Tag: renovation storage

Why We Dont Lock You In The Case For Fair Self Storage Terms

Posted on by Simon Fothergill

Been caught out by someone else’s small print before?

Most people who go looking for storage terms have already been caught out by something else. A tenancy that ran long. A gym that kept billing after the cancellation. A phone contract with a clause they missed. By the time they type “self storage notice period” into a search engine, they are not curious. They are wary.

That is a reasonable place to be. And it is the reason this article exists. These are Wigwam’s actual terms, explained in plain English, from the customer’s side.

There is nothing in here designed to catch you out. There never was.

The four things people worry about before they book storage

Before you sign anything, four questions usually come up. Here are Wigwam’s answers to all four.

Am I locked into a long contract?

No. There is a two-week minimum stay, and after that the agreement rolls on for as long as you need it. There is no fixed long term, no annual commitment, and no penalty for leaving once you have given proper notice. If your house move completes quickly or your clearance takes less time than you planned, you are not paying for weeks you never used.

Will I lose money if I leave before the end of a billing period?

No. Unused days are refunded. This is worth pausing on, because it is not universal in the industry. Some providers bill in advance and keep the remainder if you leave early. At Wigwam, if you have paid ahead and you vacate before the period is up, you get the unused days back. The financial risk of a move that goes faster than expected sits with us, not with you.

Is there a hidden minimum stay?

Two weeks. That is the whole minimum. It is stated plainly before you commit, not tucked into a footnote. After those two weeks, you stay for as long or as short as you need. The refund of unused days applies from the first period onward. There is no further lock-in.

Can someone else get into my unit?

Your unit has its own individual alarm, and access is yours to manage. Wigwam’s sites are unmanned, which means nobody is roaming the corridors with a master key. You come in during access hours, you go to your unit, and you leave. Some providers’ terms include language about the right to enter a unit or break a lock. Wigwam’s terms are built around the opposite principle: your goods are in a secure, individually alarmed space that you control.

How the deposit works, and how it comes back to you

There is a deposit. Here is exactly what happens to it.

What the deposit covers

The deposit is refundable. It is there to cover the agreement, not to create a trap. Once you have given your 14-day notice, vacated the unit and settled the account, the deposit is returned. Nothing in those three steps is hidden or unreasonable: give notice, empty and clean the unit, make sure there is nothing outstanding on the account.

You can read the precise wording in Wigwam’s full terms and conditions. That page is the authoritative version. What we are doing here is explaining the shape of it in ordinary language.

Leaving cleanly and getting your deposit back

When the time comes to leave, the process is straightforward:

  • Give 14 days’ notice
  • Remove everything from the unit
  • Take your padlock off
  • Make sure your account is settled, with nothing outstanding

Do those four things in the right order and the deposit comes back to you. That is what a fair exit looks like.

Ready to see a clear quote with the terms in writing?
Start at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk

The 14-day notice period, explained plainly

We ask for 14 days’ notice. Here is what that means in practice.

How to give notice

Notice is a formal step, not a phone call. The full process is set out in the agreement, and the terms page is the right place to read exactly how it works. We are not going to paraphrase a legal mechanism here in a way that could mislead. Read the agreement. If something is unclear, ask us directly.

What we can tell you plainly: 14 days is the figure. It applies to everyone, on every unit, at every one of our UK market-town locations. No exceptions based on unit size, no extended notice for longer-stay customers.

What happens to your billing when you give notice

Once notice is given, the clock runs. If you have paid ahead and you vacate before the 14 days are up, the unused portion comes back to you. If you want to understand the billing cycle in detail before you commit, the pricing page covers how costs work. No prices appear on this page. The quote tool will give you the real figure for your unit, your location and your dates.

The two-week minimum stay

Every storage booking at Wigwam starts with a two-week minimum. That is the whole minimum.

Two weeks is in line with what serious operators across the industry charge as a floor. It is not designed to trap you. It is long enough to make the logistics work on both sides, and short enough to be genuinely flexible for a house move or a clearance that takes less time than you expected.

After that first two weeks, the agreement rolls on and you stay for as long as you need. There is no secondary lock-in, no escalating commitment, no penalty for going. If you are storing for a long renovation project and you end up needing the unit for six months, it rolls with you. If the move completes in three weeks, you give notice and leave. The refund of unused days means you are never paying for time you are not using.

This is what flexible actually means. Not a sales word. A practical fact.

How our terms compare, in plain English

It helps to know what is normal in UK self storage, so you can see where Wigwam sits.

What “rolling” and “flexible” mean in practice

The AI Overview on this query cites Big Yellow and Safestore as requiring 14 days’ written notice, and Access Self Storage as asking for seven to 14 days on standard units. Wigwam’s 14-day notice puts us in line with the better operators. The notice period itself is not the differentiator.

What is different is what happens around it. Some providers bill on a rolling monthly cycle and keep the remainder if you leave early. Some list the right to enter your unit as a standard term. Wigwam does not run billing that way, and Wigwam does not build entry rights into the customer-facing position. The terms are designed around your exit being clean, predictable and fair.

The phrase “flexible contract” appears on most providers’ websites. At Wigwam, the flexibility is measurable: you get unused days back, your deposit returns on a proper exit, and a two-week minimum is all that stands between you and leaving when you need to.

What cooling off and changing your mind look like

If you book and then your move collapses or your plans change, the minimum two-week stay applies. The honest thing to say is that there is a floor, and that floor is two weeks. The refund of unused days softens that: if you vacate inside the minimum period and have paid ahead, you get the remaining days back. The full terms at wigwamstorage.co.uk/terms-conditions/ cover the precise mechanism. Do not rely on this page for contractual decisions. Read the agreement.

What is actually in a Wigwam storage agreement

A Wigwam agreement covers the practical things. Here is what is in it and what is not.

What is in it:

  • A two-week minimum stay, stated plainly before you sign
  • A 14-day notice period to end the agreement
  • A refundable deposit, returned after proper notice, vacating and account settlement
  • A refund of unused days if you leave mid-period
  • Access hours of 6am to 10pm by smart entry, seven days a week
  • An individual alarm on your unit
  • Household goods only (and business goods); the agreement does not cover vehicle or leisure storage

What is not in it:

  • A long fixed term
  • A rolling annual commitment
  • Hidden escalators or penalty clauses for leaving

The full terms and conditions are the authoritative document. Read them. They are not long and they are not written to confuse.

A note on legal questions. If you have a question about how a storage agreement interacts with your lease, your probate process, a business liability, or any other legal matter, Wigwam is not the right place to ask. A solicitor is. This applies particularly if you are storing in Scotland or Northern Ireland, where some contract and property rules differ from England and Wales. The Wigwam agreement is written under English law, and this article does not address other jurisdictions.

Access, hours and what to expect on site

Before you start storing, here is what access to your unit looks like day to day.

Smart entry, 6am to 10pm, seven days

Access is by smart entry, from 6am to 10pm, seven days a week. You do not need to call ahead or arrange a time. You arrive during those hours, use the smart entry system, and go straight to your unit. Sunday morning before most people are awake, that works. A late run after work on a Friday, that works too.

The hours are fixed at 6am to 10pm. This is not 24-hour access, and we would rather you knew that up front than found out when it mattered.

Unmanned sites and deliveries

Wigwam’s sites are unmanned. There is no on-site team waiting for you when you arrive. You access your own goods. The system works because everything is secure and individually alarmed, and you are in charge of your own unit.

One thing to know before your removal firm or a courier turns up: Wigwam does not sign for deliveries and does not receive goods on your behalf. If a courier or removal team is dropping something off at your unit, someone from your side needs to be there to accept it. This is not a limitation we apologise for. It is the honest shape of how the site works, and knowing it now means there are no surprises on moving day.

Honest about what we do not offer

Wigwam’s storage is for household goods and business goods. The honest claim for every unit is clean, dry and secure.

There is no climate control at Wigwam sites. If you need temperature or humidity management for specialist items, a different facility would serve you better, and we would rather tell you that now.

There is no vehicle, caravan, motorhome or boat storage. Our units are for goods, not leisure or transport equipment. If you are looking for vehicle storage, Wigwam is not the right fit.

We say this because honesty about what you do not offer is itself a trust signal. A firm that is clear about its limits is easier to trust on the things it does promise.

Find a location and get a clear quote

If the terms make sense to you and you are ready to see what a unit costs, here is where to go next.

Wigwam operates across our UK market-town locations. Two examples: Wigwam Self Storage Bath covers the Somerset area, and Wigwam Self Storage Lincoln covers Lincolnshire. For the full list, the locations hub is the right starting point.

A note on contents cover. Storage at Wigwam requires contents cover. You can take Wigwam’s own policy or prove your own policy covers goods in a third-party storage facility. Either way, declare the full replacement value of what you are storing. Under-insurance is settled in proportion, which means if you declare half the value, a claim pays out at half the rate. The contents protection page has the detail. We signpost it here, but this article does not give insurance advice. For any questions about whether your existing policy covers storage goods, speak to your insurer.

When you are ready, get a clear quote with the terms in writing at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if I fall behind on a payment?

The first thing to know is that falling behind does not mean someone walks into your unit. The practical answer is that you should talk to the support team early, because the situation is far easier to sort before a balance builds up than after. The terms set out what happens with arrears, and the full terms and conditions are the authoritative document on the precise consequences, so read them rather than relying on a paraphrase here.

In plain terms, the account needs to be settled for a clean exit: the deposit is returned only once you have given notice, vacated, and cleared any outstanding balance. So if money is owed, that is what the deposit and the exit process are measured against. A missed payment is a balance to resolve, not an instant loss of your goods, and the sensible move is to contact the team and agree how to bring the account back in order.

What the support team can help with is the storage account itself: invoicing, what is owed, and how to settle it. What they cannot do is give you financial advice or restructure your wider finances, because that sits outside storage. If you are in genuine difficulty, free debt advice services exist and are the right place for that. For your account specifically, contact the team, and read the terms for the exact wording on arrears.

Can Wigwam ever enter my unit or dispose of my goods?

Day to day, no. The sites are unmanned, nobody roams with a master key, and your unit has its own individual alarm that is yours to control. The customer-facing position is built around the opposite of an open entry right: your goods sit in a secure, individually alarmed space that you manage through smart entry. That is the normal state of things and it is the principle the whole agreement is written around.

There are limited circumstances any storage agreement has to address, such as an emergency, a legal requirement, or a long-unpaid abandoned unit, and those are governed by the precise wording of the contract rather than by anything we would summarise loosely here. This is exactly the kind of clause where you should read the full terms and conditions rather than trust a plain-English gloss, because the detail matters. We are not going to paraphrase a legal mechanism in a way that could mislead.

If you have a question about how those provisions interact with your own situation, a probate, a business liability, or a dispute, that is a question for a solicitor, not for us. This applies particularly in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where some contract and property rules differ from England and Wales, and the Wigwam agreement is written under English law. For the everyday reality, though, the answer is simple: your unit is yours, it is alarmed, and no one is entering it in the normal course of things.

Do I have a cooling-off period if I change my mind after booking?

The honest answer is that the contractual floor is the two-week minimum stay, and the refund of unused days is what softens a change of mind, rather than a separate cooling-off window we set out on this page. If you book and your plans then collapse, the minimum two weeks applies, but if you vacate inside that period having paid ahead, you get the remaining days back. So the financial sting of a cancelled move is limited, even though the minimum is real.

Whether any statutory cancellation right applies to your booking depends on how and where you signed up, and that is a matter of consumer law rather than something we would rule on here. We are not legal advisers, and we will not tell you what your statutory rights are, because getting that wrong would not serve you. The full terms and conditions are the authoritative document, and for a definitive view on any cancellation right, a solicitor or a consumer-advice service is the right place to ask.

What we can say plainly is the shape of it: a two-week minimum, a 14-day notice period, unused days refunded, and a deposit returned on a proper exit. Those four together mean changing your mind is rarely as costly as people fear. Do not rely on this page for a contractual decision; read the agreement, and if something is unclear, ask us directly before you commit.

Can I extend my stay after I have already given notice?

Yes, in practice this is usually straightforward, but you need to tell the support team rather than simply staying put, because once notice is given the clock is running toward your exit. People often give notice expecting a move to complete, then find the timeline slips. The sensible step is to contact the team as soon as you know, so the account can be kept open rather than closed out at the end of the notice period.

The terms are built to be flexible in both directions. There is no long lock-in, so extending is not a matter of signing a fresh long contract; the agreement simply rolls on as it did before, for as long as you need it. The two-week minimum has already been met by that stage, so there is no fresh floor to clear. Practically, withdrawing or pausing a notice is an account change, and the team handles account changes during office hours.

What you should not do is assume an extension happens automatically. Notice is a formal step set out in the agreement, and so is keeping the unit beyond it, so confirm it with the team rather than leaving it to chance. The exact mechanism is in the terms and conditions. If your situation is uncertain and you are not sure whether to give notice at all yet, it is often easier to hold off and give it once your dates are firm, given the notice is only 14 days.

Will I lose part of my deposit if the unit needs cleaning or has minor marks?

The deposit is refundable in full on a proper exit, and a proper exit means the three clear steps: give 14 days’ notice, remove everything and take your padlock off, and settle the account so nothing is outstanding. Do those, and the deposit comes back. It is there to cover the agreement, not to be whittled down over ordinary wear, and nothing in those steps is hidden or unreasonable.

Where a deduction could arise is if there is a genuine cost left behind, for example goods or rubbish not removed, or damage beyond normal use, because then there is an outstanding amount the deposit is measured against. The way to avoid any question is to leave the unit as you would want to find it: emptied, padlock off, swept out, with nothing left for someone else to deal with. That is what a clean exit looks like, and it is the same care most people would take anyway.

The precise wording on the deposit and on the condition the unit should be left in is in the full terms and conditions, which is the authoritative version; this is the plain-English shape of it. If you are ever unsure what counts as a clean exit for your unit, ask the support team before your last visit. They handle the account and the exit process directly, so a quick check beforehand removes any doubt about the deposit coming back.

Self Storage For A Kitchen Renovation Where Everything Goes For Six Weeks

Posted on by Simon Fothergill

New kitchen booked — where does the old one live for six weeks?

You confirm the start date with the kitchen fitter on a Tuesday afternoon. The excitement lasts about twenty minutes. Then you walk back into the kitchen, look at the fridge, the dresser full of your grandmother’s crockery, the dining table that seats six, the slow cooker, the stand mixer, the contents of every cupboard, and you think: where does all of this actually go?

That is the moment this article is for. Not the choosing of tiles, not the worktop decision. The practical question nobody warns you about: where does it all live while your kitchen is a building site, and how do you arrange it without spending a fortune or losing your mind?

The answer is usually a self storage unit. This is how to make it work.

Why a Kitchen Renovation Needs More Than a Spare Room

Most renovating homeowners start with the same instinct: shove it in the spare room, stack it in the garage, pile it in the hall. Three problems arrive quickly.

The spare room fills up faster than you expect. A fridge, a dishwasher, a stand mixer, four dining chairs and a folded-down table take up more floor space than you think when they are all in a ten-by-ten bedroom. The garage is often damp, which means your dry crockery becomes clammy crockery, and your furniture absorbs the kind of moisture that warps joints and lifts veneer. The hall becomes a safety hazard the day the plasterer arrives with a wheelbarrow.

The Dust and Damage Problem Builders Actually Create

What a kitchen rip-out does to the air in your house is something most people underestimate until the plaster dust settles on everything in a three-room radius. Paint, plaster, sawdust and brick dust travel through gaps you didn’t know existed. They land on fabric, on crockery that wasn’t wrapped, on the felt padding on the underside of furniture legs, on the veneer of a sideboard you have been careful with for twenty years.

Moving your kitchen contents into a clean, dry, secure unit before the first skip arrives means none of that reaches them. The unit is not a dust-proof vacuum, but it is an enclosed space with no builders in it, and that matters.

Why Fitters Need the Room Completely Clear

There is a practical reason your kitchen fitter will thank you for it too. A room that is fully cleared from day one lets tradespeople work without stepping around stacked chairs and shuffling the bread bin from counter to counter. When they are not choreographing around your belongings, they work faster. When they work faster, the job runs to time. When the job runs to time, the bill does not creep.

A half-cleared kitchen is genuinely one of the things that stretches a six-week job into an eight-week one. Giving them the whole room on day one is one of the better project-management decisions you can make.

A Unit, Not a Pod on the Drive

It is worth saying what a Wigwam unit actually is, because there is a lot of confusion in this space. We are not a container dropped on your driveway. We are not a portable storage pod that sits outside your front door while the builders step around it. Our units are indoor, purpose-built spaces in a secure facility that you drive to. Clean, dry, and individually alarmed.

That distinction matters. An on-site container sits in the English weather for six weeks and accumulates whatever the weather brings. An indoor unit does not.

The Six-Week Timeline (and What to Do When It Slips)

Here is the part nobody writes down for you. Most kitchen renovation guides skip from “choose your units” to “enjoy your new kitchen” without mentioning the six or eight weeks in between. Let us put it on the envelope.

What a Typical Kitchen Job Looks Like, Week by Week

This is the honest version of what happens once the fitter starts:

Week one: Rip-out. The old units come out, the old worktops come off, the first fix plumbing and electrics begin. The room is a shell. Your stuff needs to already be elsewhere.

Weeks two and three: First fix continues. Plaster goes on where walls have been disturbed. This is the slow part. Plaster needs to dry properly before you can tile or paint. Depending on the weather and the ventilation, this takes longer than the quote says.

Weeks three and four: Tiling, painting, and the new units going in. This is where delays pile up: wrong tile delivery, a unit that arrives damaged, a worktop template that has to be remade.

Week five: Worktops measured, templated, and fitted. For stone or composite, the template to installation gap is usually seven to ten working days. This is where a five-week job reliably becomes a six-week job.

Week six (sometimes week eight): Second fix electrics and plumbing, appliances reconnected, snagging. Snagging rarely takes a day. It takes a week.

That is six to eight weeks, routinely. Not a pessimistic estimate. A realistic one.

The Two-Week Minimum and Why It Fits the Kitchen Calendar

Wigwam has a two-week minimum stay. If you have just done the arithmetic above, you will notice something: six weeks is exactly three two-week minimums. The minimum stay was not designed to penalise a short job. For a kitchen renovation, it is simply the natural unit of time. One minimum for the rip-out and plaster. One for the units and worktops. One for the second fix and snag.

Our advice is to book the unit a few days before the skip arrives, and book it out a week past the fitter’s “finished” estimate. That week of cushion is not pessimism. It is the week you will need for the snagging, the re-plumb, the worktop that needs a slight adjustment, and the afternoon you realise the extractor still has not been connected.

When the Builders Run Late

They will, sometimes. Not always, but often enough that building it into the plan is sense, not worry. The good news is that Wigwam’s terms are built for this. If the job runs long, you simply continue in the unit. If the job finishes early and you vacate before your booked period is up, unused days are refunded.

That means the financially sensible move is to book a generous amount of time rather than a tight one. You will not be punished for finishing early. You give 14 days notice, vacate once the account is settled, and any unused days come back to you. The details are in our full terms and conditions.

What to Put into Storage, and How to Pack It

The right way to approach this is in two piles: what goes into the unit, and what stays at home in your survival kit. Start with the survival kit, because it is smaller.

Appliances: Fridge, Dishwasher and the White Goods

The fridge is the one that catches people out. A fridge that goes into storage still running, or that goes in while it is still wet inside after defrosting, is a fridge that comes out smelling of mould. Defrost it completely, dry the interior thoroughly, tape the doors shut so they stay slightly ajar (this prevents the seal from moulding), and then store it upright.

The same principle applies to the dishwasher: drain it, dry it, leave the door slightly open if you can arrange it. For a range cooker, give the interior a proper clean and make sure the gas connection is handled by a registered engineer before disconnection.

One thing to say plainly: our units are clean and dry, but they are not climate-controlled. There is no temperature or humidity regulation. This is exactly right for defrosted, dry appliances and properly dried crockery. It is not a fix for already-damp equipment. The unit is “clean, dry and secure.” Bring it in dry, and it will stay that way.

Crockery, Glassware and the Dining Furniture

Wrap glass and crockery in plain white packing paper, not newspaper. The ink from newspaper transfers onto glazed surfaces and is a nuisance to remove from fine china. Box by room and by category: all the glasses in one box, labelled clearly at the side as well as the top (because you will stack boxes and only the side label will be readable).

For the dining table, disassemble where possible. Legs off, tabletop wrapped in moving blankets or furniture pads. Stack the chairs rather than leaving them free-standing, and put the heaviest items on the floor with lighter boxes on top. Use the vertical space in the unit; that is what it is there for.

What Stays at Home: The Survival Kit

Set aside one box before you pack anything else. It does not go into storage. It goes into a corner of the bedroom or the living room, and it keeps daily life running for six weeks.

In it: a kettle, a microwave, a handful of plates, mugs and cutlery, a slow cooker (your most useful appliance for the duration), a can opener, and a couple of good sharp knives. A portable induction hob if you have one. A small chopping board. A cafetiere or travel mug if coffee is non-negotiable in the mornings, which it probably is.

Six weeks without a kitchen is liveable. People do it while camping. The survival kit just needs to be assembled thoughtfully before you pack the rest.

