Why Transporting a Stove on Its Sides Is Safer
According to Statista, about 3.46 million kitchen stoves (surface cooking units, gas ranges, and ovens) were shipped in 2016 across the United States alone. Clearly, this appliance is an essential part of most modern kitchens.
Whether you use an electric or gas stove, safety is always the watchword. When it is in use, you want to be sure your stove doesn’t cause any havoc in your kitchen. When it becomes necessary to move it, you also don’t want it to scratch your beautiful floors, or fall on your legs – these things are incredibly heavy.
Additionally, because most stoves are expensive, you want to protect your investment by making sure it is secure during transportation.
Although safety is vital, your stove won’t become damaged beyond repairs simply because you transported it on its back. Home cooking has been identified as one of the top five major causes of house fires, but these fires are not likely caused by stoves that were broken in transit. Instead, it has more to do with negligence.
However, carrying your stove on its back increases the likelihood of a malfunction. If you want to transport your stove on its back, you must remove a few parts. Grates, internal racks, oven doors, coils, broiler pans, burner covers, valve knobs, and others are a few of these. It can be challenging to reinstall some of these removable parts (like valve knobs), and you run the risk of doing damage.
If you have a modern stove, it is probably equipped with a hot surface ignitor (HSI). The HSI and a few other parts of a stove are fragile and can break easily if the stove lies on its back, especially if there are lots of jarring and banging during transportation.
On the other hand, moving the stove on its side can preserve the majority of its parts. All you need to do is use tape to secure the oven doors and a few other parts, and you are ready to go.
Potential Problems (and How to Minimize the Risks)
Transporting your gas stove on its side is risky even though it is the advised method.
The biggest risk would be scratching the panels. Laying down a blanket, towel, or rubber mat underneath the stove will quickly fix this.
If you are careless about what you set the stove down on, the panels may also become dented or bent. Make sure the surface you are laying it on is level and that it is laid out flat. In pick-up trucks, the bed is often grooved or ridged. This shouldn’t be a big deal, but the blanket or towel will definitely come in handy.
Even slightly open oven doors put an unbalanced weight on the door hinges, which could lead to damage. Make sure the door is closed and locked before you leave for your trip.
Hello, We were wondering if a nice stove/oven (range) up for sale on Craigslist could be transported lying on its back or side. I know that refrigerators can have problems when laying on their backs (compressor, oil lines breaking), but for ranges is there any danger to the electronics being jarred or other possible breakage problems that could occur. This is a Maytag double oven range, which has burner coils on top (not a glass surface) and is the typical design. Sadly, we don’t have a pick-up truck where it could stand upright during transport—we only have a van. In the van, it would have to lie on its side or back. Thanks for any insights and replies. Related Stories.