Lake of the Ozarks Residential Elevator Project

The L’s contacted us because the residential elevator in their home at the Lake of the Ozarks was inoperable and outdated. They wanted to replace it with something that was safer, more reliable and more attractive.

For most elevator contractors this situation is extremely difficult because the models they offer only come in stock sizes. What this typically means is either extensive modification to the home is required or the customer ends up with a drastically undersized cab compared to their original model. Thankfully at First Class Elevator this is not the case.

One of the reasons that we chose to partner with Cambridge Elevating is their ability to easily accommodate a situation like this. Cambridge Elevating custom builds the cab for every elevator they produce. This allows us to maximize cab size and eliminate wasted space inside the hoistway. Not only is this helpful in a retrofit situation like this it also means that we can easily install our elevators into a hoistway that was originally designed to accommodate another manufacturers outdated or overpriced model.

The existing model in the L’s home was not inoperable and stuck in the elevator pit in the basement of the home. This creates a bit of a challenge for us as we do not have access to many of the components required for disassembly. Thankfully our team has experience in these situations and we were able to remove the old elevator in less than a day. Since we now had access to the entire hoistway we were able to acquire precise measurements and send them to our engineering team. The homeowners decided to go with our Heritage model because they liked the idea of automatic retracting cab doors instead of the accordion gate their old elevator had. We then worked together to pick out the finishes and selected a final design for their new elevator. The final design was sent to production and a few weeks later we took delivery of the new elevator.

Based on our engineering teams recommendation the first step of this installation was to add some additional support and structure to the rail wall. After this was complete we rehung 5/8” fire rated drywall in the affected areas and fire taped all of the seams to ensure in the event of a fire the hoistway would not act as a chimney and rapidly spread the fire throughout the home. On day two of the project we began the installation of the elevator by setting our rails, hydraulic cylinder and sling. Day three of the installation consisted of wiring up our machine room, installing our ropes, plumbing and bleeding the hydraulic system and powering up the elevator. On day four we built and wired the elevator cab, installed all of the cartop electronics and wired up all of the safety systems like the landing door interlocks and pit switch. Day five was our final day of installation on this project and was a day of finishing touches and testing.

This was a challenging project that most elevator companies would not take on because it is very difficult. Things like working in a finished home, removing a dead elevator, custom building an elevator to fit an existing hoistway and an extremely steep lake lot made this job no small task. Thankfully because of our experienced and well rounded team at First Class Elevator we were able to deliver an exceptional finished product that the L’s will enjoy for many years to come.