What Size Unit Do You Need for One Kitchen?

The honest answer is: a kitchen plus the dining furniture usually fills a small-to-mid room-sized unit. Think somewhere between a large walk-in wardrobe and a small single bedroom.

Rough Guide to Sizing a Kitchen Renovation Unit

A compact modern kitchen with standard appliances and a four-seater dining set will generally fit in a unit at the smaller end of the range. A Victorian kitchen with a larder fridge, a range cooker, a six-seater extending table, a dresser, and twenty years of accumulated crockery and cookware is a different calculation.

The best approach is to walk through the kitchen and make a list of the largest items: the fridge-freezer, the oven or range, the dining table (dimensions, not just “dining table”), and the number of chairs. Everything else, boxed, is almost always less than you expect. It is the big items that drive the size decision.

What Changes the Size Calculation

A few things to flag. An American-style fridge-freezer is significantly larger than a standard one, and it cannot be laid on its side. A range cooker occupies more floor space than it looks. If you have a larder cupboard full of tinned goods, that is another set of boxes. Garden furniture that was already living in the kitchen during winter does not need to go into storage unless you are putting it back; consider whether the garden shed has room.

When you are not sure, the right move is to size up rather than down. If you leave early, unused days are refunded. If you try to cram too much into a small unit and damage something in the squeeze, that is not refundable.

Get a quote for your kitchen renovation dates at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk. Tell us the rough list of what you are storing and your renovation start date, and we will size a unit with you.

What It Costs, and How the Deposit and Refund Work

The cost of a storage unit for a kitchen renovation is not a fixed number. It depends on where you are, what size you need, and how long you take. We do not quote prices on this page because the honest figure comes from your specific situation.

How Pricing Works

You can see how our pricing is structured at our pricing page. The quote tool gives you a personalised figure based on your size, location, and dates. That is the number to work from for your renovation budget.

The Refundable Deposit and 14-Day Notice

There is a deposit. We say this plainly because some storage providers obscure it, and obscuring it helps no one. The deposit is refundable. You pay it at the start; it comes back to you at the end, once you have given 14 days notice, vacated the unit, and the account is settled with nothing outstanding. Nothing complicated about it.

What this means for your renovation planning: when you decide the kitchen is done and you want to bring everything back, give the 14-day notice at the same time. That gives you a fortnight to transport things back in manageable runs rather than a single frantic moving day. By the time the notice period expires, the last boxes are home and the unit is empty.

Full details are in our terms and conditions.

Refund of Unused Days

If the kitchen finishes early, you are not trapped paying for time you do not need. Unused days are refunded when you leave early, after giving the 14-day notice. This makes the sensible strategy a generous booking rather than a tight one. Book enough time to cover the realistic worst case. If it goes smoothly, you get the days back.

Getting to Your Unit While the Renovation Is On

Six weeks is a long time. You will forget something. Everyone does. That casserole dish you use every Sunday. The tin opener that went into a box that got labelled “misc kitchen.” The extra set of keys that somehow ended up in the junk drawer, which is now in storage.

Smart Entry, 6am to 10pm, Seven Days

Our sites use smart entry, which means you can get in from 6am to 10pm, seven days a week. Not 24-hour access, and we say that plainly because accuracy matters. But 6am means before work if you want to collect something on the way, and 10pm means after a full renovation day if you need to drop off a box that could not go on the first run.

For a six-week renovation, this window is genuinely useful. Pop in on a Sunday morning to retrieve the pasta bowls. Go in on a Wednesday evening to pick up the slow cooker because you have decided the microwave alone is not enough.

Individually Alarmed Units and What Secure Means for a Kitchen

Each unit is individually alarmed. The facility is secure. The units themselves are clean and dry.

Clean and dry is what matters for kitchen goods. Dry crockery and properly defrosted appliances will come out in exactly the condition they went in. The units are not a climate-controlled environment, and we do not claim they are. What they are is enclosed, dry and alarmed, which is the right environment for everything a kitchen normally contains.

Sites Are Unmanned: What This Means for Deliveries

Our sites are unmanned. There is no on-site team to receive things on your behalf. If you are using a removals company to bring your kitchen contents to the unit, someone from your household needs to be there to meet them and let them in. We cannot sign for deliveries, and we cannot receive goods on your behalf.

This is worth knowing before you book a removals firm. The slot you book with the removals company needs to be a slot where you, or someone you trust, can be present at the facility.

Finding a Unit Near Your Market-Town Home

The value of a local unit over a national warehouse on the edge of a city is the same as the value of a local tradesperson over a firm that drives an hour each way. You are not making a round trip of thirty miles every time you need the bread knife.

Why Market-Town Locations Suit the Renovation Customer

Wigwam’s UK market-town locations are positioned to be a short drive from the homes they serve. During a renovation, when you are already managing fitters, deliveries, decisions about grout colours and late-afternoon visits from the plumber, adding a forty-minute drive each way to retrieve something you forgot is not a reasonable ask.

A unit that is ten or fifteen minutes from home means you can call in on the way back from the builders’ merchant. You can drop off the final boxes on a Tuesday evening. You can collect the stand mixer the day before the worktops go on, because you know the kitchen is nearly done.

Where to Find Your Nearest Wigwam

Wigwam Self Storage Bath in Somerset and Wigwam Self Storage Lincoln in Lincolnshire are two of our locations. For all of our UK market-town locations, the full list is at wigwamstorage.co.uk/self-storage-locations/.

Contents Protection While Your Kitchen Is in Storage

A self storage unit is not the same as home insurance cover extended to off-site belongings. It is worth checking your own policy, but most home insurance does not automatically extend to goods stored away from the home.

Why Contents Protection Matters for Kitchen Goods

Your kitchen contains things that are genuinely expensive to replace. A range cooker, a good stand mixer, a dresser full of crockery, a dining table and chairs. These are not items you want to discover are uninsured after something unexpected happens.

Opt-In Cover or Prove Your Own

Contents protection is mandatory when you store with Wigwam. You either take our policy or demonstrate that your own insurance covers goods in a storage facility. You declare the full replacement value of what you are storing. If you under-declare and a claim is needed, it is settled in proportion to the declared value. That is standard insurance practice, but it catches people who estimate low because it feels more comfortable.

We are not insurance advisers. We signpost, we do not advise. The details of our policy are at our contents protection page. For questions about whether your existing home insurance extends to stored goods, talk to your insurer or broker directly.

The sketch on the back of the envelope ends here. A confirmed start date, a list of what goes, a unit booked with a week’s cushion at each end, and a survival kit assembled before the skip arrives. Storage becomes the settled part of a complicated project, and the kitchen that comes back will come back in the same condition it left.

Get a quote for your kitchen renovation storage at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk. Tell us your start date and what you are storing and we will find the right size.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do I do with the freezer food while the kitchen is out of action?

Plan the freezer down before the rip-out, because food is the one thing that cannot go into a storage unit. Storage is for the appliance, not its contents, so the freezer needs to be empty, defrosted and dry before it travels, and that means dealing with what is inside first. The simplest route is to run the freezer down in the weeks before the build. Stop restocking a month out, and start working through what is in there so it is as empty as possible by the start date. For whatever is left, you have a few options:

  • Eat it down in the final fortnight by planning meals around the contents.
  • Move the essentials into a cool box or a small spare freezer in the garage or utility for the duration, if you have one.
  • Ask a neighbour, friend or relative nearby to take a drawer of your freezer space for six weeks. Most are happy to help and it is easily repaid.

What you should not do is leave food in the freezer and store it switched off, or try to keep an appliance running in a unit. Units are not powered for customer appliances, and a freezer of food left off will spoil. Once the freezer is empty, defrost it fully, dry it out, and store it with the door wedged slightly open so the seal does not mould. Your survival-kit plan and your freezer plan should be made together, a few weeks before the skip arrives, not on the morning of.

Who disconnects the gas and electric appliances, and when should that happen?

A registered engineer disconnects anything connected to gas, and competent electrical disconnection should be done properly too, ideally folded into your fitter’s schedule rather than left to the day of the move. This is a safety matter, not a corner to cut. A gas hob, a gas range or a gas oven must be disconnected by a Gas Safe registered engineer, and reconnected by one at the other end. Do not attempt to uncouple a gas appliance yourself. For electrics, a freestanding cooker on its own circuit, or hardwired appliances, should be isolated and disconnected safely, which usually means your electrician or kitchen fitter as part of first-fix. The timing matters for your storage plan. You want appliances disconnected, cleaned and dried in the day or two before your removals slot, not still plugged in when the van arrives. Build a short gap into the schedule: engineer disconnects, you clean and dry the appliance, then it goes to the unit. Coordinate the date with your fitter when you book, because a missed disconnection is exactly the kind of thing that turns a tidy move-out into a scramble. Keep any certificates or paperwork from the gas engineer, both for the disconnection and the later reconnection, in your survival-kit box rather than in a stored carton, so they are to hand when the kitchen goes back in.

Should I store integrated appliances or leave them in place?

Most integrated appliances stay where they are if the carcass around them is staying, but in a full rip-out they come out and need the same handling as freestanding ones. The answer depends on the job. If you are keeping the existing units and only changing worktops, doors or tiling, the integrated oven, hob, dishwasher and fridge often stay built in and simply get protected in place by the fitter, in which case they are not your storage problem at all. If it is a full kitchen replacement, the old integrated appliances either go to the tip, get sold or donated, or, if they are newish and going back into the new kitchen, come out and need storing like any other appliance. Treat a stored integrated appliance exactly as you would a freestanding one: disconnect it safely (gas by a registered engineer), clean and dry the interior, tape the door slightly ajar, and store it upright. The complication with integrated units is that they often arrive without their original housing or fixings, so bag and label any brackets, screws and trim that come out with them and tape that bag to the appliance. A photo on your phone of how it was fitted before removal saves a great deal of guesswork when the new kitchen goes in. If in doubt about whether an appliance is worth storing and refitting versus replacing, the fitter is the right person to advise, since the labour to refit can sometimes outweigh the value of an older unit.

What about the old units and worktops being ripped out: can those go in the unit?

No, the old kitchen carcasses, worktops and rip-out waste are not storage items, they are waste, and they need a skip or a removal plan of their own. It is a common mix-up, so worth saying plainly: a storage unit is for the things you are keeping and bringing back, not for the debris of the old kitchen. Old units, broken worktops, ripped-out tiling and packaging from the new kitchen all go to a skip, to the tip, or out with the fitter if waste removal is part of their quote. Check that point when you book the fitter, because skip hire and waste disposal are sometimes included and sometimes not, and it changes your plan either way. If any of the old kitchen is still good, an old but serviceable freestanding cooker, a dresser you are not putting back, units someone could reuse, that is worth selling or donating rather than skipping, and it can leave the house before the build rather than cluttering it during. The only things that belong in your storage unit are the keepers: the dining furniture, the crockery, the good appliances going back in, the things you have carefully boxed and labelled. Keep that distinction clean in your head when you are packing, because paying to store something destined for the tip is money straight down the drain, and unit space you could have used for the things that matter.

How do I bring everything back so the kitchen goes back together smoothly?

Bring things back in reverse order of how the kitchen comes together, and use your 14-day notice as the window to do it in calm runs rather than one frantic day. The end of a kitchen job is staged: worktops go on, then appliances reconnect, then the room is decorated and snagged. Your belongings should return on the same rhythm. There is no need to empty the unit the moment the fitter says “done,” because snagging always takes longer than expected, and a half-finished kitchen full of boxes just gets in the way. Instead, when you can see the genuine finish line, give your 14-day notice. That gives you a fortnight to move things back in manageable trips, using the 6am to 10pm access seven days a week to fit runs around work. Bring the appliances back first, once the fitter confirms the services are ready for reconnection (gas by a registered engineer again). Then the dining furniture once the floor and decorating are done. Crockery and the contents of cupboards come last, when the units are in and clean, so they go straight into their new homes rather than sitting in boxes on the new floor. This is exactly where labelling by room and category earns its keep: a box marked “glasses” on the side goes straight to the right cupboard. By the time the notice period ends, the last boxes are home, the unit is empty, and you give it back with the account settled and the deposit returned.

The Market Town Self Storage Story Serving The Places The Chains Forgot

Posted on by Simon Fothergill

Ever wonder why the storage chains built everywhere but your town?

There is a pattern to where the big storage chains build. Same as where the big supermarkets build, really. Same as where the big anything builds. They find a city ring-road, somewhere the land was cheap and the traffic already passes, and they put up a large sign. The towns a few miles inland do not feature in that calculation. They rarely do.

Whole communities get used to the drive. Forty minutes there, forty minutes back, van loaded, weather unpredictable, delivery window already missed. It is not that nobody wants storage. It is that nobody thought the town worth serving.

That is the gap Wigwam was built to fill. And this is how it happened.

The towns nobody built for

The storage industry, for all its growth, has followed the same logic as most logistics businesses: concentrate where the volume is highest and the build costs are lowest. That tends to mean city fringes, motorway junctions and distribution corridors. It does not tend to mean Warminster, Wiltshire. It does not tend to mean Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, or Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, or the dozens of other market towns where people live, work, start businesses, downsize, renovate and move home, exactly as they do anywhere else.

Where the chains cluster, and where they do not

The self-storage landscape in the UK is more developed than most people realise. There are hundreds of facilities, operated by a mix of national brands and regional independents. But their geography tells a story. Cluster them on a map and the same shapes keep appearing: orbital routes around London, the M6 and M62 corridors, the edges of Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. The market towns between those points are, in most cases, a gap.

For the person arriving in one of those towns, that gap has a real cost. Not a statistical cost. A Tuesday-morning-with-a-van cost. You search, you find the nearest chain, you discover it is thirty-five minutes away in a direction you did not want to go. You book it anyway, because there is nothing else obvious. You do the journey every time you need your things. You wonder whether there is a better answer.

What a long drive to a storage unit actually costs you

Time is the obvious one. If you are mid-move, mid-renovation, or running a local business that needs access to stock, an out-of-town unit is a job in itself. Every visit is a half-morning. Every forgotten item is a round trip. The inconvenience does not make headlines, but it is real.

Beyond time, there is the question of belonging. Part of choosing to live or trade in a market town is the sense of knowing the businesses there, of being a customer rather than an account number. A unit thirty miles away, operated by a brand that has no presence in your town, cannot offer that. It is just a shed you happen to use, managed by people who do not know where you live.

Why Simon Fothergill built Wigwam the other way round

Simon Fothergill, founder and Managing Director of Wigwam Self Storage, made a deliberate decision. Not the decision the industry defaults to, which is to build where the build costs are lowest and the volume is already there. The other decision: to build in the towns the chains drove past, and to put his name on every door.

That decision is not a marketing position. It is the business. Every site Wigwam operates is in a place that the national operators had, at that point, largely left alone. And the terms Wigwam operates under, the deposit that comes back to you, the notice period stated plainly, the hours that are what they say they are, exist because a named person decided that is how it should work.

A name on every door, in towns we know

In a market town, the name on a business door carries weight. It means someone made a choice to be there. Not a property portfolio choice or a logistics optimisation choice: a choice about which places deserved to be served. When you see a local business name rather than a national logo, you can, in principle, find the person behind it. You can look them up. You can ask questions and expect someone who knows the answer.

Wigwam Self Storage was built on that principle. Simon Fothergill’s name is not on a website footer for brand purposes. It is on the record because this is his deliberate work, and the terms and standards at every location are his responsibility.

The towns we chose, and why

The Wigwam network covers UK market towns that most national operators have passed over. Wigwam Self Storage Bath in Somerset and Wigwam Self Storage Lincoln in Lincolnshire are two of them. Beyond those, our UK market-town locations include Burton upon Trent in Staffordshire, Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, Warminster in Wiltshire, Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, Dorking in Surrey, Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, Leatherhead in Surrey, Marlow in Buckinghamshire, and others. The full list is at the locations hub.

These are not accidental choices. They are towns where people needed a storage option and there was not a good one. That is the starting point each time.

What “serving a town properly” means in practice

Choosing the town is one thing. What you build there is another. At each of our UK market-town locations the units are clean, dry and secure, individually alarmed. The access is by smart entry, with stated hours. The terms are written plainly and the same at every site. This is not the only way to run a storage business, but it is how Wigwam runs one, and the consistency matters. You should not have to wonder whether the Lincoln site works like the Bath site. It does.

What a Wigwam unit actually looks like

Before anyone commits to a unit, they want to know what they are actually getting. That is a fair question and it deserves a plain answer.

Clean, dry and secure, individually alarmed

The standard phrase we use is clean, dry and secure, individually alarmed units. Those words are chosen carefully. Each unit has its own alarm, not a shared perimeter system. The buildings are maintained to the standard that keeps stored goods in the condition they went in. Temperature and humidity control are not things we offer or claim; if a stored item requires a precisely managed climate environment, we are not the right answer for it.

What we do offer is what the phrase says: clean, dry, secure and individually alarmed. For household goods, business stock, furniture, documents, tools and the usual contents of a home or a small business, that is the standard that matters.

How access works (6am to 10pm, smart entry)

Smart entry, 6am to 10pm, seven days a week. That is the access window at our UK market-town locations.

We know that some competitors state or imply 24-hour access. We will not. We are not open at 3am and we will not tell you we are, because the moment a claim like that turns out not to be true, it costs you something real. We would rather state the hours plainly and let you plan around them. If you can work within a 6am to 10pm window, seven days, you will find it sufficient for most practical needs. If you cannot, that is worth knowing before you book.

The honesty about hours is the same honesty as the rest of the terms. If we are straight about when you can get in, you can trust what else we say.

What we do not do, and why that matters

Some things are worth stating directly rather than leaving to be discovered.

We do not offer climate-controlled storage. No temperature regulation, no humidity management. Our claim is clean, dry and secure, and that is accurate.

We do not offer vehicle storage. No cars, caravans, motorhomes, boats or similar. Our units are for household goods and business goods.

Our sites are unmanned. You access your own unit using your own smart-entry code. We do not have staff on site who can sign for parcels, receive deliveries, or handle goods on your behalf. If a courier needs to deliver to or collect from your unit, someone from your own business or household needs to be present. Wigwam does not receive or sign for anything.

These are not apologies. They are the edges of what we do, stated so you know them before you commit, not after.

See what is available in your town. Check unit sizes and availability at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk. No pressure to book; just an honest look at what is there.

Honest terms, plainly stated

The self-storage category has a convention. Competitors tend to lead with “no deposit, no reservation fee, no notice period” because it sounds like the simplest possible thing. We do not lead with that, because it is not true of us, and we would rather tell you what is true.

Your deposit comes back to you

There is a deposit. We will say that plainly. When you take a Wigwam unit, a deposit is paid at the start.

Here is the equally plain thing: it comes back to you. The deposit is refundable. When you give 14 days’ notice, vacate the unit, and settle any outstanding balance on your account, the deposit is returned. The conditions for its return are not buried in fine print designed to catch you out; they are stated in the terms and conditions and they are straightforward.

A deposit that comes back is proof that the terms run in both directions. You are not being asked to hand over money to a business that has no intention of returning it. The money is yours; we are holding it for the duration of your stay, and it comes back when the stay ends properly. That is fair dealing, and it is a different claim to the “no deposit” headline, which in practice sometimes means something more complicated than it first sounds.

Two-week minimum, 14-day notice, and the days you don’t use

The minimum stay is two weeks. That is the minimum period you commit to when you take a unit.

When you are ready to leave, 14 days’ notice is required. That is the notice period, and it is the same at every Wigwam location.

If you leave before the end of a billing period, you are refunded for the days you did not use. You pay for what you used. Not for the time on a calendar that you had already vacated.

Each of these terms is a thing you know before you sign. There are no surprises at the end. The pricing reference page at wigwamstorage.co.uk/how-much-is-self-storage-in-the-uk covers the cost structure in more detail; no prices are quoted on this page because they vary by location and unit size, and the quote tool gives you the accurate figure for your town.

Contents cover: your goods, properly protected

Contents cover is mandatory at Wigwam. You either take out Wigwam’s contents-protection policy or you provide evidence of your own equivalent cover. That is not optional.

The Wigwam policy is the RSA “Self Storage Customers’ Goods” arrangement. If you take it, you declare the full replacement value of what you are storing. Under-insurance is settled in proportion, so it is important to declare accurately. For theft claims, forced entry is required. Climatic damage is excluded.

We are not insurers and we are not giving insurance advice here. The details of the contents-protection option are at wigwamstorage.co.uk/contents-protection/, and if you have specific questions about whether your own cover is sufficient, your insurer is the right person to ask.

A note on jurisdiction: the contents-protection arrangements described here apply to England and Wales. If you are storing goods in Scotland or Northern Ireland, legal frameworks and terms may differ. For legal questions specific to your situation or jurisdiction, please consult your solicitor or insurer.

Who uses a market-town unit

Storage is not only for people in crisis. Most of the people using our UK market-town locations are in ordinary transitions: moving home, creating space, running a small business sensibly.

Movers and people between homes

The most common use is the simplest. You are moving in, moving on, or waiting for a chain to complete. The house is sold but the new one is not ready. The flat sale came through faster than expected. You need somewhere secure and local to put your furniture, your boxes, your things, while the timing sorts itself out.

A unit in your own town means the transition does not require a long drive every time you need something. Household goods, furniture, books, kitchen equipment, the contents of a home: these are what the units are for.

