Level 03 and above, by lift
A lift is a dimension, not an answer
A lift removes the height from the problem and adds three measurements and a set of conditions. Whether it is shared, how wide its door is, how deep its car is, and whether the building requires it to be booked — those four things decide the day, not the floor number.
Measure the door opening, not the car. Then measure the car diagonal, because that is what a mattress uses.
What to measure at a lift
Door first, car second
Old passenger lifts commonly have a deep car behind a narrow door, often with a concertina gate that takes another few centimetres off the opening. Nothing rigid that will not pass the door can use the space behind it, however generous that space is.
This is why we ask for the door measurement first and treat the car dimensions as a secondary question. A lift that looks roomy from inside can be useless for the one item you needed it for.
Shared lifts cannot be held
In most residential blocks the lift is the residents' lift and holding it is neither permitted nor neighbourly. That means the work is staged: everything comes to the lobby, then moves in bursts, with somebody at each end of the lift throughout.
It is the single biggest difference between a lift job and a stair job, and it affects the crew more than the number of floors does.
Goods lifts and booked windows
New-build and commercial blocks usually have a service lift, a loading bay, a booking system, a floor-protection requirement and an insurance-document requirement. Every one of those is reasonable and every one of them has to be arranged before the day rather than on it.
Where a window is short, the whole load has to be staged beside the lift before it opens. That is a planning problem rather than a lifting one, and it is where these jobs succeed or fail.
- Ask building management for the booking form early rather than late.
- Get the floor-protection specification in writing; they differ block to block.
- Confirm the route from the loading bay to the lift, which is not always direct.
- Check whether the bay has a height restriction, which decides the vehicle.
- Establish whether the same window is needed at the other address too.
When the lift is not the route anyway
Plenty of upper-floor jobs use the stairs for the furniture and the lift for the boxes, because the furniture will not fit the car. That is a perfectly ordinary plan and it needs to be the plan from the start rather than a discovery.
And on any job above the second floor we work out the stair route as well, because a lift out of service on the day is not unusual and a plan with no second half is not a plan.
LVL 03+
Questions about upper floors with a lift
- Can you reserve the lift for us?
- Where the building operates a booking system, yes, and we will help with the paperwork. In a block with one shared passenger lift, no — it is not available to be reserved and we plan around sharing it.
- What if the sofa will not fit the lift?
- It goes up the stairs, which is why we ask about both routes. On a high floor that changes the crew, so it is far better established in advance.
- Does the building need our insurance details?
- Frequently, yes, along with a method statement. We supply both — just tell us who to send them to and allow time for them to be accepted.
- Is there a height limit on the loading bay?
- Very often, and it decides the vehicle. It is one of the first questions we ask building management, because arriving with the wrong vehicle wastes everybody's day.
Send us one measurement
The clear diagonal across the tightest turn on your staircase, corner to corner, with the handrail in place. That single figure answers more questions about a London move than a room-by-room inventory does.