5 Things To Look Out For When Getting an Outdoor Lift

So you have decided on a lift, but either because there’s no space left inside, or because you want a beautiful glass lift to look over your forever home… You’ve decided to go for an outdoor lift.

While a wonderful solution, customers need to be a little more careful with outdoor lifts in order to avoid some potentially very expensive weather-related disasters!

Will Your Outdoor Lift Rust?

Outdoor lifts are subject not only rain, but also the generally higher humidity of outdoors compared to indoor home elevators. This creates a gigantic risk of rusting.

While most steel is protected by a layer of paint, a single scratch in this paint, be it from a tree branch, a worker passing by with a big box, or just bad luck, can quickly devolve into a horrible situation. The scratch reveals the steel below, creating an access for rust to form, and quickly spread across the whole steel surface.

When choosing an outdoor lift, ensure that all outward facing materials (i.e. the shaft structure) are made of non-rusting materials such as aluminum or glass.

How to Beat the Heat in your Outdoor Lift?

Outdoor lifts get HOT. It doesn’t matter what material you use, a lift cooking in the sun can often feel like entering an oven.

Thankfully, there are a number of solutions available to beat the heat.

Top of the list in terms of instant freshness is an on-platform fan – the stronger the better. The few companies that offer on-platform fans such as Cibes Lift Cambodia lead the pack in creating a cool and easy outdoor elevator ride.

Second best is simply installing an AC unit connected to the elevator shaft. The only downside with this solution is the inertia of air conditioning. Mostly, by the time the ride is over, the lift is still not fresh enough.

Finally, one should always consider the ventilation flows inside the lift. Hot air rises. You need a simple air intake grills at the bottom, combined with a suction fan at the top. This will provide a nice breeze, lending itself to a pleasant elevator ride.

How to Build the Right Outdoor Lift Pit

When it comes to outdoor pits for elevators, less is more. The less deep you pit, the lower the chance of flooding, groundwater swelling, or general water damage caused by water that simply won’t go away. Many customers end up with a free pond inside their lift, because their pit was poorly planned!

While waterproofing and draining the pit are all important, building additional pit structures such as Zocalo or rounded edges can help reduce the risk even further.

For the ultimate level of flooding protection, choose an outdoor home elevator with water sensors in the pit: at the first sign of water, the elevator will zoom up to a higher floor and limit any potential damage. Also, sometimes it is better to choose a small lift to get a smaller pit. Check out our article about lift sizes to learn more!

What Roof do you Need?

A proper outdoor home lift comes with a special outdoor roof to help guide water and other debris safely away from the shaft. For the users entering the lift – do not slope your roof towards the door opening!

But don’t stop there! For maximum protection, consider building an additional roofing over the lift itself. Kind of like a car, an outdoor lift is built to resist the weather. But if you have a garage or a car tent, it will resist it that much better!

How Good is Wind Resistance?

Have you heard the story of how the supple reed resists the wind better than the straight branch? Tall lifts are similar to buildings. If the materials they are made of are not flexible enough, they do poorly outside with strong winds.

An easy rule of thumb is to prefer aluminum structures. Their combined light-weight and strength allows for taller and more flexible lifts than steel-based structures. In fact, in a study, aluminum structure lifts were shown to be able to resist winds of up to 117 km/h – equivalent to a Beaufort Force 12 Hurricane.

Waterproof Everything in your Outdoor Lift!

Multiple things to check here – and all of them important.

First, are your panels waterproof? A professional lift company will often reseal panels on-site with superior waterproofing to ensure the perfect water-tight fit.

Second, how about call-buttons? Too many times, short circuits occur on outdoor lifts where the call buttons are general purpose, and not specially designed for the outdoors.

Finally, the doors themselves. Do the doors provide an outdoor compatible seal? While swing doors and certain types of sliding doors are waterproof, other door solutions are not. Beware saloon doors or bifolding doors. They fail the test almost every time.

Conclusion

As you can see, an outdoor lift needs some special love and affection compared to an inner home lift. However, it is often worth the effort. The space saved, combined with the unparalleled views as you rise in your lift, more than make up for the additional investment involved.