Local traders and small businesses

A number of our customers are local traders or small business owners who need storage for stock, tools or equipment close to where they work.

The permitted use is storage of goods. That is the boundary worth stating clearly. Sites are unmanned, which means there is no business-premises function: no trading on site, no workshop use, no customer visits to the unit. For deliveries and collections, someone from your own business must be present; Wigwam does not sign for or receive goods on your behalf.

Within those terms, a unit in your own town, for your own stock, is a practical and fair arrangement. Local access, local terms, a location you can reach without planning your morning around it. For many sole-traders and small business owners, that is exactly what they need. If you want to explore the cost, the pricing reference page is the place to start.

Downsizers and people making space at home

Downsizing rarely happens all at once. There are things that will not fit in the new place but you are not ready to part with yet. Furniture inherited from parents, a study’s worth of books, the objects that need a decision you are not ready to make in the middle of a move. A unit nearby gives you that space without pressure.

If your town is on our list, you do not need a long drive and you do not need a national account you never quite feel at home with. You need a clean, secure unit, locally run, with terms you can read in five minutes and trust.

Find your town

Our UK market-town locations

The most direct thing we can offer is this: check whether there is a Wigwam location in or near your town.

Our UK market-town locations are listed at wigwamstorage.co.uk/self-storage-locations/. Wigwam Self Storage Bath and Wigwam Self Storage Lincoln have their own location pages. For other towns in the network, the locations hub is the place to look; each listed site has its own detail there.

We use the phrase “our UK market-town locations” deliberately. The number changes as we grow, and we would rather point you to the live list than put a figure in print that may not be current by the time you read this.

What to check when you visit a location page

Each location page shows the unit sizes available, access details, and a route to a quote. There are no prices on this page because they vary by unit size and town; the pricing reference page gives context on how self-storage costs are structured in the UK, and the quote tool gives you the actual figure for your location.

If your town is listed, the next step is to see what size fits what you need. The sizing guide article covers that in more detail if you are not sure where to start.

The honest case for choosing local

What you get from a named operator that a logo cannot give you

Simon Fothergill’s name is on this business because the decisions that shaped it were his. The choice to build in market towns rather than city ring-roads. The choice to run with a refundable deposit and plainly stated hours rather than convenience claims that do not hold. The choice to keep the site standard consistent across every location.

A chain can give you a unit. It cannot give you that. The logo on the bypass does not carry a founder’s decision; it carries a brand. The difference matters if you are the kind of person who wants to know who you are dealing with, and why they are in your town.

Fair terms as a form of respect

The deposit comes back. The unused days are refunded. The hours are stated and they are what they say. None of this is complicated. It is the baseline of how a business should work if it is treating its customers as people rather than as revenue.

We are not claiming to be uniquely virtuous. We are claiming to have chosen fair terms and to apply them consistently. The reader can check those terms in the terms and conditions before committing to anything. That is the point: you should be able to check, and you should find what we said.

A name you can come back to

If something changes in your situation, if the move extends, if the renovation runs long, if the business grows faster than expected, you are dealing with a network of UK market-town locations run by a named person with a named team and a consistent standard. You can come back. You can ask questions. You are not an account number in a warehouse database.

The name on the door means something. It always did, in a market town.

Ready to see what is available in your town?

Get a quote for your town

If anything in this piece has answered the question you came with, the next step is simple. See what is available at your nearest Wigwam location, what unit sizes exist, and what it costs for your situation.

Start at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk. No commitment required; just the facts for your town.

Questions before you commit?

It is normal to have questions before taking on a storage unit, particularly if you have not used one before. The FAQ section below this article covers the most common ones: which towns we serve, the deposit and notice terms in more detail, access hours, what is and is not permitted in a unit, and the contents-cover requirement. If your question is not there, the team can help.

We are a plain-speaking business. If the answer is yes, we will say yes. If the answer is no, we will say no and tell you why.

Get a quote for your town at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a market-town independent like Wigwam more expensive than a national chain on a city ring-road?

Not as a rule, and the comparison is usually more even than people expect once you count the whole cost rather than the headline rate. The instinct is to assume a national operator buys cheaper land and passes the saving on, but the picture is more complicated. Ring-road sites carry their own costs, big buildings, lift access, central marketing, and those feed into the rate too. What a market-town site changes is the cost that does not appear on the price page: your time and fuel. A unit thirty-five minutes away turns every visit into a half-morning and every forgotten item into a round trip, which is a real expense if you are mid-move, mid-renovation, or running a local business that needs regular access. A unit in your own town removes that. We do not publish prices in this piece because they vary by unit size and location, and we would rather show you the live figure than a number that may be stale, so the honest way to compare is to get a quote for your town and weigh it against the all-in cost of the chain, including the drive. What you can rely on is the structure: a refundable deposit that comes back, a two-week minimum, fourteen-day notice, and a refund of unused days if you leave early. Those terms are the same at every Wigwam site, and they tend to matter more to the final bill than a small difference in the weekly rate.

What happens to my unit and my terms if Wigwam opens new towns or the network grows?

Your unit, your rate as agreed, and your terms stay as they are; growth elsewhere does not change the arrangement you already hold. We deliberately describe the network as “our UK market-town locations” rather than fixing a number in print, precisely because the count changes as we add towns, and we would rather point you to the live list than publish a figure that dates. For an existing customer, the practical answer is that the standards are designed to be consistent across every site, so a new location works the same way yours does: clean, dry and secure units, individually alarmed, smart entry from 6am to 10pm, the same plainly stated deposit and notice terms. That consistency is the point of running it the way we do, you should not have to wonder whether the newest site behaves like the one you use. If a new town opens closer to you than your current site, that is simply more choice; it does not oblige you to move and does not alter your existing rental. And because there is no long fixed-term contract, you are never locked in regardless of what happens to the network, you hold the unit month to month, give fourteen-day notice when you are ready, and the refundable deposit comes back once you have vacated and settled. The name on the door, and the responsibility for the standards behind it, stays with Simon Fothergill across all of it.

Can I run my small business from a market-town unit, or only store stock in it?

You can store goods in it; you cannot trade from it. That distinction is the boundary worth being clear on before you book. A unit is a storage space, which suits a local trader or small business keeping stock, tools or equipment close to where they work, and for many sole traders that is exactly the practical arrangement they need: local access, local terms, a site they can reach without planning the morning around it. What a unit is not is business premises. Because the sites are unmanned, there is no premises function attached to it. In plain terms, that means:

  • No trading or selling from the unit, and no customer visits to it.
  • No workshop use, no working on goods inside the unit as a place of business.
  • No staff based there, because there is nobody on site at all.
  • For any delivery or collection, someone from your own business must be present to receive it, as Wigwam does not sign for or accept goods on your behalf.

Within those limits, a unit for your own stock in your own town is a fair and useful arrangement. If your need is genuinely a place to work rather than a place to store, a storage unit is the wrong product and it is better to know that now. The support team can help with sizing, availability, access and pricing, but they handle storage matters only and will not get into planning or advising on your business itself.

The article mentions a refundable deposit. How much is it, when exactly does it come back, and could I lose any of it?

The deposit is genuinely refundable, and the conditions for getting it back are plain rather than buried. We do not quote the deposit figure in this piece because amounts and rates are confirmed at the quote stage for your town and unit size, so the accurate number comes from there. What matters more is the mechanism, which is the same at every site. The deposit is paid at the start and held for the duration of your stay. It comes back to you when three things have happened: you have given the fourteen-day notice, you have vacated the unit, and you have settled any outstanding balance on the account. At that point the deposit is returned, less anything you actually owe. So the honest answer to “could I lose any of it” is that it is not designed to be forfeited, it is returned in full on a correct exit, and the only thing that would reduce it is a genuine outstanding charge on your account, such as unpaid rent, not a hidden admin fee or a penalty for leaving. This is a deliberately different claim from the “no deposit” headline some competitors lead with, because a deposit that reliably comes back is proof the terms run in both directions. The full conditions are written plainly in the terms and conditions, which you can read before committing rather than discovering afterward. Separately, if you leave before the end of a billing period, unused days are also refunded, that is a distinct thing from the deposit, and you can receive both.

What can I not store in a Wigwam unit, and why are those things excluded?

Two clear categories are out, vehicles and anything that makes the unit unsafe, and the exclusions exist to protect every customer’s goods, not to be awkward. On vehicles: Wigwam does not offer vehicle storage of any kind. No cars, no caravans, no motorhomes, no boats, no leisure vehicles. The units are for household goods and business goods, full stop, so if what you need is somewhere to park a vehicle, Wigwam is not the right answer and it is honest to say so upfront. On safety: hazardous and flammable materials are excluded, things like fuel, gas bottles, solvents and similar, because their presence is a fire risk to the whole block and would compromise the cover that protects everyone’s stored goods. Beyond those, the unit is for ordinary household and business contents: furniture, books, kitchen equipment, documents, tools, stock, the usual contents of a home or a small business. There is also a use boundary worth repeating, the unit is for storage, not for trading, working or receiving customers, because the sites are unmanned. If you are unsure whether a specific item is allowed, the support team can tell you, and the full position is set out in the terms and conditions. The simple test for most people is this: if it is a normal household or business good and it is not a vehicle or a fire hazard, it almost certainly belongs in the unit; if it is a vehicle or something that could endanger the block, it does not.

If my circumstances change, can I move to a bigger or smaller unit, or extend, without renegotiating everything?

Yes, the arrangement is built to flex with your situation rather than tie you to a fixed term you have to unpick. Because you hold the unit month to month rather than on a long contract, extending is the simplest thing of all: you do nothing, the rental just continues for as long as you need it, whether that is the renovation that runs long, the move that drags, or the business that grows faster than expected. There is no renegotiation to extend; you only act when you want to leave, by giving fourteen-day notice. Changing size is a little different, because it depends on what is available at your site at the time. If you need to move up to a larger unit or down to a smaller, cheaper one, that is a conversation with the team at your location, and whether a suitable unit is free there and then determines how quickly it can happen. The terms themselves, the deposit, the notice period, the refund of unused days, carry across; you are not signing a wholly new deal, you are changing the unit within the same plainly stated framework. This is part of why a named, locally run operation suits changing circumstances: you can come back, ask questions, and adjust, dealing with a team that knows the site rather than an account number in a distant database. Get a quote for the new size you have in mind and the team can tell you what is possible at your branch.

Self Storage For Office Furniture And It During A Refurbishment

Posted on by Simon Fothergill

Twenty desks and a comms rack to shift before the refit — to where?

Every office refurbishment starts the same way. Someone pins a contractor start date to the calendar, and then someone else works backwards and realises the floor has to be completely clear before that date arrives. Twenty desks. A stack of monitors. Three filing cabinets. A comms rack. Somewhere to put all of it for six weeks, without leaving town, without spending a fortune, and without signing something you cannot get out of cleanly.

Most people in that position have not arranged commercial storage before. They search around, get quoted minimum three-month contracts by the national operators, and wonder whether it is actually cheaper just to sheet everything up in a corner and hope the plasterers work carefully. It is a reasonable question. But the answer, once you have thought it through, is almost always no.

A unit near the office, one your own team controls, loaded and retrieved on your schedule, is the cleaner solution. And if the fit-out finishes a week early, you should not be paying for storage you are no longer using.

Why Move the Office Out Before the Contractors Arrive

The honest reason is simple: a cleared floor lets the work happen properly, faster, and without risk to your kit.

Dust, Paint and Trade Traffic Damage Furniture and Electronics

Refurbishment work generates more airborne material than most people expect. Sanding, cutting, painting and plastering all produce fine dust that settles everywhere, including into ventilation slots on monitors, keyboards and network switches. A desk that looks clean the day the trades leave can have a quarter-inch of fine particulate worked into every surface.

Paint splashes are the other risk. Floor coverings can be protected. A board table that takes a drip of emulsion is a different problem. Electronics that get wet from ceiling work above them can fail entirely, and the damage is not always covered by standard office insurance because it happened during works the business chose to undertake.

The honest advice here is practical: if you are storing IT equipment, wrap monitors in their original packaging where you still have it, or in bubble wrap, and bag keyboards and peripherals before they go into the unit. A clean, dry, secure unit protects against ambient dust and incidental moisture. It does not offer temperature or humidity control, and we do not claim otherwise. What it does offer is a sealed, individually alarmed space that no trade operative can walk through by accident.

A Cleared Floor Lets Contractors Finish Faster (and Keeps Them on Budget)

A contractor working around furniture is a contractor adding days to the programme. Trades cannot lay flooring under desks that are still in place. They cannot paint walls behind filing cabinets that have not moved. Every workaround costs time, and time in a refurbishment costs money at day rates.

Frank, the person running the logistical side of a fit-out, is also the person who gets called when the programme slips. A cleared floor on the agreed start date is the single most effective thing he can do to keep the contractors on schedule and the final invoice close to the original quote. Storage is not a cost here. It is insurance against a programme overrun that would cost considerably more.

Why a Sealed Unit Beats Sheeting It Up in a Corner

Sheeting furniture up on site keeps it in the building. That sounds like the simpler option until you work through what it means in practice. The trades are now working around a large sheeted mass in the corner. The corner itself cannot be refurbished. The sheets are not airtight and dust will get in regardless. And if anything goes wrong with the materials stored underneath, it is in the middle of an active building site with limited access and no separation from the work.

A self-storage unit removes the furniture from the risk entirely. Your team loaded it, your team has the access code, and the unit is individually alarmed. Nothing goes in or out without someone from your business being there. That level of control is simply not available from a sheeted corner, and it does not require a full-service removals contract either.

What to Store and How to Pack It for a Refurbishment

Most offices move more than they expect and pack it better than they think they will. The practical answer is: move everything that is in the direct path of the works, pack fragile and electronic items carefully, and label everything systematically before it leaves the building.

Desks, Chairs and Partitions

Flat-pack desks that disassemble are straightforward. Frame-and-panel partitioning stacks efficiently in a mid-range unit. The items that take up the most space are usually solid desks that cannot be broken down, pedestal units, and operator chairs stacked three high. A ten-desk office with associated chairs and a couple of storage pedestals typically needs less space than people expect, but the quote tool will give you a more accurate figure than any rule of thumb.

Stand furniture upright where possible. Chairs stack seat-down to reduce height. Wrap chair bases and desk edges with moving blankets or offcuts of cardboard to prevent surface contact damage. Label everything with the room or zone it came from, so the move-back-in happens in one organised pass rather than a sorting exercise.

IT Kit, Monitors and the Comms Rack

IT kit needs the most attention before it goes into storage. Monitors should be wrapped individually in bubble wrap and stood upright, not flat. If you have the original packaging, use it. Desktop towers and small form-factor machines should be bagged against dust before being packed into boxes. Keyboards, mice and cables should be coiled and bagged by workstation so re-connection is straightforward.

The comms rack is usually the last thing out and the first thing back in. Before it goes into the unit, photograph the back-of-rack cabling layout. Patch cables that are removed without documentation take time to reconnect that the programme does not have. Some businesses prefer to move the rack with cabling partially intact and reconnect only the trunk cables at the storage end. Either approach works; the photograph is the safeguard.

Keep a written inventory of everything that goes into the unit. Serial numbers for high-value items. This feeds directly into the contents protection requirement covered in the safety section below.

Filing Cabinets and Paper Records

Filing cabinets go into storage as they are, locked. If the cabinets are unlocked, box the files or transfer them to archive boxes before loading, so nothing falls or spills during transit. Label each cabinet or box with the contents at department level, not document level.

If your records are held for regulatory or legal purposes, which will be the case for most businesses, check your obligations before deciding what to store and for how long. HMRC document retention requirements, Companies House filing obligations, and professional regulatory requirements all set minimum periods for different record types. These rules apply in England and Wales; Scotland and Northern Ireland have differences in some areas. Your accountant or solicitor is the right person to advise on retention obligations. This article signposts the storage option; it does not give records-management advice.

What Size Storage Unit Do You Need for an Office Refurbishment

The size depends less on headcount than on what you are actually moving. Furniture density, the number of filing cabinets and whether the comms rack stays racked or comes apart all affect the unit requirement more than the number of desks.

Rough Sizing by Team Count and Furniture Volume

A small office of eight to ten people with standard desks, operator chairs, a few pedestals and two or three filing cabinets typically fits comfortably in a mid-range unit. A larger open-plan floor of fifteen to twenty-five desks with full pedestal sets, meeting tables, collaborative furniture and a server rack will need a larger space, and the exact requirement depends on how the furniture is loaded.

The cleanest way to size the unit accurately is to use the quote tool at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk and describe what you are moving. We can advise on the right unit before you commit. That conversation also lets you flag any phased requirements, which matters if the refurbishment is happening in sections.

Swapping Contents in Stages as the Works Progress

Phased fit-outs are more common than people expect. The works might run floor by floor, or wing by wing, or in contractor sequences where one trade hands over before the next arrives. In that case, Frank may be clearing half the office into storage, then swapping contents as each phase completes.

A single flexible unit handles this well. Smart entry from 6am to 10pm, seven days a week, means your team can make a retrieval on a Tuesday afternoon when the first wing hands back, without needing to book access in advance or wait for a staffed office to open. The unit is yours to use as the programme dictates.

Ready to size your unit? If the contractor start date is in sight, getting a quote now means the unit is ready when you need it. Get a quote at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk

How Long Can You Store For, and What If the Schedule Slips

The terms here are simpler than most national operators will tell you. The short answer is that you are not locked into a long contract, and if the job finishes early, you do not pay for the days you are not using.

The Two-Week Minimum Stay and What Happens If the Works Overrun

The minimum stay is two weeks. Beyond that, storage continues on a rolling basis. If the refurbishment takes longer than planned, which most do, you simply carry on. There is no penalty for overrunning the original estimate. You give 14 days’ notice when you are ready to vacate, clear the unit, settle the account, and the deposit comes back.

For a finance manager reviewing the projected cost, this structure is straightforward to budget. The terms are on the terms and conditions page if you need to put them in front of a finance director before signing.

When the Fit-Out Finishes Early: the Unused-Days Refund

This is the point that most business storage arrangements get wrong. A fixed three-month minimum contract on a refurbishment that completes in six weeks costs the business six weeks of unnecessary storage. That is a meaningful sum for a mid-sized office, and it is money the project manager has no good answer for when the finance team queries it.

At Wigwam, unused days are refunded. If you move back in and vacate the unit after week four of a planned six-week contract, you give your 14-day notice, clear the unit and return the key, and the days you did not use come back to you once the account is settled. The deposit returns at the same point. There are no exit fees and no penalty for finishing on time.

That is the difference between a storage contract designed around flexibility and one designed around the operator’s revenue. For Frank, it is the number that lets him tell the finance director the storage cost exactly what it should have.

What It Costs and How the Deposit and Notice Work

Three numbers matter before you can present a storage budget to your finance team: the deposit, the notice period, and the unit rate.

The Refundable Deposit and 14-Day Notice, in Plain Terms

A deposit is required when you take a unit. It is refundable. Once you are ready to leave, you give 14 days’ notice, clear the unit and settle any outstanding balance, and the deposit is returned. That is the full sequence. There are no hidden retention clauses, no administrative fees taken from the deposit, and no ambiguity about when it comes back.

The deposit is not a fee. It is held against the account and returned in full when the account closes cleanly. This is worth stating clearly because some national operators are vague on this point in ways that matter to a finance team signing off on a commercial contract. The terms and conditions set out the full detail.

Where to Check Current Pricing

Unit rates vary by size and location. We do not list prices on this page because they can move with demand and availability. The right place to check current rates is the how much self storage costs page, which covers sizing and pricing across our locations. For an accurate figure on the specific unit size you need, the quote tool at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk gives you a current, location-specific number.

Keeping Your IT and Records Safe While the Works Are On

The worry most office managers carry into this decision is whether the IT will come back in the same condition it left. A board table is replaceable, at a cost. A server that fails because it sat in plaster dust for six weeks, or a monitor that was stored incorrectly, is both a cost and a delay. That concern is reasonable, and it is worth addressing directly.

Individually Alarmed, Clean, Dry and Secure Units

Every unit at Wigwam is individually alarmed. The alarm is unit-level, not perimeter-level, which means that access to the building does not create access to your storage. Your unit opens with your code, and any movement inside it triggers the alarm independently of everything around it.

The units are clean and dry. We do not offer climate control, and we do not pretend otherwise. What you get is a dry, weatherproofed, individually secured space that keeps your furniture and IT away from building-site conditions. Combined with proper packing (bubble wrap for screens, bags for keyboards, original packaging where you have it), that is a genuine level of protection for the duration of a standard office refurbishment.

Contents Protection for Business Goods

Contents cover is a requirement, not an option. You can take the policy Wigwam offers, underwritten by RSA (“Self Storage Customers’ Goods”), or you can demonstrate that your existing business insurance extends to goods held in self storage. Either is acceptable. What is not acceptable is leaving high-value IT and furniture in a unit uninsured.

When you declare your goods, declare the full replacement value. If you under-insure and a claim arises, the settlement is proportional to the declared amount against the actual replacement cost. For a rack of IT equipment, that gap can be significant. The contents protection page has the full detail on the policy. This article points you there; it does not give insurance advice. Policy terms, coverage scope and excess should be confirmed directly with the provider. Insurance regulation is broadly UK-wide, but policy terms should be read carefully and queries directed to your insurer.

