gotta move my safe............
hillbille
Member Posts: 14,397 ✭✭✭✭
wife decided we need new carpet, what we have is original and 44 years old, so I guess we have gotten our money out of it. That said I have to move my gun safe and a second smaller one about half full of ammo and other junk. I think I can stuff the gun safe full of pillows and move it with dolly, I am going to move it to the kitchen for now till the get done monday. My question is the kitchen is ceramic tile and I wonder do you think it will crack to pull the safe over it with a 2 wheel dolly?????? I hate thinking about unloading it and moving it outside and down to the garage then right back up in a day or so. I know the smaller safe should be no problem as I will have to unload the ammo before I can move it so it can go anywhere, safe if a 10 gun and doubt it is more 500-600 pounds..........
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Get an 8 foot wooden closet dowel and cut it into 4-2 foot sections. Tilt the safe back and put a couple of dowels under it and start rolling it. Keep removing one dowel from the rear and placing it in front. You'd be surprised how fast you can move one. I'd put it on a larger piece of plywood or some 2x6's to spread the weight out a bit. If your safe is 20"x30", and weighs 600 pounds, that's only 10 psi if it's flat. Depending on the type of wheels on your hand truck/dolly, it could get substantially higher in the psi number, especially if they're hard, narrow tires. Should be pretty easy to move, I've done it quite a few times. Only problem you might have is the carpet wadding up in front of the rollers after some distance.
Well, I'm not an ME so maybe one will have better idea, But just off the top of my head, maybe lay down some plywood to roll it on to, thinking that might help distribute the weight but again just a guess...
If moving to the kitchen ceramic floor lay a piece of plywood on the floor (cut to fit) your roll, it'll help disperse the weight and cushion the roll. That's how mine was brought into the house by the mover.
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This.
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The last time I moved a big safe.......some family helpers and I used a bunch of golf balls. It was out of a house with carpet into a house with carpet and the golf balls worked great. Don't remember how many we used for a 600 lb safe but I'm guessing it was about three dozen...........just advance the safe and move the balls from rear to direction of travel.
Getting it into the bed of a truck and back out was just tilt and push/pull with 4 strong guys.
Just tilt the safe one way to push the carpet under and reverse it for the other side. Who is going to see it.
I've moved a few +. You'll be surprised how much lighter it is if you empty it out first. Then like @toad67 suggests, use electrical conduit (cheaper than clothes pole) & roll it onto a layer or 2 of plywood. You may have to use larger conduit to roll it on the carpet or lay pieces of plywood on the carpet & move them as you go.
DUH!! You are a Marine so you will probably break the tile and very possibly the ceiling as well. 😁
Happy early U.S. Marine Corp. birthday!!
On some safes the door can easily be removed, thus reducing the overall weight (in your case) by about 200 pounds. Here's a video showing how to do it.
Plywood is your friend.-----------------------Ray
Do you really need need to put new carpet under the safe?
2nd agreement, I have done it before on kitchen tile.
I don't know the layout of your home or how many rooms will be carpeted. In our case we were doing multiple rooms, so they started in the room next to the room with the safe. When that room was done they wheeled the safe in there and we avoided any tile or vinyl flooring. Did the safe room and it was a short trip to put the safe back in its original spot, eeasy, peeasy. Bob
sorta my feeling, it is in a walkin closet, carpet guys won't move it , and won't do the walkin if it isn't moved!! Momma wanted new carpet so it got moved, 2 wheeled it to living room, I put bigger 6 inch rubber tires on my 2 wheeler and it won't go thru the door ways now, so had to drop it and move it thru, got a long carpet runner and would drop it on it in the doorway then pulled on carpet and had ratchet strap low down on safe about 6-8 inches up, between pulling and the pushing we got it out and into the living room without breaking anything. although there is a bit of green paint on the wall in a few places. put a small piece of throw rug down rubber side up, with plywood on top of it then dropped the safe on it. we pulled it across the kithchen without any scratches, and ricci the ceiling is safe, though there were a few cuss words bounced off it a time or two........
Last time I needed a safe moved, from in the house to my shop outside, I still had kids at home. I asked my eldest, who was in his teens, to round up some of his friends. He did, and about six of them just snatched it up and put it where I wanted it.
When we move the safe stays where it is. ( without the firearms )
Can you be in the service and never use a cuss word. I don’t remember anyone in the Navy ever using a sentence that did use a four letter cuss word.
I have built many subfloors, and I have installed a lot of tile. The floor may just be built "to code" with 1/2 inch plywood, or might be built the way I do, with 3/4 inch tongue and groove wafer board. My subfloor is 50 percent stronger than code. For the tiled bathroom in my house, I put on top of that, 3/4 inch of PT plywood, then the concrete board and then the tile. Super strong bathroom subfloor and the tile hasn't, needless to say, cracked.
Over in the living room, for the masonry hearth for the wood stove, I doubled up the three, 2x10 joists that support the wood stove in the corner. Most guys would not bother doubling up joists. The wood stove weighs 460 pounds, and four men stand on that masonry hearth while installing the stove, I didn't want the hearth to crack. Not tile but similar, mortar with flat rocks set into the mortar.
There is no way of knowing just how strong your subfloor is so I would say there is a good chance of cracking tile with that much weight on 2 wheels of a hand truck. Take precautions!
That is what we did in our last house..my son and three of friend helped me get an 800 pound safe across a 20 year old ceramic tile floor on a refrigerator dolly. Then down a flight of stairs to my den in the basement.
In our current house the movers did the same thing ….
It was definitely going to crack the tile if you hadn't done what ya did.
And fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
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That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain
...I'm sorry...
....Last time I moved two gun safes...laid down sheets of cardboard over the carpet, once my SIL & 2 of his buddies started pushing, they didnt stop until safes were in place...slid on the cardboard like the safes were on ice, each safe weighed over 500 pounds empty...I wont ever move them from where they sit...
Lotsa good knowledge in the responses. I’d add safety as a concern…make sure everyone moving heavy items knows their out and values safety over the stuff.