slack in your rope and that its tight around the appliance and you will be right.

8. Wait Before Plugging Back In

Usually you can turn them back on straight away if they are a newer model of refrigerator, just be sure to check the manufactures guidelines. If you had to for some reason lay the fridge on its side, leave the fridge upright for double the amount of time it was on its side before turning back on. This lets the hydraulic gas come back down to the motor.

Other Things To Keep In Mind

  • If the fridge is going to be stored, be sure to leave the doors slightly open to make sure mould cannot build up.
  • Always when possible transport and keep fridge in an upright position

If you have a challenging situation and your not sure how to move a fridge. Try enlisting the help of professional removalists howl know what they are doing.