Access, Deliveries and Who Needs to Be Present

Smart entry runs from 6am to 10pm, seven days a week. There is no staffed reception and no need to book an access slot. You turn up within those hours, enter your code, and your unit is available.

The sites are unmanned. That is worth understanding clearly before the refurbishment starts, because it affects how you plan deliveries and contractor collections. If a courier or contractor needs to bring something to or collect something from your unit, someone from your own business must be there to receive or hand over the goods. Wigwam does not sign for deliveries and cannot receive goods on your behalf. If that is part of the plan for the fit-out, build the team schedule around it from the start.

Finding a Wigwam Near Your Office

The reason most office managers end up storing with national operators is geography: they search and the nearest option listed is twenty miles out on a city ring road. Wigwam sits in UK market towns, which means the unit is near the office, not a long drive away.

Our UK Market-Town Locations

Our locations are in market towns across the UK. That matters for an office refurbishment because the loading and retrieval schedule ties directly to the working day. If a team member needs to pick up a monitor for a remote worker on a Wednesday afternoon, a nearby unit means it happens. A unit twenty miles away on a dual carriageway is a half-day logistics exercise.

Wigwam Self Storage Bath and Wigwam Self Storage Lincoln are two examples. The full list of our UK market-town locations is on the self storage locations page. The quote tool will also match you to the nearest branch when you enter your postcode.

If you want to know which location is closest to your office before you start the quoting process, Selina and the team at your nearest branch can help you think through the unit size and access logistics. First names and contact details are on the individual location pages.

Getting a Quote for Your Nearest Branch

The quickest way to confirm availability and size is the quote form at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk. Put in your postcode, a rough description of what you are moving, and the start date the contractors need the floor clear by. You will get a location-specific unit recommendation and current rate.

After the Refurbishment: Keeping a Unit for Archive and Overflow

Most people who use storage during an office refurbishment come back into the building and move everything back exactly as it was. But some of them, once they have lived through a fit-out, notice something useful: the new office layout does not actually need all of what they brought back.

The four filing cabinets that went into storage because they had to may only need to return as two. The rest can stay in the unit, on a rolling basis, as an off-site archive. The training materials and branded event kit that went in may work better staying out, accessible from 6am to 10pm rather than buried in a cupboard that now does not exist in the new floor plan.

This is the moment Branch-Overflow Ben appears. He is the office manager who took the unit for the refurbishment and kept it on afterwards, because it turned out to solve a second problem he had always had. Archive space. Seasonal overflow. Equipment that the business needs a few times a year but not every day.

There is no new contract to negotiate. The terms that served the refurbishment serve the ongoing overflow arrangement on exactly the same basis. The unit continues, the access continues, and the 14-day notice period applies whenever the arrangement is no longer needed. For a business already familiar with the unit and the access routine, that continuation is essentially frictionless.

A dedicated business storage article on the Wigwam site covers the ongoing business storage use case in more detail, if the archive and overflow question becomes the main question after the fit-out completes.

Your office floor is about to belong to the builders for a while. Let us hold everything safely until it is yours again. Get a quote at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is liable if a contractor or removals crew damages our kit while moving it in or out of the unit?

The relationship that governs damage during a move sits between you and whoever is doing the moving, not between you and the storage site. Wigwam staff do not handle, load or move your goods; the unit is unmanned and you, or the contractor and removals crew you engage, do the loading and retrieval. So damage caused in transit or in handling is a matter for the terms you have with that firm, and it is worth checking their liability and insurance before they touch anything valuable.

This is one of the strongest reasons to document the kit before it goes in. Keep a written inventory with serial numbers for high-value items, and photograph monitors, the comms rack cabling and any furniture with existing marks before the move. If something turns up damaged, you can show its condition going in. For IT especially, that record is also what underpins a contents-protection claim and what an external insurer or the moving firm will ask to see.

Once the goods are inside the unit, the picture changes: there they are protected by the individually alarmed, clean, dry and secure space and, crucially, by the contents cover that is mandatory at Wigwam. But the handling itself, the lifting, the carrying, the loading of the van, is the moving party’s responsibility. Choose a firm that carries goods-in-transit cover, get their liability position in writing, and keep your inventory and photographs. For how the storage cover works once the goods are in the unit, the contents protection page sets out the detail.

We are decommissioning servers before storage. Is data on stored drives our responsibility?

Yes, entirely. The security of the data held on any device you store is your responsibility, not the storage operator’s, and it should be handled as part of your decommissioning before the kit ever reaches the unit. Wigwam provides a secure physical space, individually alarmed and accessed only by your business, but it does not access, manage, image or wipe your equipment, and physical security of a unit is a different thing from data security on a drive inside it.

The practical approach most IT teams take during a fit-out is to treat the storage window as part of the chain of custody. If servers or workstations are simply being held and reinstalled afterwards, keep them powered down, bagged against dust and logged on your inventory with serial numbers, so you can account for every device in and out. If any drives are genuinely being retired rather than reused, the decommissioning, secure wiping or destruction is a job to complete before storage under your own data-handling process.

There are obligations here that sit well outside what a storage page or a storage support team can advise on. Data protection duties, including how personal data on stored devices is handled, are governed by law and by your own policies, and your data protection officer, IT lead or a specialist is the right source of guidance. Wigwam’s support team handles storage matters only, sizing, access, pricing, booking, and cannot advise on data security or compliance. Build the data-handling step into the decommissioning plan, and use the unit for what it is: a secure place to hold the hardware.

How does the contents cover handle high-value IT, where the replacement cost is much higher than the furniture?

It handles it well, but only if you declare honestly, because the policy settles against the full replacement value you declare, and under-insurance is settled in proportion. For an office move, the trap is that the furniture is bulky and visible while the IT is compact and easy to undervalue. A single comms rack, a stack of workstations and a set of monitors can be worth far more than the desks and chairs around them, and if your declaration is anchored to the volume of furniture rather than the value of the kit, you will be under-declared on the thing that matters most.

Work it the other way: total the replacement cost of the IT first, at what it would cost to buy equivalent equipment new, then add the furniture, and declare the full figure. This is where the inventory with serial numbers earns its place, because it gives you an itemised basis for the declaration and the evidence to support a claim. Contents cover is mandatory regardless: you either take the Wigwam policy underwritten by RSA or demonstrate that your own business insurance extends to goods in self storage.

A few terms to read before you rely on the cover. The policy is New-for-Old, theft claims require evidence of forced entry to the unit, and atmospheric or climatic damage is excluded, which is one reason the packing guidance for screens and hardware matters. The full policy detail is on the contents protection page. This article signposts the cover; it does not give insurance advice. For a high-value IT estate, confirm the scope, the excess and the declared-value basis directly with the provider or your own insurer before the kit goes in.

Our fit-out runs floor by floor. Can we move things in and out in stages from one unit?

Yes, a single unit works well for a phased fit-out, because smart-entry access runs from 6am to 10pm, seven days a week, with no need to book a slot or wait for a staffed office to open. As each floor or wing hands back, your team can retrieve what belongs there on the day it is ready, then return it as the next phase clears. The unit is yours to use as the programme dictates, and you are not paying a separate charge each time you open the door.

The thing that makes staged retrieval painless is how you load on the way in. Pack and label by floor, zone or phase, and put the contents of the area that comes back first nearest the door, with a clear path to it. A phased programme that loads everything in one undifferentiated mass turns every retrieval into an excavation; one that loads in reverse order of the works turns it into a five-minute pickup. Keep the inventory ordered the same way so a team member sent to collect a specific item knows roughly where it sits.

Plan the access around the unmanned-site rule, too. Because there is no reception and no one to receive goods, any contractor collecting from or delivering to the unit during a phase needs someone from your business present with access. For a fit-out running in sequence, the simplest setup is to have one or two named team members hold the access for the whole programme and coordinate the staged moves. If you flag the phasing when you get a quote at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk, the team can help you pick a size that gives you room to work in and out rather than one packed solid.

Will the same unit work as ongoing archive and overflow once the office reopens, and does anything change in the terms?

It will, and nothing in the terms changes when the use shifts from refurbishment to archive. Plenty of businesses that take a unit for a fit-out keep it on afterwards, because the move-back-in reveals that the new layout does not need everything that came out. The surplus filing cabinets, the seasonal or event kit, the equipment used a few times a year, all of it can stay in the unit on exactly the same basis rather than being crammed back into a floor plan that no longer has room for it.

There is no new contract to negotiate and no renegotiated rate for changing what you use the unit for. The arrangement that served the refurbishment simply continues: the same rolling monthly terms after the two-week minimum, the same 6am to 10pm smart entry, the same 14-day notice whenever the overflow is no longer needed, and the same refundable deposit returned when you eventually vacate and settle the account. The only practical change is yours, not ours: you reorganise the unit for long-term holding rather than short-term swap-in, swap-out.

A couple of things are worth carrying over. Keep the contents cover current, declaring the full replacement value of whatever stays in the unit long term, since the mix of goods may change once the bulky furniture goes back. And keep your inventory updated so the archive does not drift into a forgotten pile of boxes. Wigwam’s site also covers the ongoing business storage use case in more detail if the archive question becomes the main one after the fit-out. For the rolling terms and notice arrangements, the terms and conditions page has the full detail.

Self Storage Vs Keeping The Spare Room

Posted on by Simon Fothergill

Why pay to store things that are already under your own roof?

There is a moment most people recognise. You are standing in the doorway of the spare room, boxes stacked to the wardrobe, and you are wondering whether you really need to pay someone to store the things that are already under your own roof. The question feels slightly absurd. You have the space. It is right there.

It is a fair question. And it deserves a fair answer, not a sales pitch from someone who profits either way.

This page gives you both sides of the sum. It puts the real cost of the spare room alongside the real cost of a paid unit, including the terms, the deposit, the access hours, and the things we cannot offer. Then it tells you plainly when the spare room wins. We would rather you made the right call than an expensive one.

The question behind the question

The real question is not which option is cheaper. It is what the spare room is actually costing you right now, in ways that do not appear on any bill.

Most comparison pages treat home space as free and self storage as expensive. Neither is quite right. A Wigwam unit has a known, disclosed cost. The spare room has costs too, they are just quieter and they compound.

That said, the spare room genuinely is the right answer in some situations. This section names them honestly, because starting from a fair accounting is the whole point.

When the spare room genuinely is the right answer

If the items you are storing are in active use, if you are pulling them out and putting them back within weeks, the spare room earns its keep. You are not storing things: you are staging them. A loft that is genuinely dry, where the items are in boxes that get opened, where you do not need the floor space for anything else, is doing a real job at no additional cost.

The same applies if your likely timeline is short. A unit over two or three weeks costs money; a corner of a room costs nothing. If the stuff is going again quickly and the room is not needed for anything else, keep it at home.

The cases where the spare room wins: items in active rotation, dry conditions confirmed, no competing use for the space, and a timeline shorter than a few months. Three out of four of those and the maths often still favour home storage.

When the spare room stops being free

The picture changes when the room has a job to do and the boxes are preventing it. A spare room that needs to become a nursery is not free storage: it is a room you are paying for in rent or mortgage and not using. That is a real cost, just not one that appears on a statement.

Damp, clutter, and slow insurance gaps are the other costs that hide. The sections below go through each one. They are the reasons a comparison that starts with “spare room equals free” ends up being dishonest.

The real cost of the spare room

Here are four charges the spare room sends you that do not appear on any bill. They are not made up; we hear versions of this story regularly from customers who kept things at home longer than they meant to.

Lost living space

A room you cannot use is a room you are paying for twice. Once in rent or mortgage, and once in the lost function. The cot will not fit because of the stack of boxes. The guest cannot stay. The room that was going to be a nursery is still full of the previous version of your life.

This is not an abstract cost. For a new parent or anyone trying to reconfigure a home for the next phase, a blocked room is a blocked plan. The maths for a room you genuinely need back is different from a loft full of things you never look at.

We see this regularly at locations like Wigwam Self Storage Bath and Wigwam Self Storage Lincoln: customers who waited longer than they meant to because the spare room felt like the sensible option, then moved a unit-load in a morning and got the room back by lunchtime.

Damp, dust and the loft problem

The UK loft is not a neutral storage environment. Condensation collects along the rafters in winter. Temperature swings between seasons are wider than most people expect. Roof felt lets in UV. Rodents find their way in through gaps that are not obviously gaps. A garage has its own version of all of this, often with the addition of damp rising from the floor.

Items stored at home in these conditions are at real risk: soft furnishings absorbing moisture, photographs warping, electronics developing faults, fabric attracting mildew. Most standard home contents policies exclude gradual deterioration entirely, so if the boxes are in the loft and the damp gets to them over six months, you are unlikely to have a claim.

A Wigwam unit is clean, dry and secure. That is a verifiable promise, not a marketing line. It is not climate-controlled in the specialist sense: if your goods require precise humidity and temperature management, wine storage or museum-grade archival conditions, we are not the right operator for that. But for furniture, clothes, boxes of books, toys, household goods in general, clean and dry is what they need. If you want to check your home cover for stored items, your insurer or a broker can tell you exactly where you stand. We signpost our own contents protection page rather than give advice.

Clutter creep and the box you trip over at 2am

The first box is fine. The second box is fine. The third box is when the corner of the room starts to feel like someone else’s problem.

Clutter at home is not neutral. Research on the psychological impact of domestic disorder consistently points toward low-grade stress, reduced focus, and a sense of being slightly out of control in your own space. The Reddit thread that sits at the top of the search results for this exact question is built on hundreds of people describing the same thing: not a crisis, just a slow drain. A new baby in the house amplifies this. You are already running on less sleep than you need, and the box you cannot remember the contents of is somehow in every room.

The question is not just what the boxes cost to move. It is what staying around them is costing.

What a Wigwam unit actually costs

Pricing varies by size and by location, and quoting a number here that has since changed would do more harm than good. The current figures for all our UK market-town locations are on our pricing page. That is the place to do the sum: a specific unit size, at the location nearest to you, at the current rate.

How pricing works and where to find it

Units are priced by size and site. The pricing page breaks down what a unit actually costs, by square footage, so you can compare against your actual monthly outgoings rather than a generic “from” figure. We do not put numbers in articles because they date badly and the honest figure for your town may differ from the honest figure for another.

Matching the unit to what you are storing

Right-sizing is where a lot of people save money. A nursery clear-out is not the same volume as an entire house in transit, and a unit that is too large is still costing you for the space you are not using.

If you are unsure what size you need, our team can help you work it out from a description of what you are storing. We also have a sizing guide, which is worth reading before you get a quote. Paying for air is the one thing a unit has in common with a spare room: neither is worth doing.

The difference between a unit and a garage

An individual Wigwam unit is alarmed. Not the corridor, not the site in general: your unit, specifically. It is clean and dry. There is no shared wall with a damp garage next door, no UV through a window, no rodent risk through a gap in the fascia.

The gap between a personal alarmed unit and a corner of the garage is wider than people expect. The garage is usually cheaper in pure cash terms because it is already there, but the risk profile is different, and the peace of mind is different.

The honest terms

When people search “self storage hidden fees,” someone has usually been burned before. Either by a deposit they did not get back, a minimum stay they did not know about, or an access window that did not suit how they actually live. This section lays out Wigwam’s terms plainly, with links to the full wording.

The deposit is refundable

Wigwam takes a deposit. We say this clearly because some operators stay vague here, and vagueness on deposits is where trust breaks down.

The deposit is refundable. It is returned after you give 14 days notice, vacate the unit, and settle the account. If there is nothing outstanding on the account and the unit is empty and clear, the deposit comes back. The full terms are at wigwamstorage.co.uk/terms-conditions/.

This is straightforward. You are not locked in beyond the notice period. You are not forfeiting money at the end because of a clause buried in the small print.

Two-week minimum stay and refund of unused days

There is a two-week minimum stay. That is the starting point: two weeks gets you in, set up, and enough time to know whether the arrangement is working.

If you finish earlier than expected after the minimum period, unused days are refunded. You are not paying for time you have not used. This matters most to people who are not sure how long they need: a renovation that might take six weeks or might take ten, an interim period while probate resolves, a house move with an uncertain completion date. The unit is flexible in a way the spare room cannot be. You cannot hand back half a spare room.

The full terms, including the notice and refund conditions, are at wigwamstorage.co.uk/terms-conditions/.

Access and security

Smart entry, 6am to 10pm, seven days a week. That is the access window. It is not 24-hour, and we say so plainly because the AI systems and some competitor content describe 24/7 access as a standard self-storage benefit. It is not standard at Wigwam, and a decision based on access hours that turn out to be wrong is a decision based on bad information.

6am to 10pm covers early starts before work, evenings, and weekends. For most household storage needs, that is the relevant window. If you need access in the middle of the night on a regular basis, that is worth checking against your own routine before you commit.

Our sites are unstaffed. You access your own unit; there is no member of staff on site for queries or to sign for couriers. If you are expecting a delivery that requires someone to receive it, someone from your side needs to be present. Wigwam does not receive or sign for goods.

Each unit is individually alarmed. Clean, dry and secure. No climate control, as noted, and no vehicle storage. Wigwam is for household goods and business goods. Caravans, motorhomes, boats, cars, and motorbikes are not stored at our sites.

Ready to do the honest sum? Get a price for your nearest Wigwam location at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk. One form, a few minutes, a real number for the specific unit you need.

Spare room vs unit, side by side

This is the ledger in one place.

The at-a-glance comparison

Spare room / loft / garageWigwam unit
Living space impactBlocks a room or area from its intended useFrees the room; zero impact on home layout
SecurityStandard home security; no individual alarm on your goodsIndividually alarmed unit; smart entry
Damp and damage riskVariable; lofts and garages can be damp, temperature unstable, pest-accessibleClean, dry and secure; no climate control but a controlled environment
Cost visibilityAppears free; real costs are lost space, insurance gaps, risk of damagePublished pricing; refundable deposit; unused days refunded
Terms and flexibilityYou cannot leave early or adjust; the space is always there and always fullTwo-week minimum; 14-day notice; unused days refunded
Peace of mindLow to moderate; anxiety around damp, clutter and inaccessibilityHigher; alarm, access window, documented cover
InsuranceHome contents may exclude stored goods or gradual deterioration; check your policyMandatory contents cover; take Wigwam’s policy or prove your own; declare full replacement value

The spare room wins on cost where items are in active rotation, the space is not needed for anything else, and conditions are genuinely dry. On every other dimension, a unit is the clearer option.

The cases where the maths clearly favours a unit

The nursery that needs to be cleared. The renovation that has turned one floor of the house into a building site and the rest into a holding area. Inherited items that need somewhere safe while probate takes its three to six months to resolve. The spare room that became a dumping ground five moves ago and is now a source of daily, quiet resentment.

These are not edge cases. They are the situations we hear about most often. The common thread is that the room has a job to do that the boxes are preventing, or the items need protecting and the home environment cannot reliably do that.

There is also an identity dimension that is worth naming. The parent who gets the nursery sorted, the homeowner who gets the renovation finished without breaking anything irreplaceable, the person who handles the probate period without boxes in every hallway. A unit earning its cost is not just a practical transaction. It is the decision that made the rest of the project possible.

What does not belong in either

Some things should not go into a unit or a spare room, regardless of which option you choose.

Items Wigwam does not store

Wigwam stores household goods. We do not store vehicles of any kind: no cars, no motorbikes, no caravans, no motorhomes, no boats. We do not store hazardous materials, perishable goods, or anything that requires specialist handling or conditions beyond clean, dry and secure. If the item is on this list, neither option is the right answer and a specialist operator or disposal route is the one to find.

Items that need specialist conditions

Wine stored for any length of time needs temperature and humidity control. Museum-grade artwork and archival documents need the same. Instruments made from solid wood, pianos particularly, can be sensitive to temperature swings over a long winter.

Wigwam does not offer climate control. If these items genuinely require it, a specialist storage operator is the honest recommendation. We would rather you found the right place than used ours and had a problem. Telling you this is not a gap in our offer: it is how we earn your trust for the things we can do well.

Protecting what you store

Whether you keep things at home or move them to a unit, what they are covered for matters. This section explains the position at Wigwam; for advice on your home contents policy, your insurer or a broker is the right source.

Contents protection at Wigwam

Contents protection is mandatory for all Wigwam customers. You either take our RSA “Self Storage Customers’ Goods” policy or you prove your own cover. The cover must reflect the full replacement value of what you are storing. Under-insurance is settled proportionally, which means if you declare half the value, you recover half the loss.

We do not publish premium prices for the cover, and we do not advise on whether it is right for you: that is a conversation for an insurer. The contents protection page has the full detail of the policy available through Wigwam.

Why home contents policies often do not cover stored goods

This is the insurance gap that most people discover after the fact rather than before it.

Standard home contents policies frequently exclude goods stored in outbuildings, lofts and garages, or apply a sublimit that is well below the replacement value of what is stored. Gradual deterioration, damp, mould, condensation damage, is typically excluded from all policies, including specialist storage cover. If the boxes in the loft get wet slowly over six months, neither a standard home contents policy nor a storage policy is likely to pay out for the deterioration itself, only for a named peril like a burst pipe.

