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I would love an elevator but not in the house. I want mine in the garage. Oh and I don't want people on it. I want to have my car ride up on it. Instead of a shaft I want a track system at 4 corners of the platform. I want to be able to park another car below the first car.
The entry level versions have a 750 lb weight limit.
They do come in handy, especially, if you have 3 levels.
25k-35k is a pretty fancy elevator especially if the shaft is already constructed. My husband did this for a living for over 10 yrs. A basic elevator with no frills would not cost that much. Now they are slow but they get the job done.
We had a 4 person elevator in our home in Honolulu (3 levels) with an EMERGENCY phone in case you got stuck...it was a rental, but the best home we have EVER lived in hands down, and that elevator came in SO handy during the move in and out...never mind time to haul groceries from the garage to the main level kitchen.
I am curious, what kinds of safety features do they have these days in case you get stuck? Not to rain on anyone's parade, but there was a story a few years ago about an elderly couple that got stuck in theirs ... they both died. I can't remember if the power went out when they were in it, or what. It was just so sad.
The safety features include a backup power source and / or a manual way to get out of the thing with no power, wireless phones, various interlocks to keep the potential to crush a kid / pet pretty near zero, heat / smoke detectors to make it somewhat feasible to evacuate a home. Probably more easily used in power outage than most full use elevators in commercial buildings...
There are also wheelchair lifts that to up stairs. There is a platform that sits flat on the floor that you roll the chair onto, then push the button and it glides up the staircase and you roll off on the second floor. Still not cheap probably 15K and up. Full house elevator is more like starting at 35K. My house has three floors plus basement, I need six stair lifts to make the house fully accessible. you know the Stannah type with a seat. And they run from about $1800. for DIY models to about 5K each for normal ones with installation.
I bought ones off Craig's list and trying to retrofit them ourselves, though there are NO online instructions and companies that sell them will not install used ones unless they supply them.
I am curious, what kinds of safety features do they have these days in case you get stuck? Not to rain on anyone's parade, but there was a story a few years ago about an elderly couple that got stuck in theirs ... they both died. I can't remember if the power went out when they were in it, or what. It was just so sad.
Mechanical/hand powered winch with the manual right next to it, in case of a failure.
I was going to put a pneumatic elevator into our house in the original design (it got cut when the price came in way too high). The advantage is you do not need a pit or any special structural support. They are stand alone. They have mechanical brakes in them if something goes wrong and the slowly lowers to the bottom level where you can exit. It was just barely enough weight limit to hold my wife and I together or me and a lot of groceries. One downside If I remember correctly, I do not think they can hold a wheel chair. The compressor can be very loud. Installation costs can be somewhat involved, especially in a per-existing home. It needs 220 v power and a large breaker (50 amps or more I think). We were pushing the height limits going up three floors with 10' ceilings. In fact, I think we had to reduce ceiling height to match the elevator. There were three companies offering them and from what I could gather two were essentially the same, and one was a junky Chinese knock off.
Our plan had a tunnel connecting form the basement to the carriage house/garage. The elevator went from the basement to the scullery off the kitchen kitchen to the master bedroom closet. I woudl have been really neat, but when the price quotes for the addition came in at $1 million, we had to cut cut cut. No tunnel, no elevator, no balcony, no giant master bedroom.
When we looked at mechanical elevators, the cost of the elevator was low, but the cost to meet code for the shaft and pit was tremendous. Pneumatic was net cheaper. It also took up a lot less space. The was some difference in yearly inspection requirements too. The advantage of the more cotly mechanical systems was they were much bigger and could be more powerful. With mechanical systems, the cheap ones were also very slow. Fast ones are expensive.
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