Piano Moving near you

SafeWork NSW describes manual tasks as using your body to lift, lower, push, pull, carry, move, hold or restrain any person, animal or thing, and treats a task as hazardous once it involves high or sudden force, sustained force, awkward or sustained posture, repetitive movement or vibration. Holding a piano steady on a ramp is sustained high force in an awkward posture, which is the textbook case. A business that moves pianos has a duty to identify that hazard and then eliminate the risk so far as is reasonably practicable, or minimise it through the hierarchy of controls.

What that means on the day is mechanical aids first and muscle last: a piano skid, a stair climber or stair-capable trolley, proper webbing rather than rope, non-slip gloves, and enough people that nobody is taking a load they cannot put down. It also means the crew deciding the route before the instrument moves at all, including where the rest points are on a stair and which door leaves come off.

If you are asked to help carry, decline. The value of a professional piano move is not only the instrument; it is that the crew is trained, equipped and insured for a task where the failure mode is a person underneath several hundred kilograms on a staircase.

A piano goes out of tune because the soundboard and the timber around the pinblock take up and give off moisture, which changes string tension. That is why moving matters less than the destination does: the same instrument in a humid Brisbane room and in a dry Adelaide summer will settle at different pitches. Allow the instrument a couple of weeks in the new room before tuning so it has reached the room's conditions, rather than tuning it to a state it will not stay in.

Position is the other half of it. Avoid a wall that gets direct afternoon sun, avoid sitting the instrument under or beside a ducted air conditioning outlet or a split-system head, and keep it away from an uninsulated western wall in a hot climate and from an open fireplace anywhere. In a raised timber-floored house, an under-floor space that vents damp air can keep the bottom of the instrument permanently wetter than the top.

Floors need attention too. Bare castors on old hardwood or on a floating floor concentrate the whole mass into four small contacts, so castor cups or a purpose-made board spread the load and stop indentation. On a suspended floor, ask where the bearers run before you place a grand in the middle of a span.

NSW consumer guidance states plainly that removalists are not required by law to provide insurance for your property during a move, and that transit cover is a separate thing which insures goods while they are being packed and moved, including any storage. Queensland's guidance makes the same point from the other direction, warning that not taking out insurance can be risky and that transit insurance covers damage or loss in transit as well as during packing and unpacking.

For a piano, read the transit policy for two things in particular: whether instruments are covered at all or excluded as a class, and whether there is a value above which an item has to be specifically declared before it is covered. An instrument with real value, sentimental or financial, is exactly the kind of item that a general household transit policy handles least well. A recent valuation, photographs of the case and serial number, and a written record of its condition before the move are what turn a claim into a settled claim.

Separately from insurance, the Australian Consumer Law guarantees that services are carried out with an acceptable level of care and skill, are fit for any purpose you made known, and are supplied within a reasonable time where none was agreed, and the ACCC states that those basic rights cannot be taken away by anything a business says or does. A contract term that tries to disclaim all responsibility for damage does not remove the care-and-skill guarantee.