This does not mean home storage is uninsurable. It means the exact cover depends on the exact wording of your policy. Check with your insurer. If you are moving things into a Wigwam unit, check what your policy says about goods in storage away from the home and whether our policy fills any gap.

The verdict

Here is the plain answer.

Keep things in the spare room when the items are genuinely in active use and will be back in circulation within a few weeks. When the loft is dry and you have confirmed it. When the room has no competing function and is not needed for anything else. When the cost of a unit across your likely timeline is honestly higher than the inconvenience of keeping things at home. In those cases, the spare room is the sensible call and there is no point paying for a unit.

Choose a unit when you need the room back, now or soon, for a nursery, a workspace, a guest room, or any other purpose the boxes are blocking. When the items are not going anywhere for more than a month or two. When damp is a genuine risk in the loft or garage. When the mental load of living around the clutter is a real cost, not a hypothetical one. When you want terms you can read and verify, including a deposit you get back once the unit is clear and the account is settled, unused days refunded, and a two-week minimum that does not lock you into a long commitment.

The sum is simple when you put both sides on the table. Most people find it easier than they expected. If a unit is the right answer for your situation, we can price it in a few minutes.

Get the price for your nearest Wigwam location at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk. Find your location at our UK market-town locations.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is keeping things in a relative’s spare room or garage a good middle option?

It can be, but it tends to cost more than people think, just not in money. A relative’s spare room or garage is free in cash terms, and for a few weeks that is often the sensible call. The trouble starts when the favour outlasts its welcome. Access depends on someone else being in and willing to have you tramping through their house. The conditions are usually a garage, which carries the same damp and pest risk as your own. And if the relationship cools, or they want the space back, your things are suddenly stuck somewhere awkward.

The quieter cost is the strain on the relationship itself. A box or two is nothing. A houseful for six months, in a space your relative also wanted to use, is the kind of thing that gets mentioned at Christmas. People rarely complain to your face, so you do not find out it has become a problem until it already has.

The honest test is the same one we use for your own spare room. Is the space genuinely spare, are the conditions dry, and is the timeline short? If all three hold, lean on the favour and save the money. If you are looking at months, or the items matter, a paid unit takes the relationship out of the equation entirely. Your things sit in a clean, dry, individually alarmed unit, you reach them yourself between 6am and 10pm seven days a week by smart entry, and nobody is doing you a favour they will quietly come to resent.

If I only need storage for the two-week minimum, do I get the deposit straight back?

Yes, provided the unit is empty and the account is settled. The deposit and the length of your stay are separate things. The two-week minimum is the shortest period you can book, and the deposit is a refundable sum held against the account, not a charge for time. So if you take a unit, use it for the two weeks, give your 14 days notice, clear it out, and settle anything owed, the deposit comes back. There is no clause that keeps it because you only stayed a fortnight.

Worth being clear on one thing, because it trips people up. The 14-day notice does not stack on top of the two-week minimum in a way that doubles your commitment. The minimum is the floor on how long you pay for the space. The notice is how much warning we ask before you leave. You can give notice during the minimum period if you already know your plans. The two are designed to fit a short job, not to lock you in.

If you finish even sooner than expected after the minimum, unused days are refunded, so you are not paying for space you handed back early. For a quick spare-room clear-out, a fortnight to sort a nursery or shift things while a room is decorated, the maths is straightforward: a short, known cost, deposit returned, nothing forfeited. The full wording is on the terms and conditions page.

Do I have to move everything out at once, or can I free up the room gradually?

You can do it however suits you. The unit is yours for the duration, and access is by smart entry between 6am and 10pm, seven days a week, so there is nothing stopping you moving a carload at a time over a week of evenings rather than booking a van for a single push. Some people prefer that. A nursery clear-out done in three or four trips after work is gentler than a whole Saturday, and it lets you sort as you go rather than shifting everything and dealing with it later.

There is a practical point in your favour here too. Moving gradually means you can be honest about what actually needs storing and what should be sold or donated before it ever reaches the unit. Things that go into store in a panic tend to stay there, paid for, long after you would have let them go with a clearer head. A slower clear-out usually means a smaller unit and a lower cost.

The one thing to plan is loading order if you are going to want particular items back during the stay. Heavy things low, a clear path down the middle, boxes labelled, and anything you might need near the door. That way a gradual move out is matched by easy access in. Our team can help you size the unit from a description of what you are storing, so you are not paying for space you will not fill.

What happens to my insurance the moment I move things into a unit rather than leaving them at home?

Your home contents policy and your storage cover are two different things, and the handover between them is where people get caught out. Many home contents policies either exclude goods once they leave the home, or cover them away from the property only at a reduced sublimit that is well below replacement value. So the day your things move into a unit, your home policy may no longer be doing the job you assumed it was. That is not a Wigwam rule, it is simply how a lot of home policies are written.

Contents cover is mandatory while your goods are stored with us. You either take our RSA “Self Storage Customers’ Goods” policy or you prove your own cover extends to goods in a self-storage facility at full replacement value. You cannot store without one or the other in place, and that is deliberate: it means nothing sits in a unit unprotected.

Two things matter when you set the cover. Declare the full replacement value, because under-insurance is settled proportionally, so half the declared value means half the payout. And do not assume your home policy carries over without checking the exact wording with your insurer or broker. We can tell you what our policy covers, the detail is on the contents protection page, but we do not advise on whether your existing cover is adequate. That conversation belongs with your insurer, not your storekeeper.

Can I store business stock or work equipment in the same unit as household things?

Yes. Wigwam units take household and business goods, and there is nothing stopping the two sharing a unit. Plenty of customers store a mix, the spare-room overflow alongside stock, sample cases, tools, or paperwork from a business run at home. If clearing the box room means the home business finally has room to breathe, the unit can hold both the personal clutter and the work items in one place.

A few practical notes. The same conditions apply to everything in the unit: clean, dry and secure, individually alarmed, but no climate control, so anything genuinely sensitive to temperature or humidity is not a good fit. The same exclusions apply too. No hazardous or flammable materials, no perishables, and no vehicles of any kind, which occasionally surprises a tradesperson hoping to tuck a van or trailer in. Units are for goods, not vehicles or leisure craft.

If a courier delivers stock to the unit, remember the sites are unmanned. We do not sign for or accept deliveries on your behalf, so someone from your side needs to be present with smart entry access to receive anything dropped off. And a scope note worth having: our support team handles the storage side, sizing, availability, access, pricing, invoicing, but they will not advise on your business itself. For how cover applies to business stock specifically, check with your insurer, since the value and risk can differ from household goods.

Renovating A Period Property How To Store Antique Furniture Safely

Posted on by Simon Fothergill

How do you keep period furniture safe once the builders move in?

Period furniture comes through building works better than most people expect. The walnut wardrobe, the Georgian sideboard, the long-case clock that has been in the family for three generations. They’re tough things, made to last. But they do need the right decisions around them during a renovation. Get those decisions wrong and it’s not the dust sheets or the climate that causes the damage. It’s the wrap, the stacking, and the unit size.

Most guides you’ll find tell you to choose climate-controlled storage and leave it at that. This one takes a different approach. It tells you what actually damages period furniture in storage, why packing technique matters far more than climate in most cases, and what the five most common mistakes look like. If you’re a week out from a major renovation and you’ve got a house full of furniture you care about, this is the honest version of the answer.

What Actually Damages Antique Furniture In Storage

The single biggest misconception about storing antique furniture is that it needs controlled humidity. What it actually needs is stable humidity. That’s a different thing, and the distinction matters a great deal when you’re deciding where to store.

The humidity myth, and what really matters

Humidity fluctuation is the destroyer of period furniture, not humidity itself. Wood expands and contracts as moisture levels rise and fall. Over months, repeated cycles of that movement stress the joints, crack veneers, and lift marquetry. A stable environment at 40 to 60 percent relative humidity is adequate for the vast majority of period furniture without any active humidity control at all.

Most insulated UK self-storage buildings hit that band naturally year-round, because the building mass buffers the seasonal swings. The humidity doesn’t need to be low. It needs to be stable. The worry about self-storage being “too damp” is usually misplaced. What you should be asking is whether the building is properly insulated and whether there is any risk of actual damp ingress.

Active humidity control does matter in a small number of cases: marquetry with very fine veneers, certain keyboard instruments where the soundboard is under permanent tension, and extremely high-value pieces where any movement would be costly. For everything else, a well-built insulated building is sufficient.

Temperature, what is actually a problem

A stable 14 to 22 degrees Celsius is fine for period furniture. The risk is rapid temperature swings, which cause the same wood movement that humidity fluctuation causes. A warm afternoon followed by a cold night in a poorly insulated space is more damaging than a building that sits at a steady 10 degrees all winter.

Most converted-building self-storage maintains reasonable temperature stability without any active system, because the thermal mass of the structure does the work. You would want active climate control for genuinely extreme-value items, or for pieces stored in non-insulated buildings over a full winter. For a typical 4 to 9 month renovation stay in a solid insulated unit, temperature is rarely the thing that causes problems.

The actual destroyers: pests, damp ingress, and theft

Climate anxiety distracts people from the risks that actually damage furniture in storage. Mice and insects are the most common culprits. A gap under a door in an inadequate facility is all it takes, and the damage to upholstery or a wooden carcass can be considerable. Damp ingress from a poorly maintained building, a leaking roof, or ground water is another real hazard. Dust on upholstery becomes permanent if left undisturbed for months.

And then there is theft. This is where the unit-level security question matters most. At our UK market-town locations, every unit is individually alarmed. Nobody opens your walnut wardrobe’s door without the alarm triggering. That’s the security layer most people underestimate, and it matters more than a degree or two of temperature.

Most Wigwam locations are insulated converted buildings that sit comfortably within the 40 to 60 percent RH band without active humidity control. We’re honest about this because the honesty is the point. When we tell you that your furniture will be fine here, it’s because we’ve seen enough renovations to know what that looks like in practice. If your items genuinely warrant a specialist climate-controlled facility, we’ll say so.

Packing: The Difference Between Fine In Six Months And Damaged In Six Months

The removal van arrives with rolls of plastic sheeting and bubble wrap. For the journey itself, that’s fine. For six months in a storage unit, it’s the start of the problem.

What to wrap, and what not to

Upholstered furniture needs breathable furniture blankets. A velvet Victorian sofa wrapped in cling film for three months is going to trap whatever moisture is in the fabric, and that moisture has nowhere to go. Mould follows. Blankets allow air to move through the surface without letting dust in.

Polished wood is more forgiving than people think, but direct plastic contact on a lacquered or waxed finish can cause a reaction over time. The answer is a layer of acid-free tissue against the surface, then a furniture blanket over the top. The tissue creates a barrier between the finish and the textile fibres of the blanket, which can otherwise leave impressions.

Metal fittings and hardware should be dry before going in. Lightly oil iron or steel components if there’s any rust risk, then cover loosely. Don’t seal them in plastic.

Why bubble wrap is sometimes wrong

Bubble wrap earns its place in transit. It absorbs impact, protects glass and fragile surfaces for the hours they’re in a van. The problem is that it has no breathability at all. Sealed against a piece of furniture for months, it traps moisture between itself and the surface. On lacquered wood, the reaction can yellow or cloud the finish. On upholstery, it can deform the surface and create a humidity microclimate that encourages mould.

The transit-versus-storage distinction is the one removal companies don’t always explain. Their job is to get your furniture there without damage in transit. Yours is to protect it for the months it sits in the unit afterwards. Those two jobs need different materials.

The kit list: furniture blankets, acid-free tissue, what to buy

Furniture blankets are the workhorse. They’re cheap, reusable, breathable, and effective. You need more of them than you think. Most moves require two to three times the number of blankets people initially buy, because you’ll want to cover every surface and still have blankets left over to use as floor padding and stack-separators.

Acid-free tissue is for direct contact with finished wooden surfaces, silver, and gilded frames. It doesn’t react with finishes and doesn’t leave impressions.

Plastic sheeting has one legitimate job in storage: protecting the floor of the unit, under the furniture’s feet. Not over it. Under it.

Our team can advise on materials or point you towards a specialist supplier if your items are particularly valuable. Ask when you book.

The “no plastic on wood for months” rule

The specific damage mechanism is this: plastic film against a sealed wooden finish creates a small sealed environment. Any residual moisture in the finish, or any small fluctuation in the air around it, can’t escape. Over weeks, that moisture causes the finish to bloom or lift. Veneer edges can separate. On older polished surfaces where the finish is already fragile, the effect can be permanent.

Removal companies use plastic wrapping because it’s fast, it protects in transit, and their liability ends when the furniture reaches the door. Storage liability is yours. The fix is simple: blankets first, plastic only over the outside of the blanket where you genuinely need a dust or moisture shield.

The Five Mistakes We See Most Often

After supporting a good many period-property renovations at our UK market-town locations, the same five mistakes come up. They’re all avoidable once you know they exist.

Storing upholstery directly on concrete

Concrete breathes moisture. Not quickly, not dramatically, but over months it wicks dampness upward through anything resting on it. Upholstered furniture on a concrete floor for six months will absorb that moisture, particularly at the base and legs. The fix is straightforward: pallets, wooden boards, or four-inch plinths under anything upholstered or with wooden feet. This is one of the most common oversights we see, and one of the easiest to prevent.

Stacking too high, and what it does to drawers

Weight overhead puts pressure on the items below. For chests of drawers and cabinets, this pressure compresses the carcass and warps the drawer runners. The drawers then either jam or fall loose when you come to move back in. The rule of thumb is no more than three items stacked in a chest, and nothing heavy on top of anything with drawers. If you need height to use the unit efficiently, stack solid items, not drawer units.

Wrapping in plastic for months

Worth saying twice, because it’s common enough. People receive their furniture wrapped by the removal company and assume the wrapping stays on for storage. It shouldn’t, for the reasons above. When items arrive at the unit, the transit plastic comes off. Breathable materials go on instead. This is particularly important for upholstered items, where the plastic can trap humidity at the surface of the fabric.

Forgetting what is in the drawers

Furniture arrives with things still in it more often than you’d expect. Liquids left in a sideboard, documents filed in a bureau, small valuables left in a blanket chest. In transit, this is usually fine. In storage, a forgotten liquid bottle can leak over six months. Documents can yellow and stick. Jewellery or valuables shouldn’t be in a storage unit at all. Before the move, take five minutes to go through every drawer. Our team won’t open units to check, and we shouldn’t, so this one sits with you.

Under-sizing the unit and cramming

The instinct to save money on unit size is understandable. The result is furniture stacked tightly with no circulation, no access for mid-build retrieval, and compression across items that should have space between them. For period furniture, the right unit size includes room to walk along one side, and enough space that you’re not stacking items that shouldn’t be stacked. For valuable pieces, overestimate the size you need by one step. The extra cost is modest compared with the cost of compressed and cracked furniture.

We’ll gently mention any of these if we see them on arrival. Nobody takes it as criticism; it’s just what the job looks like in practice.

Insurance: What Is Actually Covered, And What Is Not

Most people assume their home contents insurance covers furniture while it’s in storage. Some policies do, but usually at a fraction of the replacement value, and with conditions worth understanding before anything moves.

Contents protection at Wigwam: how it works

Contents cover is mandatory at Wigwam. You can take our own contents-protection policy or prove your own cover at an equivalent level. Either way, cover is a condition of storage, not an optional extra.

The critical detail is declaring full replacement value. Under-insurance is settled proportionally. If you declare £10,000 for a collection worth £30,000 and suffer a loss, the settlement reflects that proportion. For period furniture, which can be expensive to replace, accurate declaration matters.

The unit-level security is the first line of protection: individually alarmed units, CCTV, secured perimeter. But insurance exists for the residual risk that security doesn’t eliminate.

A note on jurisdiction: contents insurance and liability are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you are based in Scotland or Northern Ireland, the legal framework differs in several respects. Please verify policy terms directly with your insurer, and consult a solicitor qualified in your jurisdiction for any specific legal questions. Nothing in this article constitutes insurance or legal advice.

Does your home contents insurance cover stored items?

Many home contents policies do include stored items, but at a capped amount. Commonly this is between £1,000 and £5,000, which is adequate for stored tools or a sofa from a budget furniture retailer. For a Georgian dining table, a Edwardian bureau bookcase, or a good Persian rug, it almost certainly isn’t.

Check your policy wording for the stored-items section specifically. The extension language typically refers to “temporarily removed” items, with a percentage of the total sum insured as the limit. The gap between that limit and the actual replacement value of your period furniture is where problems arise.

Scheduled cover for high-value antiques

When the replacement value of individual pieces exceeds the single-item limit of your existing policy, scheduled cover is the route. A scheduled item is listed individually in the policy at its appraised or agreed value, so the settlement is not subject to the standard cap.

The British Antique Furniture Restorers’ Association (BAFRA) can point you towards member firms with experience in conservation-grade valuation for insurance purposes. Specialist insurers offering stored-contents cover for antiques do exist, and a specialist policy alongside the Wigwam contents-protection cover is entirely possible. The two are not mutually exclusive. This is worth exploring if any single piece would be expensive and difficult to replace.

Special Cases: Pianos, Paintings, Mirrors, Clocks

The piano question comes up more than any other. Here is the honest answer for that, and for the other items that come up regularly.

Pianos: floor loading, orientation, acclimatisation

Upright pianos are manageable in most standard self-storage units. The floor loading at our units is typically adequate for an upright, but if you have a baby grand or grand piano, confirm with the team before booking, particularly for upper-floor units. Ground-floor placement with drive-up access is usually the right answer.

Wrap in heavy furniture blankets, not plastic. Uprights must be stored upright, never on their side. The instrument’s structure is designed for the strings to run vertically under tension. Storing on its side puts that tension across the wrong axis.

When the piano comes back out, allow it a few weeks to acclimatise to its new environment before calling the tuner. The timber and soundboard will adjust to the change in humidity and temperature, and tuning before that adjustment settles is a short-term fix at best. One tuning appointment a month or so after reinstallation is the practical approach.

Call us before arriving with a piano. It helps us make sure the right space is ready.

Paintings: temperature, orientation, and keeping them upright

Stable temperature is adequate for most oil paintings. The risk, as with furniture, is rapid fluctuation rather than any particular level. Store paintings away from external walls where possible, as these see the greatest temperature variation across seasons.

Light is not a significant factor in storage, which is positive. The painting will be in the dark. What matters is orientation: always vertical, never flat. Lying flat puts uneven pressure on the canvas from the frame, and over time this can cause distortion. If you have multiple paintings, store them vertically with a blanket or foam sheet between frames to prevent contact damage.

For very high-value or fragile works, specialist art storage with climate control may be warranted. The British Antique Furniture Restorers’ Association or a specialist art conservator can advise on where the threshold lies for your pieces.

Mirrors and glass: always vertical, always labelled

The rule is vertical. Lying flat, a mirror or framed glass panel is vulnerable to impact from items placed on top, and to thermal stress if the backing and glass expand at different rates. Vertical storage eliminates most of that risk.

Cardboard corner protectors on all four corners, then a furniture blanket secured around the whole piece. Write “GLASS” clearly on the outer surface of the blanket before it goes in. The team won’t be moving items inside your unit, but if you or a contractor are retrieving things mid-renovation, a visible label avoids the wrong piece being shifted without care.

Long-case clocks: disassembly is not optional

A long-case clock that goes into storage intact, with the weights and pendulum in place, may arrive with a damaged movement. The pendulum swings during transport, and without the clock running in its normal regulated state, the swing is uncontrolled. One sustained period of free pendulum movement in the back of a van can bend a suspension spring or damage the escapement.

Disassemble properly before any move. Remove the pendulum and wrap it separately. Remove the weights and pack them individually, labelled. Wrap the movement in acid-free tissue, then a blanket, separate from the case. The case itself can travel and store upright. When everything comes back together, a specialist clockmaker should regulate and restart the movement rather than attempting to do it from memory. This is not a difficult job for the right person, but it is an easy way to create an expensive problem if it’s skipped.

Ready to get a storage plan in place for your renovation? Get a quote at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk or find your nearest team at our UK market-town locations. If you have anything specialist, call us before you arrive.

Accessing Your Storage During The Renovation

At some point in the renovation, someone will need a specific item from storage and they will need it on a Tuesday morning before the plasterer arrives. This is not an exception. It happens in almost every renovation we support.

When contractors need access mid-build

The scenario is familiar. The bathroom tiler needs the mirror that’s been in storage since week one. The decorator wants to check the colour of the cornice against the sample. The joiner arrives to fit the kitchen and needs the handles that were wrapped and stored in week two.

Plan retrieval points into your build schedule when you can. Not with the precision of a project plan, but with awareness. Keep a simple inventory of what’s in the unit, even if it’s just a phone-photo record taken as you packed. Know roughly where things are positioned, which is another reason not to cram.

You can authorise other people to access your unit. Your project manager or a trusted contractor can fetch items without you needing to be there. Our sites are unmanned, which means access is fast and straightforward for anyone with authorisation, but it also means we cannot coordinate contractor access on your behalf or receive deliveries for you. If anything is being delivered to the unit, someone from your team must be present. We don’t sign for anything.

Smart entry: practical implications for renovations

Smart entry allows access between 6am and 10pm, seven days a week. There’s no office to call, no one to coordinate with, no dependency on opening hours. An early start on a Tuesday works as well as a Saturday afternoon.

