You benchmark your drives, you know your rig’s thermals, and you’d never ship a build without an anti-static bag. So why do most people budget a house move by guessing the van and ignoring the hardware? Here’s the itemised version, with the lines that matter when half your net worth is on a desk.
Line 1: the transport, and what the quote leaves out
The removals quote is the big number, and it varies enormously with property size, distance and whether packing is included. According to Which?, costs climb steeply as the home gets larger and climb again with professional packing, and city moves can run higher still. Treat the quote as the opening line, not the total, and confirm what’s inside it: VAT, parking, congestion charges, and any surcharge for awkward access. A home office adds a specific question: does the quote assume you’ve packed the tech yourself, or that they will?
Line 2: backups, before anything else moves
This line costs almost nothing and is the one people skip. Before a single cable is unplugged, image the system drive, verify the backup actually restores, and copy anything irreplaceable to a second location that isn’t travelling in the same van. A NAS or external array should be powered down cleanly, drives labelled by bay, and ideally transported separately from the chassis. If a drive is going to fail, the trip in the back of a vehicle is when it will choose to do it. Budget an evening, not a pound, and it’s the best-value line on the sheet.
Line 3: packing the rig properly
A desktop is not a box of books. Remove the GPU if it’s heavy and transport it in its original box or anti-static padding; a long card hanging off a PCIe slot in a van is a snapped slot waiting to happen. Secure or remove large air coolers. Fill empty case space with soft padding so nothing shifts. Monitors travel face-to-face with a sheet between them, screens padded, in boxes if you still have them. Keyboards, mice, audio interfaces and the drawer of cables get their own labelled box so you can rebuild the desk in an hour rather than a weekend.
Budget for materials: anti-static bags, bubble wrap, a monitor box or two, and proper tape. It’s a small line, but skipping it is how a £400 panel arrives with a cracked corner.
Line 4: insurance, and the exclusion that catches tech owners
Here’s the line that genuinely changes the number. A removals company’s goods-in-transit insurance typically covers items the company packed itself and excludes boxes you packed, because they can’t verify how well you did it. For a desk of hardware worth thousands, that’s a meaningful gap. The choice is to let the professionals pack the expensive items so they’re covered, or to pack them yourself and arrange separate cover. Either way, itemise the high-value kit with serial numbers and photos before the move, because a claim without evidence is a conversation, not a payout.
Line 5: the gap between homes
If there’s any chance your move-out and move-in dates don’t line up, the rig needs somewhere safe and dry to wait. Electronics in a damp garage for a fortnight is a worse outcome than a few days of proper storage. Price it as a possibility, not a surprise.
Line 6: the setup tail
New broadband is the line home workers feel most. Get it ordered before the move so you’re not tethering for a fortnight. Add a surge-protected extension lead for the new room, a cable run if the router lands somewhere unhelpful, and the small hardware that always goes missing: monitor arms, the right DisplayPort cable, the stand screws you swore you kept.
Putting the sheet together
The honest budget for a home office move has six lines, and only one of them is the van. A good online tool for house removal costs will prompt you for the rest, from packing and access charges to storage and setup, which is exactly why using one beats anchoring on the removals quote: it turns “the move cost more than I thought” into a figure you planned for. Run it the way you’d run a benchmark. Measure everything, trust nothing you haven’t tested, and don’t let the headline number hide the lines that actually hurt.