Packing fragile items: glassware, televisions and mirrors

Most breakage is predictable

Damage claims concentrate on a small number of items: televisions, glass tabletops, mirrors, crockery, and anything with a projecting arm or a hinge.

All five fail in the same two ways — point pressure on an unsupported surface, and vibration over hours of road.

Good packing addresses both. Here is what that looks like, so you can tell whether it is happening in your living room.

Televisions

• The original box if you kept it. Nothing else is as good.
• Otherwise: a foam sheet directly against the screen, corner protectors, then a wooden crate or a double-walled carton cut to size.
• Transported upright and secured. A flat-packed television with anything stacked on it will fail.
• Bubble wrap alone against a screen is not adequate — it transmits point pressure.

Mirrors and glass tabletops

• Masking tape in an X across the face. It does not prevent breakage; it holds shards together if it happens.
• Foam or cardboard on both faces, corner protectors, then a wooden crate for anything over about a metre.
• Always transported on edge, never flat. Flat glass over a pothole is glass under a bending load.

Crockery and glassware

• Double-walled cartons, not the carton the mover brought the tape in.
• Plates on edge, like records, never stacked flat. Stacked plates transmit the entire load through the bottom one.
• Each piece wrapped individually; paper or foam between layers.
• Fill every void. A carton with room to move is a carton whose contents move.
• Under 15 kg per carton. Heavy cartons get dropped.

Refrigerators and washing machines

• Defrost and dry the refrigerator 24 hours ahead. Trapped moisture becomes mould over a three-day transit.
• Refrigerators travel upright. On their side, compressor oil enters the cooling lines. If one has to be laid down, it must stand for several hours before being switched on.
• Front-load washing machines need their transit bolts. Without them, the drum's suspension can be destroyed by ordinary road vibration — and it is an exclusion on most policies because it leaves no external damage.

What to pack yourself

Jewellery, cash, documents, laptops, medicines, keys. Not because your movers are dishonest, but because these are the items whose loss is unrecoverable and which are excluded from every policy. Carry them in the car with you.

Note that self-packed cartons are generally excluded from damage cover, since nobody else saw what went in or how. That is a reasonable rule, and worth knowing before you pack your own crockery to save a few hundred rupees.