For a project manager running a build schedule, this flexibility is genuinely useful. The access can be granted to multiple people, so your project manager can collect the right piece without waiting on you. The only firm rule is that access is for the account holder’s authorised contacts, not for couriers or unaccompanied deliveries.

What to store near the door, and what can go deep

Phase your packing to reflect when you’ll need things back. Items you’ll want in the first three months of the renovation should be accessible near the front of the unit. Items you won’t need until the finishing stage can go further in, stacked more securely. This sounds obvious, but under the pressure of a move it’s easy to load the van without thinking about retrieval order.

There’s a practical truth about renovation storage: you will always need something you thought you’d stored safely at the back. Building a small cache at home of genuine daily essentials avoids the retrieval trip for the thing you need at 8pm when the unit access window is still open but you’ve already changed out of your work clothes. Think in phases when you pack. It reduces retrieval trips and makes the mid-build reality much calmer.

The team can advise on unit layout for phased retrieval when you arrive. It’s a straightforward conversation that saves a lot of disruption later.

How Long Renovations Actually Take, And What That Means For Storage

UK architects and project managers estimate accurately. The renovation itself almost always runs longer than the estimate, typically by 30 to 50 percent, for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the professional involved.

Why timelines slip, and why it’s predictable

Planning permission delays and listed-building consent processes run to their own schedule. Contractor availability gaps open up between phases. Surprise finds in older buildings are not rare: damp behind a wall, wiring that pre-dates current standards, structural adjustments that weren’t visible until the builders opened things up. Material lead times for period-appropriate joinery or specialist glass can extend unexpectedly.

These are predictable as a category, even when the specifics are not. The value of building slack into your storage estimate is not that it costs more upfront. It’s that it removes the anxiety of watching an overrun build collide with a storage end date you’ve already committed to.

The case for monthly billing, not an annual commitment

Monthly billing means you are never paying for time after you have finished. If the renovation takes eight months instead of six, you extend by two months. If it takes five months instead of six, you leave a month early and get those unused days back.

The two-week minimum stay is the floor. Above that, you’re billed monthly, with no long-term commitment. Some customers find a mild usefulness in the monthly billing as a project discipline: the unit cost appearing on the statement each month is a quiet reminder that the build clock is running. For most people it’s simply the fairest structure for a timeline that nobody can fully predict. See our current pricing for current rates.

When you’re ready to leave, give us 14 days’ notice. Once you have vacated and the account is settled, the deposit is returned in full, less anything owed. That’s the full mechanism: two events, notice given, unit vacated and account settled, deposit back.

Unused days refunded when projects finish early

If the plasterer finishes three weeks ahead of schedule and you want to return the furniture early, the unused days are refunded. You booked for the time you needed, and you pay for the time you used. The deposit sits separately from the day-rate and is returned through the notice-and-vacate process described above.

This is set up the way it is because it’s what we would want as customers. Renovation timelines are genuinely unpredictable. The billing structure should reflect that, not punish it. Read the full terms at our terms and conditions.

Renovations slip. The billing structure means that slippage does not cost you more than it already costs you in time and disruption.

Talk To Us About Your Renovation

Every period-property renovation is different. The listed-building constraints, the Conservation Officer requirements, the contractor schedule that nobody controls entirely, the inherited furniture that carries more than monetary value. A conversation with the nearest Wigwam team gives you a practical plan for sizing, item-specific preparation, access logistics, and a realistic cost across the whole project timeline.

Here is what that plan is built around:

  • Insulated converted buildings, naturally climate-stable for the majority of period furniture without active control
  • Individually alarmed units, one alarm per unit, not one for the building
  • Smart entry 6am to 10pm, seven days
  • Monthly billing from a two-week minimum stay
  • Refundable deposit, returned after 14-day notice once you’ve vacated and the account is settled
  • Unused days refunded if you finish early
  • Multi-unit option for phased renovations or very large furniture inventories
  • A local team who knows the area, the building types, and the kind of items that come out of period properties

For customers in high-renovation-density locations, Wigwam Self Storage Bath is well placed for Georgian and Regency period properties throughout the city and the surrounding villages. Our other UK market-town locations cover a range of similar conservation areas and period-property concentrations.

If you’d like to understand costs, our pricing page sets out current rates. For contents cover, our contents-protection page explains the options. And if you have a piano, a long-case clock, or anything else that warrants a conversation before it arrives, the team will tell you exactly what preparation helps.

Get a renovation storage quote at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk or find your nearest location to speak to the local team.

Whatever the project, we’ve probably seen something like it. Good luck with it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I prove the value of antique pieces if I ever need to claim?

Document everything before it leaves the house, because a claim is far easier to settle when you can show what was stored and what it was worth. The single most useful thing you can do is photograph each significant piece from several angles in good light, including any maker’s marks, labels or signs of provenance, and note the dimensions. Keep those photographs with any receipts, auction records, or restoration invoices you already hold. For genuinely valuable pieces, a written valuation from a qualified appraiser, dated close to the storage period, is the strongest evidence there is.

This matters because of how cover works. The RSA Self Storage Customers’ Goods policy is settled against the value you declare, and under-insurance is settled in proportion, so an accurate, evidenced figure protects you twice: it sets the right premium and it removes the argument later. For the high-value end, the British Antique Furniture Restorers’ Association can point you to firms that do conservation-grade valuation for insurance purposes. We signpost the policy and the documentation discipline, but we do not give insurance or valuation advice, and we cannot tell you what your pieces are worth. That part sits with a qualified appraiser and your insurer. What we can tell you is that the inventory you build for insurance is the same one that makes mid-build retrieval easier, so it earns its keep twice over. Read the policy specifics on the contents-protection page before you settle on a declared figure.

What happens to the furniture if the renovation has to pause for months?

It simply stays in the unit, and the billing follows the pause rather than fighting it. Period renovations stall for all sorts of reasons outside your control: a listed-building consent that takes longer than anyone forecast, a structural surprise that needs a new engineer’s drawing, a specialist joiner with a three-month waiting list, or a funding gap that means the work waits until spring. None of that should cost you more in storage than the time itself already costs you.

Above the two-week minimum the unit rolls on month to month with no fixed end date, so a pause just means the unit continues until you are ready to bring everything back. When the project restarts and finishes, you give 14 days notice, vacate, and once the account is settled the deposit is returned along with any unused days. There is no penalty for a long stay and no surprise block billing. The one thing worth doing during a long pause is a periodic check of the unit, not because anything is likely to go wrong in a clean, dry, secure unit, but because it lets you confirm the furniture is sitting as you left it and gives you a chance to air anything you are slightly unsure about. Access is by smart entry from 6am to 10pm, seven days a week, so dropping in to check costs you nothing but the trip. The furniture waits as long as the building works do.

Can heavy pieces go in an upper-floor unit, or do they need ground level?

It depends on the piece and the specific site, which is exactly why this is a conversation to have before you arrive rather than a question to answer in a vague guide. A long-case clock case, a chest of drawers, most chairs and tables and wardrobes are manageable at any level. The pieces that need a conversation are the genuinely heavy ones: a cast-iron range, a large safe, a marble-topped washstand, a stone garden ornament, or a piano. As the body of this article notes, an upright piano is usually fine but a baby grand or grand needs confirming, and ground-floor placement with drive-up access is generally the right answer for serious weight.

Floor loading and the access route both matter. A piece that is heavy and also tall or awkward to turn can be harder to get into an upper-floor unit than its weight alone suggests, because of corridors, doorways and any lift. The honest approach is to call the local team before the removal day with a list of your heaviest and most awkward items and their rough weights and dimensions. They can tell you which units suit and reserve the right space, so the removal crew is not improvising on the day. Sites are unmanned for day-to-day access, but sizing and placement is exactly the kind of practical question the team handles before you book. Getting it right beforehand avoids the worst outcome, which is a heavy antique stuck halfway down a corridor with a crew on the clock.

Is there a fire risk to storing furniture, and what should I keep out of the unit?

A clean, dry, secure unit is a low-risk environment for furniture, and the simplest way to keep it that way is to be careful about what you put in. The things that do not belong in any storage unit are the obvious hazards: petrol, paraffin, gas canisters, paint thinners, fireworks, and anything flammable, corrosive or under pressure. During a renovation these are easy to mix up with the furniture, because the garage and the workshop are being cleared at the same time. Keep the decorating and building materials separate from the stored contents and do not let solvent tins travel in with the dining chairs.

Beyond that, go through every drawer and cupboard before the move, which the body of this article flags as one of the five common mistakes for a different reason. A forgotten bottle of spirits in a sideboard or an old tin of polish in a cabinet is both a leak risk and a fire-safety one. Documents, candles, and any battery-powered items are also better kept out. For the furniture itself, the breathable-blanket approach recommended above is the right one: no sealed plastic creating little trapped microclimates. If you are storing genuinely valuable or irreplaceable pieces, contents cover is mandatory in any case, so the residual risk that good housekeeping does not eliminate is the thing the insurance is there for. We do not give fire-safety or insurance advice beyond this, but the rule of thumb is straightforward: furniture and household goods in, hazardous and flammable materials out.

Should I store everything off-site, or keep some pieces in a sealed room at home?

For most period renovations, storing the good furniture off-site is the safer choice, but a sealed-room approach can work for items you genuinely cannot move or do not want to. The case for off-site storage is simple: a renovation is a building site, with dust, footfall, trades coming and going, and a real risk of accidental damage to anything left in the way. A clean, dry, secure unit removes the furniture from all of that, and individually alarmed units mean it is secure while the house is open to contractors. The body of this article covers why packing technique protects the pieces while they wait.

A sealed room at home can be reasonable for very large or built-in pieces, or where the work is confined to one part of the house and you can genuinely close off the rest. The risks to weigh are dust ingress, the temptation for the room to become a dumping ground for tools, and the fact that a “finished” room often gets opened up again when the project changes scope. If you do keep pieces at home, treat them as you would in storage: breathable covers not sealed plastic, off the floor, away from external walls. Many people end up doing both, the irreplaceable and the in-the-way pieces go to the unit, and the largest fixed items stay home under cover. The local team can help you size a unit for whatever you decide to move out, and the quote tool will give you a figure. Whichever you choose, decide it before the trades arrive, not once the dust is already settling on the walnut.

Self Storage For Landlords Furniture Between Tenancies

Posted on by Simon Fothergill

Decorators booked Thursday, but the old tenant’s furniture is still there?

The tenant has just handed back the keys. You walk in and there it is: the three-seater sofa pushed against the wall, the dining table that seats four, a wardrobe the incoming tenant never asked for, a bed frame and a mattress that has seen better days. The decorators are booked for Thursday. The gas engineer is coming Friday. And right now, none of them have room to work.

This is where most landlord articles skip ahead to the brochure. We will not. The furniture is the problem that stops everything else starting, and sorting it quickly is the whole job. If it can go somewhere safe and nearby for a few weeks, the rest of the turnaround follows.

That is exactly what local self storage is for. Clean, dry and secure, near the property, with a minimum stay short enough to fit a quick void. Here is how it works in practice.

Why landlords move furniture out between tenancies

Furniture between tenants does three things: it slows down the contractors, it complicates viewings, and it reminds an incoming tenant of the previous one. Moving it out is not always necessary, but when it is, a local storage unit makes the window between lets work.

Clearing the property for cleaning, painting and safety checks

A furnished property mid-void is a sequence of obstacles. The deep clean needs clear floor space. The decorators want nothing near the skirting boards. The gas safe engineer needs access to every appliance. The electrical condition report requires unobstructed access to every socket and consumer unit. None of that happens efficiently around a dining table and four chairs.

Moving the furniture into a local unit at the start of the void is not extra work. It is the thing that lets every other job run on schedule. Contractors book slots, not open-ended days; a clear property lets them arrive, work and leave, rather than waiting for clearance or working round obstacles that should not be there.

When an incoming tenant wants the property unfurnished

Furnished lets attract some tenants and put others off. When the new tenant wants to bring their own things, or the market in your town has shifted toward unfurnished lets, good furniture ends up in the way. Not because it is worthless, but because it does not fit the next arrangement.

Skipping to the skip is the wrong instinct. The furniture you chose and maintained has value, and a sofa that was bought to last a decade should not end up at the tip because of a three-week gap in occupancy. A local storage unit holds it between arrangements: the new tenant moves in, the flat is clear, and the furniture waits for the next let, a different property in your portfolio, or a considered sale.

Staging and viewings without the previous tenant’s belongings

An empty property that is freshly painted and well-lit photographs better and shows better than one full of someone else’s furniture, even good furniture. Prospective tenants are looking for somewhere to put their own lives, not picking up a domestic interior that already has a story. A clear property, with the previous tenant’s furniture stored locally, is simply easier to let faster.

What a void costs you, and where storage helps

Every day between tenants is a day without rent. A short, planned use of local storage can cut that gap by letting the work happen faster, with decorators, safety checks and viewings running without furniture in the way.

Turning the property around faster

The direct link is straightforward. A furnished flat mid-void takes longer to clean, longer to paint and longer to show than a cleared one. When the furniture comes out on day one, the contractors can come in immediately. When the contractors finish quickly, the property photographs well and goes on the market. When viewings happen in a clear, freshly turned space, the time to a signed tenancy shortens.

A two-week minimum stay at your nearest Wigwam location fits a quick turnaround. The furniture goes in, the work happens, the new tenant signs, and the furniture comes back or stays in storage for the next requirement. The minimum stay is the exact window a fast void needs: no three-month contract, no guessing, no paying for time you do not use.

For the cost of the unit, the pricing reference is at wigwamstorage.co.uk/how-much-is-self-storage-in-the-uk. Unit rates vary by size and location; a quote gives the specific figure for your nearest site.

The two-week minimum and what it means for the maths

The two-week minimum stay is the number that makes self storage work for a landlord void. Most self storage contracts run to a month as a floor. Wigwam’s is a fortnight, which matches the realistic timeline of a quick repaint-and-relet. If the job runs shorter than expected, unused days are refunded. If it runs a little longer, you simply stay on.

There is a refundable deposit to book the unit, returned to you after the 14-day notice period once you have vacated and the account is settled. Nothing is trapped. The full deposit comes back, less anything owed. That is the maths your accountant needs to see on the quote: a deposit that is not a cost, a daily rate for a defined window, and a refund of whatever days you do not use.

Prices are on the pricing page. There are no headline rates on this page; a quote from quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk gives you the specific figure for your nearest Wigwam location and the size you need.

What size unit for a flat or house of furniture

The question most landlords ask first is: will it all fit? The short answer is yes, with the right size unit. Here is a plain guide in furniture terms, not cubic feet.

A one-bed flat or studio’s furniture

A typical one-bed flat or studio, furnished for letting, will usually have a double bed and mattress, a wardrobe, a small chest of drawers, a two or three-seater sofa, a coffee table and a compact dining set. That kind of load fits comfortably in a small to medium unit. If you have a few boxes of soft furnishings and bedding on top, allow a little more.

The practical test: think about whether you could fit the contents of that flat into a small room or a large bedroom. If yes, a smaller unit works. If it would overflow, step up.

A two or three-bed house of furniture

A furnished two or three-bed house brings more volume: two or three bed frames, two or three mattresses, a double wardrobe, a larger sofa or sofa set, a full dining table with chairs, and likely side tables, bedside tables and accumulated soft furnishings. That needs a medium to large unit.

The rule of thumb: it is always better to err on the larger side. A unit that is three-quarters full is easier to work in and less stressful than one that is packed to the ceiling. If you are unsure, the quote tool shows available sizes at your nearest location.

Sizing tip: book a size up if you are unsure

If you are hovering between two sizes, take the bigger one. Furniture packs less efficiently than you expect, particularly sofas, bed frames and anything that cannot be disassembled. A mattress on its side takes more floor space than it looks. An extra foot of room in the unit saves time and stress on the day.

A quote from quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk takes a few minutes and shows you what sizes are available at your nearest Wigwam location, with current availability. It is the fastest way to confirm the unit before you book a removals firm.

Not sure what size you need? A quote at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk shows the options at your nearest Wigwam location and takes a few minutes to complete.

Preparing furniture for storage

A few hours of preparation makes a real difference to how furniture comes out the other end. These are the things that actually matter.

Cleaning, wrapping and stacking

Start with the obvious: clean everything before it goes in. A mattress that goes in clean comes out clean. A sofa that has dried before wrapping does not carry moisture in. Our units are clean, dry and secure, and furniture that is properly prepared stores well in them.

For mattresses, a mattress bag is worth using. They are inexpensive and keep the fabric from picking up dust. For upholstered sofas and chairs, a breathable sofa cover does the same job. For wooden furniture, blanket wrap around table edges and chair legs prevents scratches in transit and in the unit.

Flat-pack what you can. A bed frame that comes apart stores in a fraction of the space of one that does not. Keep the bolts and fittings in a labelled bag taped to the frame. You will thank yourself when it comes back out.

Stack thoughtfully. Heavy items on the bottom, lighter items on top. Leave a clear path to anything you might need to access during the void.

What not to store

Wigwam units are for household and business goods. There is a clear scope to that: no vehicles, no caravans, no motorhomes, no boats. No flammable or hazardous materials, no perishables. If you have items that fall outside household goods, the terms and conditions set out the full list of what cannot be stored.

This is a unit you control and access yourself. Wigwam staff do not handle, catalogue or inventory your goods. What goes in is yours to manage.

Access on your schedule: 6am to 10pm by smart entry

Smart entry gives you access to the site from 6am to 10pm, seven days a week. That is early enough for a contractor starting at first light and late enough for an evening drop-off after a long day. It is not 24-hour access; plan around that.

The sites are unmanned. You, or a contractor from your own business, handles your goods. If a removals firm or courier is making a delivery to your unit, someone from your own side needs to be present to receive it. Wigwam does not sign for deliveries and does not take responsibility for goods left at reception or at the unit entrance. That is worth making clear to your removals firm or van hire before the day.

Insurance for stored landlord furniture

Your furniture is an investment. Whether it is covered while it is in storage depends on whether you arrange it.

The RSA contents protection policy available at Wigwam

Wigwam offers the RSA “Self Storage Customers’ Goods” policy, which you can opt into at the point of booking. If you already have your own contents cover that extends to goods in storage, you can provide proof of that instead. One or the other is required; cover is not optional.

The RSA policy is New-for-Old. That means if a covered item is lost or damaged in a covered event, the settlement is based on what it would cost to replace it new, not its depreciated value. To make that work in your favour, you need to declare the full replacement value of everything in the unit. Under-insurance is settled in proportion, which means if you declare half the value and suffer a loss, the payout is half of what you would otherwise receive.

Full details of the available cover are at wigwamstorage.co.uk/contents-protection/.

Jurisdiction note: Insurance terms, including what constitutes forcible entry for a theft claim and the scope of atmospheric or climatic damage exclusions, may operate differently in Scotland and Northern Ireland. If you have any complex insurance questions, or questions about your landlord obligations during a void period, speak to your own broker or solicitor. This page does not give legal or financial advice.

Honest limits of the policy

A few things worth knowing before you rely on the cover. There is a GBP 50 excess on claims. Theft claims require evidence of forcible entry to the unit; there is no cover for unexplained disappearance. Atmospheric or climatic damage is excluded from the policy.

These are not unusual exclusions. They are the standard terms for this kind of cover. State them plainly, read the policy wording, and if you have questions about whether a specific item or scenario is covered, speak to your insurer. The contents protection page has the policy details; this page gives you the headlines only.

Short stays, long voids and student lets

Not all voids are the same length. A quick repaint takes two to three weeks. A full refurbishment might run two to three months. Student let cycles mean the same furniture moves out every July and comes back every September. Wigwam works for all of them.

The quick turnaround

Two weeks is the minimum stay. That is the floor, not the standard. For a quick repaint and relet, two to four weeks is a realistic window: the furniture goes in, the contractors work, the property is let, the furniture comes back or stays on.

If you leave before the end of the month you paid for, unused days are refunded. The refundable deposit comes back after the 14-day notice period, once you have vacated the unit and the account is settled. The financial arrangement is clean: you pay for the time you use, and the deposit is returned rather than absorbed.

Longer voids and refurbishments

Some voids are not quick. A full kitchen and bathroom renovation might hold for eight to ten weeks. A property taken off the market for significant structural work might need longer still. The unit stays as long as you need it; there is no requirement to commit to a long contract upfront. The arrangement rolls month to month, with a 14-day notice when you are ready to leave.

For a landlord running a larger project, that flexibility is the point. You are not locked into a fixed term while the building work runs over, and you are not paying a penalty for leaving when the project finishes ahead of schedule.

Student let cycles

Landlords with properties near universities often run an annual furniture rotation. The furnished flat empties in July when the tenants graduate, sits through a summer deep clean and repaint, and needs to be clear for viewings before September’s incoming cohort signs. The furniture needs to be out for six to eight weeks, reliably, every year.

A local Wigwam unit near the property turns this into a repeatable workflow rather than a recurring problem. The furniture goes in each July, the flat gets turned around, and it comes back each September. Find your nearest Wigwam location to see whether there is a site convenient for your student let portfolio.

Where Wigwam stores landlord furniture

Wigwam operates self storage units across our UK market-town locations. If you own rental properties in any of these towns, there is likely a Wigwam site within a short drive of your portfolio.

