Home Elevator Installation
Charleston Home Elevators is the residential elevator of choice by homeowners, architects and builders in the Charleston area. We work with great builders like yourself every day to ensure our mutual client's satisfaction.
Residential elevators were once considered a luxury for high end homes but today home elevators are more common place. CHE residential elevators can be installed in just about any home regardless of the year it was built. Installing your client's new home elevator is just a question of adequate space. Fortunately our hydraulic elevators only need space about the size of a small walk in closet. Another option for some homes is to install the elevator in place of the stairs.
Installation Process
Simply put, the CHE Hydraulic Home Elevator is like a sophisticated forklift.
The first step is to form an 8" pit in your concrete slab. The following animation shows the 8” pit being formed in your concrete slab.
Some customers have a crawl space and their crawl space can act as a pit as well with a 6” concrete slab poured at the bottom of the crawl space. The elevator pit allows the elevator floor to be even with the first floor level.
The next step of your installation process is to have your carpenter or framer prepare your elevator shaft.
We strongly recommend framing your elevator shaft out of two by fours, not two by sixes or concrete block. Some customers think that by over-framing, or blocking the elevator shaft, your elevator will be stronger, keep in mind that most of the loads on the elevator are on the concrete slab below and not on the rails. It might sound confusing, but you will create a 3” by 5” rule safety violation if you have your framer use 2 by 6’s or concrete block. This can be a safety violation and prohibit the installation of your elevator.
The next step is to have your carpenter install wood blocking material. These are double two by 12 headers turned on their face and running plate-to-plate on one wall inside the elevator shaft. This is the wall that our rail brackets are mounted to. The animation shows the two by 12’s slide into the shaft and then your elevator rail brackets being lag-bolted onto the 2 x 12’s. Some customers are required to fire rate their elevator shaft. Please check with your local inspector to find out what is required. Finally we install the elevator guide rails, the hydraulic jack installation, the elevator cars link and then the elevator cap.
3x5 Safety Rule
This is the biggest safety issue we've seen over the years - the proper distance between the outside of the elevator cab gate, and the inside of the shaft door - allowing small children to be safe around the elevator openings.
