The Claremont Rain Plan for a Moving Day

Southern California moves are usually planned as though weather is not a variable. Most of the time that is fine. Then a storm system lands on the one day the truck is booked, and a household discovers that cardboard is a fabric, not a material.

A rain plan is cheap. It is a tarp, a roll of plastic sheeting, some old towels, and twenty minutes of thinking. The households that suffer in the rain are not the unlucky ones. They are the ones who had no plan because it usually does not rain.

This guide sits under the broader Claremont moving guide.

Decide the go or no-go rule in advance

Before the day, agree with yourself and with the mover what conditions would cause a postponement, and what that would cost. Ask the mover directly during booking: what is your policy if it rains, and what is the fee to move the date?

Most moves proceed in rain, because a crew works in weather and a postponement cascades into closings, leases, and other people's schedules. But you want that to be a decision you made, with a known cost, rather than a thing that happened to you at seven in the morning.

If a move can slip, the mechanics of slipping it are covered in the guide to when a Claremont move slips a day.

Cardboard is the weak point

A wet box does not fail immediately. It fails twenty minutes later, when somebody picks it up by a bottom that has quietly turned to paste, usually on a stair.

So the priority is keeping boxes dry rather than keeping people dry.

PLASTIC BINS FOR THE VULNERABLE. Anything that would be genuinely damaged by water — documents, photographs, electronics, textiles, books — moves better in sealed plastic than in cardboard on a wet day. If you own bins, this is what they are for.

LINE THE CARDBOARD. A garbage bag inside a box, or a bag over the top of a full box, buys enough protection for a short dash. It is crude and it works.

DO NOT STAGE OUTSIDE. On a dry day, staging boxes near the door saves the crew's clock. On a wet day, staging them where rain can reach them undoes the whole point. Stage inside, just behind the threshold.

Protect the floors, both ends

Rain damage inside a house is mostly floor damage, and it is caused by traffic rather than by water falling. Twenty trips in wet boots across a hardwood floor or a light carpet will show.

Lay a protected path from door to truck at both addresses: adhesive floor film, drop cloths, flattened cardboard, or rented runner. Cover the threshold and the first three feet inside the door most heavily, because that is where the water is carried in.

Older Claremont homes frequently have original hardwood, and it is one of the features people buy the house for. Protecting it for a day is a much smaller job than refinishing it.

Have a stack of old towels at each door and somebody whose job is to mop the entry between loads. If the new home has just been cleaned ahead of a sale or a lease, that matters twice over, and the arrival checklist in the guide to the first 72 hours in a new Claremont home assumes floors you have not already ruined.

Cover the gap between door and truck

The exposed stretch is usually short. A tarp or a pop-up canopy over the carry path, or simply parking as close to the door as the street allows, removes most of the exposure.

In Claremont, how close the truck can get is often not your choice. Narrow older streets, limited clearance under a mature canopy, and driveways sized for smaller vehicles all lengthen the carry, and a long carry in rain is where wet boxes come from. Walking the approach in advance is worth more in bad weather than in good, and anything requiring street space is the city's to approve, as set out in the guide to street parking and permits.

Load order changes in the wet

Upholstered furniture, mattresses, and anything absorbent should be wrapped in plastic rather than only in moving blankets, because a blanket in the rain becomes a wet blanket pressed against your sofa for the length of the drive.

Load the most water-sensitive items in the middle of the truck rather than at the tail, and keep the door closed between trips rather than open for convenience. An open trailer in rain collects water at the threshold and the last few feet of floor get soaked.

Electronics deserve a specific rule: they travel in the car, not the truck, on a wet day if there is room. So does anything paper you cannot replace.

People and safety

Wet ramps, wet stairs, and wet tile are the actual hazard of the day. Slow the pace deliberately and say so out loud, because a crew paid by the hour will otherwise keep the pace it always keeps.

Dry towels, a change of clothes, and hot drinks are not a luxury on a wet move. Neither is a decent light: a storm afternoon in a house with the power switched over is darker than you expect.

Unpack differently after a wet move

Open and inspect anything that felt damp on arrival rather than stacking it in a garage to deal with later. Cardboard that got wet and then dried will still be weak, and damp textiles left boxed will not improve.

Take photographs of anything that arrives water-marked, immediately and before you move it, in case a claim follows. What a claim requires is set out in the guide to filing a damage claim after a Claremont move.

The short version

Agree a go or no-go rule and its cost in advance. Keep cardboard dry, protect floors at both ends, cover the carry, wrap absorbent items in plastic, put irreplaceable paper and electronics in your own car, slow the pace, and inspect on arrival rather than later. Start from the moving hub for the full sequence.

Anthony Grynchal has been licensed in California since November 2009. This is general information; postponement policies and weather terms are set by individual moving companies and should be confirmed with yours before booking.