Transform Your Home / Transform Your Life

Serving Maryland, Washington DC & Northern Virginia

A Safe & Secure Home Elevator

Residential Elevators are a great improvement to your home!

Due diligence will ensure your families safety & security with a properly constructed hoist way.

In the construction industry I occasionally hear framing carpenters, builders and remodeling companies refer to hoist ways for residential elevators as no more complex than a walk in closet. That analogy stops once they have built an elevator hoist way to specification. It certainly stops after they re-build it to specification.

Home Elevator Hoist Way Walls

An experienced residential elevator contractor can build the walls of a residential elevator hoist way or shaft with concrete, masonry, standard wood or metal framing or any combination. The most important feature of a hoist way is that it must be safe for you and your family, plumb in all four corners, as well as square, from the top of the shaft to the pit below.

The rail walls must be structurally strong; strong enough to with stand the forces exerted by an elevator in motion with occupants, whose total weight is about 1,000 pounds.

The odd point in the analogy above is most houses, and most rooms in houses are anything but plum or square. Most closets can barely hold my wife's clothes much less withstand the pull of 1,000 pounds! In addition closets have no fire rating! This is a major life safety concern.

In addition a residential elevator must not share its space with anything else. No wire, pipe duct may pass through the shaft vertically or horizontally.

Last, but not least each floor system that the elevator is going to pass through has to be structurally modified. In today's platform construction homes joist span each floor from outside wall to interior beam or wall. All of which are supported by footers. When your home elevator hoist way contractor cuts those joist for the elevator hoist way, the cut joist load must be transferred somewhere else. Typically it is transferred to header joists, which then transfer the load to king joists or doubled joists. This joist must then transfer there greater load to a wall or beam.

Fire Transfer & Life Safety for Residential Elevators

All commercial codes and some residential building codes and most importantly common sense require that residential elevator hoist ways be finished in fire resistant materials. Concrete & masonry, are excellent fire retardants and can remain exposed. The more common wood studs and even metal studs should be part of an overall fire rated system. Either designed by UL United Under Writers Laboratories or the GA Gypsum Association. For example in The GA Fire Resistance Design Manual we often use system WP 3605 for wood studs and system WP 1072 for metal studs. Both systems will stop a fire from passing through the hoist way walls for one hour. We have systems available which would stop a fire from passing through for two hours as well, and are not unreasonably more than the cost of a one hour system. The hallway or hall station doors accessing the home elevator when it arrives at each floor should also have a one hour fire rating.

Earlier I said "common sense" because local codes as they relate to home elevators and hoist way construction are inconsistent and enforced inconsistently between MD, DC & VA. Many Architects, contractors and remodelers will state that there is no code provision for single family residential elevator hoist way fire ratings and therefore they don't address it. The code especially when it comes to fire is primarily concerned with life safety transfer that is fire in one space say your house spreading to another space say your attached neighbor. Within your own home the code is less concerned about you and your family than you or your residential elevator contractor ought to be. It is up to you and your residential elevator contractor to use common sense to protect your loved ones. It may help to keep in mind that a hoist way for a residential elevator is essentially a large chimney. Common sense dictates at least a one hour fire rating.

It should be clear by now that there is quite a lot involved in an elevator hoist way.

If you live in the Washington Metropolitan Area, DC, MD or VA, and if you are also considering the installation of a residential elevator then perhaps you should have your home assessed. We will help you determine the most convenient, cost effective and astatically pleasing location in your home, or addition to your home, for your elevator hoist way. Click Here for additional information or to schedule an appointment.

Home Elevator Pit

A residential elevator is supported by an L shaped frame like a fork lift. In order for the cab floor to stop even with the lowest level a pit must be part of the shafts construction. The pit makes room for the framework holding the elevator to descend past the last floor by just enough to bring the floors even. Recently a few elevator manufacturers have suspended there cabin from an inverted or upside-down L. This allows them to market a pitiless elevator. The floor of the elevator has a minimum thickness of 1" in order for it to become even with the last stop a shallow pit must be dug. Frankly the cost to break concrete and re-pour concrete is pretty much the same weather you are creating a whole 1" deep or 12" deep. After all, the only difference is the dirt taken out. If the house has any history of water intrusion due to high water table then a sump pump should be installed in a crock at the bottom of the pit.

Residential Elevator Hallway Doors & Call Station

A residential elevator has its' own door usually a folding accordion door, made of vinyl, metal, or wood. Each hallway or landing also has a door. The location of the door to the edge of the shaft and the edge of the elevator platform is dictated by the code in a section commonly referred to as the 3 & 5 rule. Which simply put means the back of the door cannot be more than 3" from the edge of the hoist way, nor can it be more than 5" from the hoist way gate. In addition the door cannot be allowed to open unless the elevator has arrived on the other side. The method of controlling the door is called an interlock. The hallway door is held shut by an electronic interlock. The interlock will not allow the hall door to be opened until it receives a signal from the home elevators controller. The controller is not going to send a signal to the interlock until the elevator signals to the controller that it has arrived at its station. For safety the elevator will not operate if the hall way door is left open or if the elevators accordion door is not pulled shut.

If you are a builder architect or remodeler seeking more information on hoist way construction for the benefit of a customer or client click here to request more information.

Shaft less - No Hoist Way Home Elevator

At Signature Elevators & Accessible Design LLC we represent some great elevator manufacturers, whose traditional approach to home elevators all require a hoist way and pit. We also represent a very unique residential elevator manufacturer the glass tube elevator or pneumatic vacuum elevator. This elevator is essentially a tube within a tube the outer tube is the shaft and the inner tube is the elevator. Although it is true that is does not need a shaft, it still needs holes through the floor. Holes though the floor need structural modification to the joists which hold up your house and which are going to be cut in order to make the hole or holes. Drywall must be removed exposing the joists on the out side of the hole and king joist and headers must be added. The headers transfer the load to the king joist (doubled joists ) which then complete the transfer to a wall or girder which then transfer the load down, eventually to the footers of your house. Click here to learn more about this out side of the box literally outside of the box residential elevator.