Common Questions Related to Elevators and Their Answers

People getting elevator installation done for the first time are utterly confused and have hundreds and thousands of questions in mind. 

It is not possible to answer all of them here, but we have attempted to answer the most common ones here with the help of this post. We have also attempted to determine here in this article as to how important is the regular servicing and maintenance of the elevator. 

To ensure that the elevator stays in a perfect running condition and safe all the time, it is recommended that it should be maintained at least once in a year. The duration between two servicing can be reduced to 9 months or 8 months also, if you are an aggressive user. 

Apart from this, regular inspection is one more thing that should never be ignored in terms of these lifts because this inspection will determine the safety of the unit. 

If the installation is more than 2 decades old, it’s better to get modernization or upgrading done rather than paying elevator installation cost for a new unit. Yes, the performance of your 2 decade old unit might be totally flawless, but the parts and components cannot be relied upon at all and they may become a reason behind any safety lapse. 

The answer to this is NO because modern-day elevator installations are all equipped with the most modern safety features. This means that even if something like this happens, the lift would have a plan-B to rescue all the passengers and keep them safe until they are all evacuated. 

A very common mis-belief is that an elevator could fall because of overcrowd, but this is not the fact at all. Now there are sensors fitted there that will sense the weight and if it exceeds the set limit, the elevator installation would not move even an inch up or down. 

The only situations that could cause an elevator to free fall are "fire" or "structural collapse". 

The answer to this question is also "no" because they vary a lot in several aspects. Yes, the elevator installation cost is different and so is the type, the mechanism on which they work and so on. 

The two most common types of elevators are hydraulic elevators and traction lifts and apart from this, there are also several different categories for elevators:

Passenger lifts are designed only to carry passengers and because of this, convenience and accessibility are the two things kept in focus. 

These lifts are designed to carry lesser weight and hence, they are typically rated somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds depending on building size. 

There are basically commercial lifts and intended to move goods, materials, and equipment only. A very important characteristic to note is that these lifts move slowly as compared to passenger lifts and these lifts mostly open vertically while passenger lifts open horizontally. 

These lifts even have dedicated buttons for steps like calling a car, opening the doors and closing the doors. Because of these buttons, the users are able to get better control over the elevator functioning and operations. 

These lifts are merely used for necessity and hence, not too much of attention is paid towards comfort, looks, etc. 

Yes, they are not aesthetically pleasing at all as they are used just for carrying weight and no humans at all.