Moving a safe over five feet

Factual Questions
1

Just moved into my uncle’s house, which we’re sitting for the next year or so. It’s great, but unfortunately there’s a gigantic safe (approx 4x2x2 feet) left by the previous owner in the center of the garage floor. (No, nothing in it.)

If we can get it over to the side of the garage, we’ll be able to pull our cars in. I’m not eager to pay a moving company a decent sum just to move the thing over a few feet, but I’m even less eager to lose a finger or two.

Anyone ever heard of a homegrown way to shift over a safe? Or do I just shell out the bucks? I’ve got access to manpower and standard tools…

2

I would strongly suggest calling a couple moving companies and see what they’d charge. It might be less than you think.

3

For a point of comparison, my company recently had a 3500 lb safe moved from the 2nd floor of a building to the 14th floor of another building 15 miles away.

Cost $900 bucks in labor, and all said and done, it took about 4.5 hours, although about 2 of that was waiting to get clearance from the new building.

It was interesting how the guy did it- he had this big-ass crowbar with a sweeping curve to it, kind of like a hockey stick. He’d stick that under the safe, and push/sit on it to lever it up. He’d then stick wooden blocks under the jacked up part, then move to a different part.

Once it was up, he used a pallet jack to lift it up, remove the blocks, then off we went. (more or less… he had to do some funky stuff to turn some tight corners).

I imagine you could do something similar, depending on what you have on hand.

4

Former banking equipment installer/technician checking in: From your description, do I correctly presume that the safe has no wheels? If that’s the case, it’s still a simple task.

Tool list- a tapered pry bar, one with a gradual slope, one or two regular crow bars, three or four lengths of 1/2" steel rod stock-they should be a little longer than the safe is deep-you can buy these at a Home Despot.

First, sweep the garage floor. Be thorough, as a tiny stone will become a great impediment. Assuming you’d like to use this safe in it’s final location, check the level of the floor there. It doesn’t take a lot of error to put an open or closed run in a heavy safe door. If the floor is off, you’ll need some metal shims- around 4" square-available from a local steel supplier of sheet goods or a metal fabricator.

To move the safe, take the tapered pry bar, place it about a third of the way back from the safe front (they tend to be face-heavy) and tap it in with a hammer to get some purchase. Continue to lift it in this fashion until you can get one or both of the regular crow bars under the two corners, about an inch or two from the outside faces. What you’re working towards is being able to lift one side of the safe about 3/4" so a solid rod can be slid underneath:

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Then go to the opposite side of the safe and tap the tapered bar underneath at the midpoint, and then lift. Longer bars make for less effort, naturally. The safe will scoot a little bit and the rod will be moving towards the middle of the safe. Repeat until it’s not quite halfway:

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Stick another solid rod under the edge where you started-it should easily fit without lifting as that end of the safe will be higher.

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The next time you scoot the safe, it should be fully raised off the floor by 1/2" and can be easily moved a little at a time using the crowbars between the floor and the safe underside.
You just have to watch where the bars are in relation to the balance point and keep it supported so you don’t have to start over. As you can see, the safe is on the first two rollers, and is ready to ride onto the third. By the time the first is no longer in bearing, it will need to be moved to the front again.

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Repeat as needed until you get it where you want it, then remove the rods by reversing the insertion procedure. Then check the safe for level and plumb, door runs and/or bind. Correct as needed with shims, and then get someone with proper tools and experience to set the combination. You don’t want a lockout after all of this. :smiley:

5

I’ve been involved in moving the safes into a couple Home Depots. Most the distance was done with a forklift. We had to get them through the computer room into the vault room. They are really freakin heavy. By the second one we learned to put them in place before the VCT flooring was there because we destroyed it the first time. The plan we went with was as many large guys as we could fit around it and a couple breaker bars for leverage around corners.

Three guys rocking it back and forth walking it should do it for you without anyone lossing fingers. There is no reason to even try to get something underneath it, so no ones fingers should ever go there.

6

Sorry-my above post doesn’t make sense because the little pictures that I typed weren’t correctly rendered, and I couldn’t edit it before timeout. Email me if you’d like more detail.

7

That’s called a Johnson Bar.

8

4 x 2 x 2? I’d say a little wheelie cart would do it. You know, two wheels and a ladder back thingy? It doesn’t sound all that cumbersome.

9

Steel weighs in at about 500 pounds per cubic foot. A 4x2x2 safe with 0.5" thick walls would be ~800 lbs. Something that big might have much thicker walls - at 1" thick you’re up to ~1600lbs.

Most handcarts are good to a few hundred pounds, I wouldn’t stick a half ton on one. Frankly I’d be extremely careful of any moving technique that started it rolling or tipping - stopping it could be an adventure.

10

This man can move anything (youtube video).

Interesting to watch how he does it.

11

Wouldn’t that rather hurt the owners of the feet the safe was being moved over?

And where do you get five feet, anyway? A milking stool and a person?

Argh! Pitchforks and torches! Run! Run!

12

…and therein lies the reason I’m not a safe mover! :slight_smile:

13

It’s cool to see him tipping the big block back and forth, sliding more wood pieces under it to lift it, but I’m curious how he got started. Did he dig away at the dirt under the middle of the block, slide a piece of wood under the center, then dig away elsewhere to get the block initially balanced on the fulcrum?

14

No kidding, Kalhoun – I’d have been out there with a handtruck, too, trying to move the thing.

Listen, though, happywaffle, have you checked around about renting a small forklift? My husband and I rented a pull-behind cherry-picker when we painted our house and we were surprised how much heavy equipment was available for rent. It would cost you a couple hundred bucks, probably (it was $150 for the cherry picker, which incuded the equipment place dropping it off and picking it up), but it might be cheaper than hiring a moving company.

Jayrot, that clip was cool.

15

OK, I did a little Googling. How about something like this. It’s rated for 1200 lbs. $150 to buy it from Northern Tool, but it’d be worth a call to UHaul, or another equipment rental place to see if one could be rented.

16

If there is nothing in it, I’m presuming that nobody is using it. Why not sell it and specify that the buyer has to move it?