Named market-town locations

Wigwam Self Storage Bath serves landlords across Bath Somerset, a university city with a strong furnished-let market and a regular student cycle. Wigwam Self Storage Lincoln covers Lincoln Lincolnshire, where landlords near the university and the cathedral quarter frequently use local storage to turn furnished properties between lets.

Beyond Bath and Lincoln, Wigwam has locations serving Reading Berkshire, Cheltenham Gloucestershire, Warminster Wiltshire, Leatherhead Surrey and Marlow Buckinghamshire, among others. For a full list and to find the site nearest to your property, the locations hub is the place to start.

A landlord with properties in more than one town

If your portfolio spans several market towns, having a Wigwam nearby in more than one of them is a practical advantage over using a national-average provider who cannot name the streets. The same process, the same deposit structure, the same access hours: a consistent workflow wherever your properties are. Check the locations hub to see which of your towns are covered.

Getting started with a quote

When you are ready to look at options for your nearest Wigwam, a quote is the fastest way to see what is available, what sizes are at that site and what the cost looks like.

What to have ready for the quote

Three things make the quote straightforward. First, an idea of how much furniture you are moving: one-bed flat, two-bed house, or somewhere in between. Second, your preferred location or nearest town. Third, an approximate move-in date so the system can show you current availability. That is it.

Pricing reference and next steps

Unit rates vary by size and location. This page does not quote prices; for a clear explanation of how UK self storage cost is worked out, the reference is at wigwamstorage.co.uk/how-much-is-self-storage-in-the-uk. For the specific cost at your nearest site, in the size that fits your furniture, the quote tool is the right next step.

The deposit, the notice period and getting it back

The deposit is refundable. It is returned to you after the 14-day notice period, once you have vacated the unit and the account is settled, less anything owed. Unused days are refunded if you leave before the end of the period you have paid for. There are no hidden retention fees.

The full terms are at wigwamstorage.co.uk/terms-conditions/. Worth a read before you book, particularly the section on what can and cannot be stored, and the notice and deposit terms in plain language.

When you are ready to get a quote, head to quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk and tell us your nearest Wigwam market town. It takes a few minutes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I store a former tenant’s abandoned belongings in the unit while I follow the legal process?

You can physically store them, but the legal handling of goods a tenant has left behind is a matter for your own advice, not something Wigwam can guide you on. The unit gives you somewhere clean, dry and secure to put the items so you can get the property turned around, which is often the practical need: you cannot relet around someone else’s furniture, and you cannot simply skip it without risk.

The important boundary is this. The Torts (Interference with Goods) Act sets out notice requirements and timescales a landlord must follow before disposing of goods left by a former tenant, and getting that wrong can expose you to a claim. Wigwam’s support team handles storage questions, sizing, access, pricing, booking, and cannot advise you on the abandonment process or the notices you need to serve. That is squarely a question for a solicitor or your letting agent.

What the unit does is buy you the time and the secure space to do it properly. You move the goods out on day one so the void can proceed, you keep them safe and undamaged while you serve the correct notices, and you make a considered decision at the end rather than a rushed one. Keep an inventory and some dated photographs of what you stored. The two-week minimum and rolling terms mean you are not locked in for longer than the process takes, and the refundable deposit comes back when you give 14 days’ notice, vacate and settle the account.

Is storage between tenancies a tax-deductible expense for a landlord?

In principle, storage taken wholly for the purpose of letting a property is the kind of running cost landlords commonly treat as an allowable expense, but how it applies to your specific situation is a question for your accountant, not for us. Wigwam can give you a clear, itemised quote and an invoice that shows exactly what you paid and over what period, which is what your accountant will want to see. We do not give tax or financial advice.

What helps at the bookkeeping end is the way the costs break down. There is a daily rate for the unit over a defined window, so the charge maps cleanly onto the void period it relates to. Unused days are refunded if you leave before the end of a paid period, which keeps the figure tied to actual use. And the deposit is genuinely a deposit: it is returned after your 14-day notice once you have vacated and the account is settled, so it is not a sunk cost sitting on your books.

A few practical things to keep for your records: the invoice, the dates the unit covered, and a note linking the storage to the specific property and tenancy turnaround. If you run a portfolio across several towns and use more than one Wigwam site, keep them separated by property. For anything about how to claim, what is allowable against rental income, or how it interacts with your wider position, speak to your accountant. The full terms, including the deposit and notice arrangements, are at wigwamstorage.co.uk/terms-conditions/.

Can I give my letting agent or a contractor access to the unit without me being there?

Yes, within limits, because the site is unmanned and access runs on smart entry rather than a key you hand over at a desk. The practical reality is that whoever needs to get in needs the smart-entry access for the unit. Many landlords running voids at arm’s length set this up so a trusted agent or a regular contractor can let themselves in to drop off or collect furniture without the landlord driving over each time.

Two things are worth being clear about. First, the access is yours to control and yours to manage responsibly: anyone you give it to is acting on your behalf, and the goods in the unit remain your responsibility. Second, the unmanned-site rule still applies to deliveries. If a removals firm or courier is bringing furniture to the unit, someone, you, your agent, or your contractor, has to be physically present with access to receive it. Wigwam does not sign for deliveries, hold spare keys, or accept goods left at the unit entrance.

For a landlord juggling a turnaround remotely, this tends to work well. You brief your agent or contractor, they hold the access for the duration of the void, and the furniture moves in and out on the schedule the works dictate, within the 6am to 10pm window, seven days a week. When the job is done, you reset the access and give your 14-day notice. Just make sure anyone receiving a delivery on your behalf knows the day and time, because an empty site means a wasted courier run.

Will one unit cover two of my properties going void at the same time?

It can, if the combined furniture fits and you are comfortable mixing two properties’ contents in one space, but in practice most landlords find it cleaner to think carefully before doing it. A single medium-to-large unit will hold the furniture of, say, two one-bed flats if it is packed well. The saving is real: one unit, one deposit, one set of access details.

The complication is sorting it back out. When the first property relets and you need its furniture back, you do not want to be unstacking the second property’s wardrobe to reach it. If you do share a unit across two voids, load with the move-back-out order in mind: the furniture you will need first goes nearest the door, clearly labelled by property, with a path kept clear to it. Keep a simple list of what belongs to which address.

The alternative is two smaller units, which costs a little more but keeps each property’s contents self-contained and independently accessible. That is often the better call if the two voids are on different timescales, for example a quick repaint at one and a longer refurbishment at the other. If you are weighing it up, get a quote for both options at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk; the tool shows available sizes at your nearest location so you can compare one larger unit against two smaller ones before you commit. Either way, the two-week minimum and refundable deposit apply per unit.

What if the void runs over and I need the unit for several months unexpectedly?

You simply stay on, with no penalty and no renegotiation. The arrangement rolls month to month after the two-week minimum, so a void that turns from a quick repaint into a full refurbishment does not catch you out. There is no fixed term you breached and no fee for keeping the unit longer than you first guessed. When the job is finally done, you give 14 days’ notice, clear the unit, and the deposit is returned once the account is settled.

This is the difference that matters for a landlord. National operators often start at a one-month or three-month minimum, which means a short void costs you for time you do not use and a long one locks you into a term you have to actively exit. The Wigwam structure runs the other way: a genuinely short minimum, then rolling, so the unit stretches to fit the job rather than the job being forced to fit the contract.

One honest note on the minimum stay and the notice period, because landlords sometimes assume they compound. They do not. The two-week minimum is simply the shortest period you can take a unit for. The 14-day notice is what you give when you decide to leave. They are separate things, not added together. So a project that overruns just continues at the daily rate until you call time on it. Keep the invoices tied to the property for your records, and if the cost over a long refurbishment matters for your budgeting, the pricing reference explains how the rate is worked out.

Self Storage For Your Contents During Insurance Repairs

Posted on by Simon Fothergill

Loss adjuster’s been, and the house has to be empty before the works?

Nobody plans for the call from the loss adjuster. One day you are living normally, and the next you have a contractor’s start date, a temporary accommodation booking, and a house full of furniture that needs to be somewhere else before the works begin. It is a lot to organise when you did not choose any of it.

You do not need a complicated solution. You need somewhere clean, dry and secure, near enough that you can get to things when you need them, with terms that flex when the contractor’s timeline shifts. That is exactly what a Wigwam unit is for.

We have helped households through escape-of-water claims, fire damage decants and flood clearances. The pattern is always the same: the adjuster visits, the contractor names a start date, and suddenly you have two weeks to move a household somewhere safe. Here is how it works.

If you need a unit quickly, here is where to start:

When the adjuster says your contents have to move

Most people searching for storage during a home repair are not doing it by choice. The claim has already been accepted, the contractor has a schedule, and the contents need to go somewhere before any of the real work can start. If that is where you are, you are in the right place.

The four most common decant triggers

Escape of water is the most common reason UK households end up needing temporary storage mid-repair. A burst pipe in the loft, a leaking appliance, a slow drip behind the kitchen units that has been sitting unnoticed for months. The damage spreads faster than people expect, and drying out a property can take six weeks or more before plastering can begin.

Fire damage, flood ingress and subsidence remediation each follow the same basic pattern: the structural work cannot begin until the space is clear, and that means the contents have to go. These are not planned moves. They are emergency decants, and the storage solution needs to be available quickly and on terms that suit an open-ended timeline.

This page is written for that situation specifically, not for planned home renovations. If you are planning a kitchen refit or extension and want storage guidance for that, a separate guide covers it.

Staying in part of the house or insurer-arranged accommodation

It makes no practical difference to how a Wigwam unit works. Some households stay in one habitable room while works happen in another section of the property. Others are placed in a hotel or short-let by their insurer while the full property is unavailable. In both cases, you still need somewhere off-site to put the contents.

Smart entry runs from 6am to 10pm, seven days a week. That means you can get in before the contractors arrive, retrieve something mid-afternoon, or collect what you need for the weekend without any of it depending on office hours or staff being present. Your things stay accessible without getting in the way of the repair schedule.

How a Wigwam unit works for a home repair decant

A Wigwam unit is straightforward. You take the space you need, you pay for the time you use, and you access it on your own terms within the access window. There are no surprises in the terms.

Clean, dry and secure, individually alarmed

The verified claim is clean, dry and secure. Every unit is individually alarmed. That matters for a claim situation, because damaged contents are often already stressed before they go into storage, and the last thing you want is secondary damage from a damp or poorly maintained unit.

Wigwam does not offer climate-controlled or temperature-regulated units. If you have damp-affected contents, the priority is to get them properly dry before they go into any sealed storage space. Trapped moisture causes secondary damage regardless of the unit quality. The packing section below covers this.

Smart entry, 6am to 10pm, seven days

Smart entry means you access your unit using your own access code or key fob. There is no dependency on staff being on site, because our sites are unmanned. You are not waiting for someone to unlock a gate or sign you in.

The access window is 6am to 10pm, seven days a week. That is not 24-hour, and the terms page makes that clear. For most claim situations it is more than enough: you can be in before the contractors arrive in the morning, or collect what you need in the evening after the working day is done. Your goods are yours, in a space you control.

Choosing a unit size

Unit sizes run from small lockers up to room-sized spaces that can hold the full contents of a large property. The right size depends on how much you are moving and for how long.

As a rough orientation: a typical two-bedroom house fills something in the region of a 50 to 75 square foot unit; a three-bedroom house often needs 75 to 100 square feet or more, depending on how much furniture and how many boxes you are working with. These figures vary, and the quote tool will give you a firmer steer based on what you tell it.

We do not quote prices on this page. For current pricing by unit size, visit our pricing page. A sizing guide is also available there to help you work out what you need before you commit.

How long will you need it, and what the two-week minimum means

The two-week minimum is not a lock-in; it is the floor. You can stay as long as the repair takes, rolling week by week, without committing to a fixed end date at the outset. For a claim situation where the contractor’s schedule is not fully in your hands, that is exactly what you need.

Repair timelines run long

Escape-of-water claims are the most instructive example. A burst pipe creates visible damage quickly, but the drying process takes far longer than most people expect. Structural drying, replastering, and redecoration each add weeks to the timeline, and insurers typically will not authorise sign-off until the moisture readings are right. Six to twelve weeks is common. Months are not unusual for significant damage.

The two-week minimum is honest about the floor, and there is no upper ceiling beyond your rolling notice period. If the contractor’s schedule moves, your storage terms move with it. You do not have to renegotiate, re-sign, or pay penalties because the repair took longer than the original estimate.

If the repairs finish early

Unused days are refunded if you leave before your paid period ends. Give your 14-day notice, vacate the unit, settle the account, and the refundable deposit comes back to you once everything is cleared. There is no hidden exit cost.

The full conditions are on the terms and conditions page. Read them before you book if you want the detail, but the short version is: you pay for what you actually use, and the deposit is yours to get back.

Will your contents be insured once they leave the house

This is the question that matters most and gets the least honest answer on most storage and insurance pages. The direct answer is: your home contents policy may not cover your goods once they leave the insured address. You need to check before anything moves.

Why your home contents policy may not cover goods in storage

Most UK home contents policies cover your belongings at the insured address. Some extend cover to goods in transit in a removal van, but very few extend automatically to a self-storage unit. This is standard across the industry, not something unique to Wigwam or any single insurer.

The right step is to contact your home contents insurer directly and confirm whether your policy covers goods placed in third-party storage, and if so under what conditions. Do not assume. Standard contents insurance rarely covers items in storage, and that matches what we see from the households who come to us mid-claim.

One more note on jurisdiction: this general position applies to England and Wales. Policy wordings in Scotland and Northern Ireland may differ. If you are in Scotland or Northern Ireland, confirm cover directly with your insurer and, if you have any doubt about your legal position, speak to a solicitor qualified in your jurisdiction.

Wigwam’s RSA goods-in-storage policy

Contents cover is mandatory at Wigwam. You either take Wigwam’s policy or prove that your own cover is adequate.

The Wigwam policy is underwritten by RSA under the “Self Storage Customers’ Goods” scheme. It operates on a New-for-Old basis, with a GBP 50 excess per claim. For full details of what is and is not covered, visit the contents protection page.

If you believe your existing home contents policy or a separate policy covers your goods in storage, you can opt out of the Wigwam policy by providing evidence of your own cover. Your insurer or broker can confirm what documentation they can provide.

Declaring the full replacement value

This is the single most important practical point on this page. When you take out the RSA policy, you must declare the full replacement value of everything you are putting into storage. Not the original purchase price, not a rough estimate. The full cost of replacing each item new today.

If you under-declare and need to make a claim, the settlement is proportional to the declared value, not the actual value. In plain terms: if you declare half the true value and suffer a total loss, you will recover roughly half of what the goods were worth. Declare accurately.

The contents protection page has more detail, and your own broker or insurer can advise you on valuation if you are unsure. Wigwam can signpost you to the right information; we cannot give insurance advice.

What the policy does not cover

Two exclusions to be clear about:

Atmospheric or climatic damage is excluded. If moisture, condensation or temperature variation damages your goods, that is not covered under the RSA goods-in-storage policy. This is why damp-affected items must be fully dry before going into storage.

Theft is covered only after forcible entry. If goods are taken without signs of forced entry to the unit, the policy does not respond.

These are standard exclusions and the policy wording will state them clearly. If you have questions about whether a specific scenario is covered, read the full policy wording available on the contents protection page or speak to your broker.

Ready to confirm your unit? A quote takes a few minutes and there is no commitment at that stage.

Get a quote at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk

What storage costs, and whether your insurer may pay

Storage costs during a home repair are a real expense, and some insurers will cover them as part of the claim. The right question is: will yours?

How Wigwam storage is priced

Prices depend on the unit size and how long you need it. We do not quote figures on this page because the right number for your situation depends on what you are storing and where you are. The pricing page has current rates by unit size, and the quote tool gives you a firm figure based on your specific requirements.

The RSA contents protection premium is separate and linked to the declared value of your goods. The contents protection page covers that.

Asking your insurer to cover the storage cost

Some insurers treat reasonable storage costs as part of a contents or buildings claim, particularly where the storage is directly caused by the insured event. It is not automatic, and it is not guaranteed, but it is worth asking.

The critical step is to get authorisation before you incur the cost, where that is possible. Speak to your loss adjuster or insurer directly and ask whether storage costs are covered under your policy. Keep every receipt and every invoice. Wigwam can provide a clear invoice for your claim file.

Do not assume that storage is covered because the insurer has authorised the repair. Those are separate questions.

If your insurer disputes the storage cost and you believe it is a reasonable consequence of the claim, the Financial Conduct Authority provides guidance on the complaints process. Your insurer’s own complaints procedure is the first step.

Getting your things to a Wigwam unit

Wigwam sites are unmanned. That is worth saying plainly before moving day, so there are no surprises.

You arrange the move

The move in and out of your unit is yours to organise. We do not offer a collection or delivery service from your home. Most households use a removal firm, hire a van, or get help from family. The advantage of arranging it yourself is that nobody else handles your belongings. You control the packing, the loading and the timing.

If you are using a removal firm, let them know the site is unmanned so they can plan accordingly. Access runs from 6am to 10pm; make sure your booking fits within that window.

Deliveries and couriers to the site

If a courier or third party needs to deliver something to your unit, someone from your side must be present to receive it. Wigwam staff are not on site to sign for deliveries, accept parcels, or hold items on your behalf. If the contractor needs to deliver materials or return items to your unit while you are not there, that needs to be planned in advance with someone from your household or business available to receive.

Packing your contents before they go in

For a post-damage decant, packing carefully pays off twice: it protects your goods during the move, and it makes retrieval mid-repair much simpler when you need to find something specific.

A few practical points:

Damp-affected items must be fully dry before they go into a sealed unit. Moisture trapped with furniture, carpets or soft furnishings causes secondary mould damage that compounds the original loss. If in doubt, allow more drying time.

Label boxes clearly by room and contents, not just “kitchen” or “bedroom 2”. You will be retrieving specific things over a period of weeks, and accurate labelling saves significant time.

Keep important documents, prescription medicines and anything you will definitely need in the first days of temporary accommodation separate and accessible, not at the bottom of a stack of boxes.

Wrap fragile items individually. A repair decant is not a planned house move, and the pace tends to be faster than ideal. Take the extra few minutes on anything breakable.

For fuller guidance on packing household contents for storage, our general packing guides cover this in more detail.

Find a Wigwam location near you

We have locations across UK market towns, and the chances are there is one within a reasonable distance of your home. Market-town locations mean practical access on both moving day and the many times you need to collect or return something during the repair.

Wigwam Self Storage Bath and Wigwam Self Storage Lincoln are two examples with their own location pages. We have locations across the country including market towns in the Home Counties, the Midlands and the south-west.

To find your nearest location, visit the locations hub and select your area.

Get a quote for your insurance repair storage

The unit is available. The terms are what they say they are. A quote takes a few minutes and does not commit you to anything.

Two things worth repeating before you click: the deposit is refundable, returned once you have given your 14-day notice, vacated, and settled the account. And if the repairs finish earlier than expected, unused days are refunded. You pay for what you actually need.

Get a quote at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk

Frequently Asked Questions

Can my contractor or the restoration firm collect items from my unit while I am not there?

No, not on their own. Our sites are unmanned, and that shapes the answer. There is no one at the site to let a contractor in, to verify who they are, or to hand over your goods. If a restoration firm or builder needs to take something out of your unit, someone from your own side has to be present to grant access through smart entry and oversee what leaves. That someone can be you, a partner, an adult family member, or anyone you trust to act for you, but it has to be a person from your side, not a member of Wigwam staff.

This catches people out during a repair more than at any other time, because the rhythm of a claim often involves contractors wanting to “pop back for the rest of the units” or collect salvaged items mid-job. The practical fix is to treat every access by a third party as an appointment you attend. Agree a time, meet them at the unit, let them in, and lock up afterwards. If you genuinely cannot be there, hand your access to a named person you trust and tell them which boxes are going. Do not give your smart entry credentials to a contractor you have known for a week and assume it will be fine. Your goods, your access, your call on who is in the unit. That control is part of what keeps the unit secure while it holds the contents of your home.

Will the moisture from my damp-damaged contents harm everything else in the unit?

It can, which is exactly why the packing matters so much during a claim. A self storage unit is an enclosed space. If you put genuinely damp items in alongside dry ones, the moisture does not stay politely with the wet box. It moves into the air, settles on cold surfaces, and over weeks can raise the humidity around everything you have stored. Cardboard goes soft, soft furnishings start to smell, and wood can bloom with mould. In a claim situation where some goods are already compromised, mixing them with your salvageable belongings risks turning a partial loss into a bigger one.

The rule is simple: nothing goes into the unit until it is properly dry. That means furniture dried out fully, not just surface-dried, and soft items aired until there is no residual damp. If your loss adjuster or a restoration firm is drying contents as part of the claim, let them finish before those items come to storage. For anything you are unsure about, keep it separate and dry it before it joins the rest. It is also worth remembering that climatic and atmospheric damage is excluded from the RSA goods-in-storage policy, so moisture damage that happens in the unit because something went in wet is not something cover will respond to. Dry first, store second. That single discipline protects both the damaged goods and everything they sit beside.

My insurer arranged the storage directly. Whose name is the unit in, and who deals with problems?

