Estimating how long your move will take can help you budget and plan for your move efficiently. Getting your timeframes and deadlines sorted is a key part to an organised move. You may have to plan for lift and loading zone bookings, cleaning, key handover, and more!
Additionally, as most removalists charge by the hour it is a good idea to figure out how long your move will take. You can then compare hourly quotes using your time estimate and make sure your move is within your budget. Below is a step by step guide on how to calculate how long your move will take.
Do a volume calculation
Firstly, work out what items you are moving and how much volume they will take up. There are many ways to do a volume calculation but the easiest is to write up a list of all your items and plug them into an online volume calculator. Remember to add the number of boxes you think you will have packed, and also small household items like floor lamps, small appliances, cleaning tools.
Many removals companies and storage companies have online volume calculators and it is probably worthwhile to plug in your items into three different sites and work out an average.
An alternate way to work out volume is by measuring your items and calculating the volume each one takes up by measuring the width, height and length of each one and multiplying them to get to the cubic metre calculation. Though this is time consuming, this is the most accurate figure you will get to. A faster way could be to pack all the items into a space in the living room and measuring the height, width and length of the whole stack of items, but again moving the items around may be inconvenient and tiresome.
Account for your parking and access
Once you have your total volume you can work out how long it will take to move all of it. The time it takes will depend on the parking and access. Professional removalists define “golden access” as the easiest access of all, namely everything on the ground floor with parking right next to the entrance of the home. With golden access, professional removalists can load and unload 10 cubic metres per hour. For example, a standard two bedroom home may have 22 cubic metres which means it would take just over two hours to pack it into the truck and just over two hours to unload it into the new address.
However, realistically most people don’t have golden access. You may live in the third floor and are moving to a second floor unit. The closest the truck might park is 30 metres away. Your townhouse may be a double storey with some items in the attic. Maybe the narrow corridors and staircases will force you to move larger items over the balcony. In some situations, limited height restrictions in the garage might mean you need a ute to ferry your househole items.
As a general guideline for each flight of stairs, add 30 minutes for every 10 cubic metres. For every additional 10 metre walk, add another 10 minutes for every 10 cubic metres. If your move is very complicated, tricky access, different vehicles used in a combination with oversized, precious items such as grand pianos, spas, etc. it will be difficult for you to work out times and you are better off getting a fixed quote.
Distance between addresses
Calculate the distance between all the addresses for the move and add this time to your move. Luckily, in this day and age we now have Google Maps and other GPS to calculate how long it takes to get from point A to B. Make sure you add time as trucks take a while to park and are also slower especially when they are fully loaded.
Get quotes from removalists
Finding time to pack, organise your move, organise your lease or property settlement is difficult enough without adding the above tasks. To make your life easier you could simply ask professional removalists how long they think your move will take. When you contact them have your inventory, parking and access information handy as it will help them with the quote. We recommend you ask for quotes from 3 different providers, so you can compare.
There are also many quote comparison websites such as OneFlare and Findamover that can source quotes and put them all in one dashboard for your for ease of reference.
