How to Safely Transport a Fridge Freezer

Quick Summary:

Moving a fridge freezer? Follow these essential steps to avoid damage:

• Defrost and clean the fridge freezer at least 24 hours before moving.
• Secure the doors using tape or straps to prevent them from swinging open.
• Remove shelves and drawers to stop them from breaking in transit.
• Keep it upright at all times to prevent compressor issues.
• Use a trolley or moving straps to lift and transport it safely.
• Let it settle for a few hours before plugging it back in.

When you buy a new fridge freezer, it’s usually well worth paying a few extra pounds to get it delivered. They’re large, heavy and cumbersome, and navigating sharp corners and doorways to get a fridge freezer from your driveway to your kitchen can result in bumped elbows, strained backs and lots of bad language!

If you’re googling how to transport your fridge freezer safely, though, you’re clearly planning to move it yourself. This could be because:

• You’re buying your fridge freezer second hand, 
• You scoff at the idea of paying for delivery when these things cost a fortune as it is, or, 
• You’re moving your own fridge freezer from your old house to your new one during a house move and aren’t using a removals company.

Whatever the reason, if you’re intent on moving a fridge freezer from point A to point B, there are some important things to bear in mind. 

If you’re moving a second hand freezer or your own (used) freezer, it’s important to prepare properly, by emptying it, unplugging it, defrosting and cleaning it. 

If you’re moving a new freezer from a shop to your home, you can skip to ‘How to move your fridge freezer’, below. 

What to do before transporting a fridge freezer

1. ‘Get rid’ of any food in there. 

Moving a fridge freezer is seldom a spur-of-the-moment decision: you’ll probably know at least a few weeks in advance if you’re going to need to move it. So, defrost and eat as much of the contents as you can. You might have to have some ‘creative’ dinners for a few days. If you’ve forgotten to do this and you need to move your fridge freezer today, ask your neighbours if they can store the food in their freezers (for you to collect later), or offer it to them to keep.

2. Unplug it.

Nice and easy, right? 

You might be wondering how long you have to leave it unplugged before you can move it. Worry not, you can move it whenever it’s defrosted (if you bought a frost-free model, you can feel all smug now because you won’t have to do step 3 below, and you can move it without further ado after giving it a quick wipe to clean it). 

Note, though, that there is an important rule about how long you’ve got to leave it after moving before you can plug it back in again. We’ll get to that in ‘What to do after moving a fridge freezer’, below. 

3. Defrost it.

Depending on how long you’ve got before you need to move the fridge freezer, you could just open the doors, leave a towel in the bottom of the fridge and one in the bottom of the freezer, and let nature take its course. The towels will soak up the melted ice water in the freezer or condensation from the fridge, and it should take about 24 hours to fully defrost. Then just remove the towels (probably a good idea to pop them in a bucket or something to move them, so they don’t drip everywhere) and you’re ready to go to step 4.

If you’re in a rush, you’ll need to manually defrost it. This is a detestful job, you will hate it, and your hands will get cold, but it shouldn’t take more than about an hour… 

Don’t use anything metal to attack the ice. It can puncture crucial parts of your freezer that will break it, or leave you at risk of electrocution next time you plug it in. A defrosted freezer is not worth dying for.

You should still use towels to catch falling or melted ice.

Fill hot water bottles and place them on the shelves to melt the ice as much as possible. If you don’t have hot water bottles, fill plastic tupperware boxes with hot water and carefully place them on the shelves (they’ll need refilling more often than the hot water bottles would).

As the ice starts to melt, use a plastic or wooden implement such as a spatula or spoon to prise away the ice; chunks should crack away.

4. Clean it.

Just use warm soapy water and a sponge or cloth to give everything a clean. You don’t want to take nasty smells into your new home, and you won’t want to put new food into a dirty fridge freezer either.

If it’s a bit whiffy from years of absorbing food smells, you could put a pot of bicarbonate of soda in the fridge overnight. 

5. Secure it.

Remove any shelves, trays, or boxes to stop them from falling, rattling round or breaking during the move. You can wrap them in towels or cloths and store them at the bottom of the fridge to keep them safe (and avoid having to hunt for them when you get to your new house).

Tape the doors shut, or tie a cord around the outside of the freezer to stop the doors swinging open. Also tape up the cord to prevent the cord being damaged (and to avoid standing on the plug).

How to move your fridge freezer

It isn’t until you try to move a fridge freezer that you appreciate how tall these things are. They’re also really heavy, considering they’re practically hollow. You’ll need to follow these steps to keep your fridge freezer, your floors and your back safe.

Can you lay a fridge freezer on its side?

Laying a fridge freezer on its side and carrying it between you and a friend probably seems like the most logical thing, doesn’t it? You couldn’t really carry it standing upright, and you wouldn’t be able to fit it through your doorways if you did.

But no! Don’t do that!

There is a thing in your fridge freezer called a compressor, which is what makes your freezer work. Inside the compressor is oil. If you lay the fridge freezer on its side, that oil can move out of the compressor and when you turn it back on it may well not work.

So, how should you move a fridge freezer?

First, wrap it before moving it, to protect it from bumps and scrapes on the journey. Use eco-friendly bubble wrap, or blankets. Lay extra padding (e.g. blankets, or cardboard) on your floor to protect it. Remember all those times you were told to ‘lift with your knees, not with your back.’

You’re going to need to use a moving dolly, or a sack truck. A moving dolly is a little platform on wheels, which is only really going to be useful if there are no stairs between your kitchen and the place you’re moving your fridge to. Otherwise, a sack truck will let you tip it back and forth slightly to get it up and down stairs, as sack trucks have handles.

Don’t tip your fridge freezer more than 45° for the same reason you shouldn’t tip it on its side.

Given the size of the fridge freezer, and the need to keep it upright, you’ll need to rent or borrow a moving van; given the weight of it, you should get a van with a mechanical tail lift to allow you to move it on and off the van safely.

What to do after moving a fridge freezer

While it doesn’t matter how long you leave it between unplugging your fridge freezer and moving it, it is important to leave your fridge freezer to ‘settle’ after moving it before plugging it back in.

Once your fridge freezer is in place, it will need time for the oil in that compressor we mentioned to settle. 

Leave it unplugged, with its doors shut, for at least 4 hours after moving your fridge freezer. Some manufacturers recommend you wait for 24 hours. 

Once it’s plugged in, you will need to give it a few hours (with the thermostat turned on) to cool down enough to safely store your food before restocking it.

Can self storage help with moving a fridge freezer?

If you want to buy a new fridge freezer in the sales, but haven’t sold or got rid of your old fridge freezer yet, you could store your new fridge freezer (or your old one) in a self storage unit with us. Similarly, if you’ve sold your house but are waiting to move into your new home and need temporary storage for your fridge freezer, one of our indoor units would be a safe, clean, dry place to keep it. Your fridge freezer would need to be unplugged and defrosted before you could store it with us.

We have trolleys you can use at the store to help you move your fridge freezer safely into your unit, and you can take your fridge freezer out again whenever you like during our extensive opening hours (7 days a week, 365 days a year).

If you’d like some information on how our self storage units work, or would like a quote, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to help you with no obligation to reserve or rent a unit.