Why an MRL Lift Is Better

What does MRL Lift even mean?

The MRL Lift has redefined lifts everywhere. To understand why, we need to understand how a traditional lift (meaning the ones you usually encounter in hotels and commercial buildings) works.

These lifts, called traction lifts or sling lifts, usually rely on very strong cables. The cables pull a cabin up or down, in parallel with a counterweight. In order to move these heavy cables however, a special room is needed. This room is at the top of the shaft where the giant motors that turn these cables are placed.

This room is extremely large (standard for small home lifts is 2 x 2 x 4 meters!). It is what is called the Machine Room.

A lift that doesn’t need a Machine Room (or that minimizes the Machine Room size or places it in another location than on top of the lift) is known as a Machine RoomLess Lift – MRL for short!

The Main Problem with Machine Rooms

The main problem with a Machine Room is simply that it takes up a lot of space and prevents a final stop. Have you ever been to a rooftop bar? If you have, you’ll remember that the lift stopped you one floor below. You then had to take the stairs for the final floor. That’s because the top floor was occupied by the machine room!

Machine Room Less (MRL) lifts don’t have this problem, and can open straight on the roof. Check out this wonderful example from Cibes Lift just below:

This provides a lot more flexibility, and is especially important for homes that often make good use of their rooftop! Barbeques, gardening, dinners – all require carrying up heavy materials, and a good home lift allows to do that very easily!

But it doesn’t stop there. Sometimes, clients simply don’t want to break their roof to install a machine room, and open themselves to the risk of leaks and other structural problems. Furthermore, an MRL room lift allows to stop the lift shaft right under the ceiling and go no farther – a perfect solution.

Not Every MRL Lift Is Created Equal

The tricky part about MRL is, although some technologies allow for no machine room, they still require a large headroom. This then leads to chimney lifts, where the top is twice as high as it needs to be. This is because it needs to accommodate things like a cable pulley or the safety equipment on top of the cabin.

This is especially the case for traction lifts, but also applies to hydraulic lifts to a lesser extend due to their cabin designs.

When it comes to true MRL, screw-driven lifts usually take the cake. They require only a 2250 mm headroom (the space from the floor of the final stop to the ceiling of the final stop) for a finished shaft, and 1100 for a half-gate model like below!

Machine Room Lifts are super effective for outdoors. But outdoors has its own challenge. Discover 5 secrets of Outdoor Lifts in our article!