This comes up when an insurer or loss adjuster sets up storage as part of the claim, and the answer matters for how smoothly the rest of the job runs. Whoever is named on the rental account is the customer we deal with. If the insurer books and pays directly, the account may sit in their name or their appointed firm’s name, and they become the point of contact for billing and notice. If you book the unit yourself and then reclaim the cost from your insurer, the account is yours, and you are the one who gives notice, settles up, and gets the refundable deposit back.

It is worth clarifying which arrangement you are in before anything moves, because it affects who can authorise access and who handles the exit. The cleanest position for most households is to hold the account yourself: you control access, you decide who goes in, and you are not waiting on a third party to give notice when the repair finishes. You then keep every invoice for your claim file and recover the cost from the insurer separately. We can provide a clear invoice for exactly that purpose. Whatever the setup, the same terms apply: a refundable deposit, a 14-day notice period, and unused days refunded if the repair finishes early. The support team can confirm whose name an account is in, but they handle the storage side only and cannot advise on the insurance claim itself. For that, your loss adjuster or insurer is the right contact.

Should I keep the unit on after the repair finishes, in case the works are not signed off properly?

It is a fair instinct, and the flexible terms are built to let you make that call yourself rather than forcing it. There is no fixed end date you have to commit to. You roll on week by week, and you only start the clock on leaving when you give your 14-day notice. So if the contractor says the job is done but you want to wait until you have moved everything back, lived with it for a week, and confirmed there are no snags, you can keep the unit on for that buffer without penalty. Many people do exactly this after an escape-of-water or fire claim, because moving everything home and then discovering a problem is worse than holding the storage a fortnight longer.

The thing to weigh is cost against peace of mind. You pay for the time you use, and unused days are refunded once you give notice and vacate, so there is no waste in keeping it a little longer than strictly necessary, only the running rate for those extra days. A sensible approach is to move back in stages: bring home what you need first, keep the bulkier or more vulnerable items in storage until you are sure the property is fully dry and finished, then clear the unit and give notice. If your insurer is covering the storage cost, check with them whether they will fund that buffer period, because their authorisation may end at practical completion rather than when you personally feel settled. That is a question for your insurer, not for us.

What is the difference between storing during a repair and a normal house move, in terms of how I should pack?

The key difference is retrieval. In a normal house move, you pack to get everything out of one place and into another in a single direction, and you rarely need to open a box again until you unpack at the other end. A repair decant is the opposite. You will be living out of temporary accommodation for weeks or months, dipping back into the unit repeatedly to fetch a specific thing: a document, a winter coat, a child’s particular toy, a tool. Packing for that means packing for access, not just for transport.

In practice that changes a few habits:

HabitNormal moveRepair decant
LabellingRoom name is enoughRoom plus actual contents, so you can find one item
Box placementStack tight, fill the spaceLeave a walkway, keep frequently-needed boxes at the front
What stays accessibleEverything goes inDocuments, medicines, season-appropriate clothes kept separate
DryingRarely an issueDamp-affected goods fully dried before they go in

The other difference is pace. A planned move has lead time; a decant happens on the contractor’s timetable, often with two weeks’ notice or less. That pressure tempts people to throw things in unwrapped. Resist it on anything breakable, because a repair is stressful enough without arriving home to chipped crockery on top of a water-damaged ceiling. Smart entry from 6am to 10pm, seven days a week, means you can get to the unit around the working day throughout the repair, so packing for easy retrieval pays off every single time you visit.

Self Storage Vs A Lock Up Garage Cost And Security Compared

Posted on by Simon Fothergill

A lock-up’s half the price — but is it safe enough for the good stuff?

There is usually a moment, somewhere between booking the plasterers and realising the house will be uninhabitable for three months, when someone spots a lock-up advertised on the council notice board or a local Facebook group. It is half the price of a self storage unit. It is round the corner. The maths look obvious.

Then you think about your grandmother’s dresser. The sash windows you had restored last summer. The stack of original tongue-and-groove you pulled from the back bedroom and cannot replace if something happens to it. And the question shifts from “which is cheaper?” to “which will give these things back to me in the same condition I left them in?”

That is the question this page tries to answer honestly. A lock-up is the right call sometimes. A self storage unit is the right call other times. The deciding factor is rarely the weekly rate.

The Quick Answer

Here it is, plainly: a lock-up garage can genuinely be the cheaper option and, for the right job, the sensible one. A self storage unit costs more per week, but it gives you something a padlocked garage on a council estate usually cannot: an individually alarmed unit, a clean and dry environment, and written terms that protect your deposit and your goods. The honest answer depends on what you are storing and how much you can afford to lose if it goes wrong.

When a lock-up genuinely wins

If cost is the primary driver and the goods are robust, a lock-up is worth serious consideration. Garden equipment, bikes, tools in hard cases, non-perishable trade materials where damp is not going to cause lasting damage: a basic lock-up handles all of that without fuss. And if you need to store a car, a motorbike, a caravan or a boat, a lock-up or a specialist vehicle storage site is where you should look, because that is a job we do not do at Wigwam. For Tradesman Tom weighing whether to upgrade from a council garage for his tools, the honest answer is: it depends on how exposed those tools are and how much is at stake if they are stolen or damp gets into the cases.

When a self storage unit is the better call

Period fittings, upholstered furniture, archived paperwork, mattresses, clothing, salvaged woodwork: anything that cannot afford three months in a damp brick box is in different territory. When the goods are irreplaceable, or when you need reliable access outside daylight hours, or when you want written terms that tell you exactly what happens to your deposit and what you get back if you leave early, a self storage unit changes the comparison. The weekly rate is higher, but the rate is only part of the total cost picture.

Cost Compared

The two options are not as far apart as the advertised headline prices suggest, once you factor in what each arrangement actually includes.

What a UK lock-up typically costs

Council lock-ups in the UK tend to run from around £15 to £40 per week for a single garage, depending on location, though figures quoted in trade press vary and council pricing changes regularly. Private lock-up arrangements cover a wide range from informal landlord deals to commercial lock-up parks, and the prices move accordingly. The catch, beyond the price, is supply: council waiting lists for lock-ups in towns where demand is high can run to months, which means you may need to pay for alternative storage while you wait anyway. Private arrangements are easier to find but rarely come with anything written down.

How self storage pricing works and where to check

Self storage is priced weekly, with the rate set by unit size. The smaller the unit, the lower the rate; the bigger the town centre, typically the higher the price. There is no one universal rate, and comparing sticker prices between providers is tricky without checking like-for-like sizes. For a clear picture of how self storage pricing works, our pricing page sets out what affects the weekly cost and how to work out the right size for your job.

What the weekly rate does not tell you on its own is the full terms picture. At Wigwam, you pay a refundable deposit when you move in, give 14 days’ notice when you are ready to leave, and once you have vacated and the account is settled, the deposit is returned less anything owed. If you leave before your expected end date, unused days are refunded. The minimum stay is two weeks. That is what the written terms look like. Compare that to a council tenancy or a private arrangement with no paperwork, and the two options are not really like-for-like on cost at all.

The costs a cheap lock-up does not show upfront

A padlocked garage on a shared site, with no individual alarm and no CCTV, carries a theft exposure that does not appear in the weekly rate. If a determined thief cuts a padlock, there is no unit-level alert, no record of who entered, and often no guarantee of recovery. For furniture, period fittings or anything with significant replacement value, that gap matters.

Damp is the second hidden cost. Many older council garages and private brick lock-ups are not sealed or maintained to a standard that protects upholstered furniture or wooden fittings over a period of months. The weekly saving looks different once you are factoring in the cost of replacing a warped door or a mildewed sofa.

And if there is no written agreement with a refund clause, there is no guaranteed route to get your deposit back if the relationship with the landlord sours, or any entitlement to a pro-rata refund if you leave early. That is a cost too, even if it does not appear on a weekly invoice.

Ready to see what a Wigwam unit would cost for your job?
Get a no-obligation quote at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk

Security Compared

The security comparison is where the two options diverge most clearly, and it is worth being specific about what that means in practice.

A padlock on a shared site versus an individually alarmed unit

Most lock-ups offer a padlock on a metal door. That is the security provision. Some sites have perimeter fencing; some have CCTV at the entrance; very few have any alarm system that is specific to individual units. If someone forces the door on your lock-up, the alert, if there is one at all, is a general site alarm that does not identify your unit from anyone else’s.

Wigwam’s units are individually alarmed. A breach of your specific unit triggers an alert. That is a meaningful difference for anyone storing goods with significant monetary or sentimental value, and it is not something a basic padlocked garage can replicate without a significant additional cost.

Clean, dry and secure: what that actually means

The framing most self storage providers reach for is climate control, with references to controlled temperature and humidity management. That is not what we are claiming at Wigwam, and it is worth being clear about why. Our sites are clean, dry and secure. That means a maintained, weather-tight environment where the floor is not damp concrete, the walls are not weeping brick, and the unit is not open to the elements. It does not mean a thermostat.

For most household goods, that distinction matters less than the general storage industry suggests. Upholstered furniture, wooden period fittings, archived documents and clothing do not need a temperature-controlled laboratory. They need a clean, dry and secure space where damp cannot get at them over three or six months. The damp problem in older brick lock-ups is real and it is the condition risk that most people do not think about when they are comparing weekly prices. A clean, dry unit that does not let water in is the honest answer to that risk, without overstating what we offer.

If your goods genuinely require controlled temperature or humidity, such as fine art, wine or specialist electronics, a climate-controlled facility is the right route and they do exist in the market. That is not a gap we fill.

Access and Convenience

Access is the third variable in the comparison, and it is one where the two options behave quite differently.

Wigwam access hours and smart entry

Access to a Wigwam unit is 6am to 10pm, seven days a week, by smart entry. We are honest that this is not 24-hour access: if you need to be loading a van at 2am, a self storage unit is not currently the right option for that. But 6am to 10pm covers most practical renovation and moving scenarios comfortably. An early contractor start at 7am is within hours. An evening run after work to collect something you need the next day is within hours. Smart entry means you do not need to arrange key collection from a keyholder or coordinate with a site manager. You use the access system and go.

Our sites are unmanned. You access your own unit and your own goods. If you are expecting a delivery, someone from your side needs to be present to receive it; Wigwam does not sign for goods on your behalf and cannot receive deliveries in your absence.

What that means for a renovation or a phased move

A manual-key lock-up gives you access when you have the key, which in practice often means when the landlord is available, or when the site is open, or when you can arrange a handover. For a renovation that runs on a building site’s schedule, that rigidity creates friction. You need to move a piece of furniture on a Sunday morning before the plasterers arrive: a manual key arrangement may or may not accommodate that. Smart entry at 6am on a Sunday morning does.

For those working in or around specific locations, we have a number of UK market-town sites within reasonable reach. Wigwam Self Storage Bath and Wigwam Self Storage Lincoln are two verified examples. For the full list, see our UK market-town locations; there is a reasonable chance a Wigwam site is a sensible drive from where the renovation is.

What Goes Where: Matching the Option to Your Goods

The simplest way to approach this is by item type, rather than by provider first.

Things a lock-up handles well

Robust garden tools, power tools in hard carry cases, garden equipment, bikes with reasonable locks, non-perishable trade materials like off-cut timber or fixings in sealed containers: these tolerate a lock-up environment without much risk, as long as the site is not actively waterlogged. If the goods are replaceable, the risk is proportionate to the replacement cost. For Tradesman Tom with a set of professional tools, the right question is the insurance position and what the actual theft exposure is on the site in question, not just the weekly rate.

Vehicles, caravans and boats belong in a lock-up or specialist vehicle storage facility. Wigwam does not store any of these, and that is worth knowing before you commit to a unit.

Things that belong in a self storage unit

Upholstered furniture, wooden period fittings, sash windows, original doors, fireplaces, mattresses, archived documents and files, clothing, bedding and anything that will be damaged by damp or affected by prolonged cold and wet: these belong in a clean, dry and secure unit.

Contents protection is mandatory at Wigwam. You either take out Wigwam’s own contents cover or you evidence that your existing insurance extends to goods held at a self storage site. You declare the full replacement value of what you are storing; if the declared value is lower than the actual value, any claim is settled proportionally. The details of Wigwam’s policy, including what is covered and what is excluded, are set out at Wigwam’s contents protection policy. We signpost you there rather than summarise the terms here, because insurance is something to read in full rather than in a paragraph.

A Note on Vehicles and Climate Control

Two questions come up regularly in this comparison and both deserve a direct answer, even though neither answer favours Wigwam.

Wigwam does not store cars, motorbikes, caravans or boats. If vehicle storage is what you need, a lock-up or a specialist vehicle storage provider is the right route. We say that plainly, because the honest answer is more useful to you than a vague deflection.

Wigwam does not offer climate control. We do not manage temperature or humidity in our units. The correct description of what we offer is clean, dry and secure: a weather-tight, maintained environment that does not let damp in. For the majority of household goods, that is the protection that actually matters. For goods that genuinely need controlled temperature or humidity, a specialist climate-controlled facility is worth seeking out. Several operate in the UK; we are not going to name competitors, but they are not difficult to find.

These two honest admissions are, in our experience, more useful to a comparison searcher than a list of features. They also mean that when we say a Wigwam unit is the right call for your period fittings, you can trust that we have given you the full picture.

How to Decide

The decision comes down to three variables: what you are storing, how much you can afford to lose, and how much the written terms matter to you.

If what you are storing is robust, damp is not a realistic risk, theft exposure is proportionate to the replacement value, and cost is the primary driver: a lock-up is worth a serious look. Check the site condition, ask about security, confirm there is at least a basic written agreement, and price it properly including any deposit.

If you have household goods, irreplaceable period pieces, upholstered furniture, archived documents or anything where condition matters over months rather than weeks, the individually alarmed unit, the clean and dry site, and the transparent written terms change the calculation. The weekly rate is higher, but the rate is only part of what you are buying.

The written terms matter more than most people expect before they need them. A refundable deposit returned after 14-days’ notice on vacating, a refund of unused days if you leave early, a minimum of two weeks: those terms are in writing and they are clear. A council garage tenancy or an informal private arrangement rarely offers equivalent protection. If you want to read the detail before you decide, see Wigwam’s full terms.

The moment that tells you whether the decision was right is not the day you carry things in. It is the day your things come out. A lock-up that looked fine in September can look very different in January once the damp has had three months to work its way into a walnut chest of drawers that belonged to someone’s grandfather. The saving on weekly rent is real. So is the loss.

If you are ready to see what a unit would cost for your specific job, a no-obligation quote is the quickest way to get a number.

Get a quote at quote.wigwamstorage.co.uk

What to Read Next

If you want to compare costs in detail before making a decision, the how self storage pricing works page sets out how weekly rates are structured and what affects the price. For the location nearest to you, our UK market-town locations lists all current sites. If you are unsure what size unit you need for your job, our unit size guide covers how to estimate the right size; reference that page in the navigation rather than guessing from this one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will my home insurance cover goods in a lock-up garage the same way it would in a storage unit?

Probably not, and this is the gap most people miss when a cheap lock-up looks tempting. Standard home contents policies cover your belongings at the insured address, your house. The moment goods leave that address for a lock-up or any off-site space, many policies stop covering them, or cover them only under a limited “away from home” extension that may not stretch to long-term storage in a garage you rent. The result is that the lock-up’s headline saving can come with no cover at all on what is inside it, which for furniture or period fittings is a serious exposure.

The honest position is the same for both options: do not assume, check the wording. If you are leaning towards a lock-up, ring your home insurer and ask plainly whether your contents are covered while stored in a garage you rent away from your property, and under what conditions. Get the answer in writing if you can. With a Wigwam unit the requirement is built in rather than left to chance: contents cover is mandatory, so you either take our RSA “Self Storage Customers’ Goods” policy or evidence your own cover before anything goes in. That is not us being awkward; it means there is no scenario where your goods sit uninsured. A lock-up does not impose that discipline, so the responsibility falls entirely on you to arrange and confirm cover. We can point you to the contents protection page for what our policy covers, but for your own home policy and how it treats a lock-up, your insurer or broker is the right person to ask, not us.

What happens to my belongings in a lock-up if the landlord wants the garage back or the arrangement ends?

This is the risk that does not show on the weekly rate, and it is worth thinking through before the saving wins you over. A private lock-up arrangement is often informal, sometimes with nothing written down, which means the certainty of your tenure rests on the landlord’s goodwill. If they decide to sell the property, reclaim the garage, or simply end the arrangement, you can find yourself needing to move a unit’s worth of belongings at short notice, possibly mid-renovation when you have nowhere else to put them. A council lock-up is more formal, but its own terms govern notice and there may be a waiting list pressure behind you. The point is that the exit is not always in your hands.

Compare that to written storage terms. At Wigwam the arrangement is set out plainly: a refundable deposit, a two-week minimum, and when you choose to leave you give 14 days’ notice, vacate, settle the account, and the deposit comes back less anything owed. The decision to end it is yours, on a known notice period, with a known process. You are not at the mercy of a landlord changing their mind. That predictability is part of what you are paying the higher weekly rate for. If certainty of tenure matters for your job, say a renovation of uncertain length where being told to clear out at two weeks’ notice would be a real problem, that is a strong mark in favour of written terms over an informal garage. For robust goods on a short, low-stakes basis where you could move them easily if you had to, the informality matters less.

Can I run a lock-up and a storage unit at the same time to split my belongings by type?

Yes, and for some jobs it is genuinely the smartest way to keep costs sensible without compromising on the things that matter. The logic follows the article’s central point: match the option to the goods. Robust, damp-tolerant items, garden tools, off-cut timber, fixings in sealed containers, kit in hard cases, can sit happily in a cheaper lock-up. The vulnerable items, upholstered furniture, period fittings, archived paperwork, anything damp or theft would ruin, go in a clean, dry, individually alarmed storage unit. Splitting them means you are not paying storage-unit rates to keep a lawnmower dry, and you are not risking a walnut chest in a damp brick garage.

A few practical points if you go this route. Size the storage unit only for the vulnerable goods, because that is where the per-week cost is higher, and let the bulky robust stuff take the cheap space. Keep your contents cover straight: a Wigwam unit requires cover on what is inside it, and you will need to satisfy yourself separately about insurance on the lock-up contents, which your home insurer may or may not extend to. And remember the vehicle line, since people splitting storage often have a project car or a trailer in mind: Wigwam does not store vehicles, caravans or boats of any kind, so anything on wheels belongs in the lock-up or a specialist vehicle facility, never the unit. Done thoughtfully, the split gets you the security where it counts and the saving where it is safe. Done carelessly, you end up paying for two arrangements and managing two sets of keys for no real gain, so it is worth a quick sum first.

Is a lock-up or a storage unit easier to access in winter, when damp and cold are at their worst?

A storage unit, on both counts, and winter is precisely when the difference between the two shows up. The damp point is the one the article keeps returning to: older brick lock-ups are often unsealed and unheated, so through a cold, wet winter, condensation and ground damp work into anything absorbent over weeks. A Wigwam unit is clean, dry and secure, a maintained, weather-tight space where the floor is not damp concrete and the walls are not weeping brick. That is not climate control, and we do not claim it is, but it does mean your goods are not sitting through the worst of the weather in the conditions that warp doors and mildew sofas.

Access is the second half. A manual-key lock-up gives you access when you can get the key and when you can physically reach it, which in winter can mean an icy shared yard, a frozen padlock, and reliance on a landlord being around. A Wigwam unit runs on smart entry from 6am to 10pm, seven days a week, so a dark winter evening run after work, within those hours, is no different from a summer one: you use the access system and go, no waiting for a keyholder. The honest caveat is the access window itself, it is 6am to 10pm, not overnight, so a 2am winter visit is not possible at either option in practice and certainly not at a unit. But for the realistic comparison, the unit holds up better against cold and damp and is more reliable to get into when the weather is against you. That is exactly the season when a slightly higher weekly rate earns its keep.

How do I price a lock-up and a storage unit on a like-for-like basis so the comparison is fair?

Put both on a total-cost-of-the-whole-job footing rather than comparing two weekly headline numbers, because the weekly rate alone hides most of what actually separates them. The honest way to do it is to add up everything each option costs you over the full length you need it, and to put a realistic figure on the risks the cheap option carries. A like-for-like comparison includes the things that do not appear on a lock-up’s advert.

A fair comparison adds up, for each option:

FactorLock-up garageWigwam unit
Weekly or periodic rent over the full jobOften lowerHigher
DepositMay be non-refundable or undocumentedRefundable, returned on a correct exit
Refund if you leave earlyRarely offeredUnused days refunded
Contents coverUsually arrange and pay separately, if your insurer will even extendMandatory, included in the arrangement either via our policy or your own proof
Damp risk to goodsReal in older brick lock-ups, cost of replacementClean, dry and secure, far lower
Theft exposurePadlock only, no unit alarmIndividually alarmed unit
Certainty of tenureDepends on landlord or council termsWritten terms, your notice

Once you total those, the gap between the two narrows sharply, and sometimes reverses, because the lock-up’s lower rent is offset by uninsured exposure, possible damp replacement costs, and a deposit you might not get back. The test the article keeps coming back to is the right one: not “who is cheapest this week” but “who charges me what they quoted, what do I pay when I leave, and what is it costing me if something goes wrong”. For a current Wigwam figure to put in the table, the pricing page sets out how rates work by size, and a no-obligation quote gives you a real number for your specific job. Price the whole thing, including the risks, and the comparison becomes honest.