Heavy Bulky Items in SW3: Three-Man Crew Rules and How Item Counting Works

Weight and shape change how a bulky item is moved. A mattress is light but awkward, whereas an American fridge freezer is heavy, tall and often has to be threaded through tight corners.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea notes that heavy items such as American fridge freezers and sofa beds can need a three-man crew, and that crew is available only on the last Wednesday of the month.

If your item needs that extra pair of hands, it is scheduled onto the last Wednesday of the month rather than an ordinary collection day. That is worth building into your planning if you are working to a move or a handover date.

If waiting for that date does not suit you, our crew is set up to move heavy items on the day you need, with the people and equipment the job actually requires.

A sofa bed is effectively two parts. Dismantling a sofa bed and removing the metal action counts as two items under the council rules, even though it is a single piece of furniture.

That matters if you are close to the ten-item limit. A living room with a sofa bed, two mattresses and a few other pieces can reach the cap sooner than people expect.

A wardrobe is handled differently from a sofa bed. A dismantled wardrobe bundled into one lot counts as one item, which is a more generous rule than the sofa bed example.

So the counting is not about size alone. It is about how the piece breaks down and whether the parts are bundled together as a single lot.

In a Chelsea townhouse the heavy items usually live in a lower ground floor, a basement, or an upper-floor mansion flat with a narrow stairwell. Weight plus stairs plus a tight turn is exactly the combination that turns a simple lift into a three-man job.

Our crew measures the route before lifting, protects steps and doorframes, and tells you in advance if an item cannot come out the way it went in.