PRArticles
PRToday
Publicity tips that can help you increase your sales leads
PowerPR: Articles
Elevators: the Next Home Appliance
Date: 07/25/2007
With builders, architects and developers trying to squeeze ever more baby boomers into pricy urban and suburban areas, they've had to build up, not out to minimize the cost of increasingly scarce real estate. But as boomers age and two, three and four level units become the norm in many areas, particularly the coasts, the onus has been on building professionals to provide safe, convenient access to all levels of dwelling. Stairs, long known as one of the most dangerous areas in the home due to falling hazard, can be an insurmountable barrier to the mobility challenged that can shut out potential buyers.
Since traditional residential lifts with manual swing doors and folding or scissor-type gates have also presented safety and usage concerns, a new generation of true home elevator is promising to become the next "home appliance," becoming as common in the near future as garages and microwaves are today. Offering the convenience and safety of automatic doors, along with streamlined design, installation and maintenance, these new home elevators are enabling building professionals to provide safe, convenient, affordable access to all levels of dwelling for owners of multi-level units such as townhouses, condos or single family homes.
The shortcomings of residential lifts
Though residential lifts, which evolved from bare-bones construction site-type lifts, can provide homeowners with access to all levels of their home, they don't offer the safety and convenience a true home elevator provides. The difference in safety and convenience is even more critical when children, older or mobility challenged people are in the home.
Many homeowners and parents are unaware of the dangers a traditional residential lift could pose to their families if installed at home. Residential lifts usually rely on swing doors or folding scissor-type gates, which are not meant to be used as elevator doors and are, in fact, prohibited in public buildings.
Swing doors and folding scissor type gates can be a dangerously incomplete barrier, especially to children and pets. The greatest danger is the gap between the residential lift's inner gate and its swing doors: children or pets can enter the gap only to be crushed when the lift car moves.
Another major danger occurs when homeowners bypass the residential lift's door interlock and gate switch, which are typically the only safety devices provided. Frustrated homeowners sometimes disable these safety devices after unsuccessfully calling for the lift, which fails to come because someone forgot to close the gate or swing doors after use.
Yet with the lift door interlock and gate switch disabled, lift users could unwittingly open the swing door while the lift is in motion-- and fall into the lift shaft. If standing at the lift's entrance when someone calls the lift from another floor, they could also be seriously injured by the unexpectedly moving lift.
On a less serious, but still dangerous level, manual, collapsible scissors-type gates can pinch fingers, cause objects to get stuck and stop moving lifts.
Safe, convenient home elevator access
Full automatic sliding elevator doors have long prevented these types of accidents in commercial settings. Until recently, however, design constraints have made such technology unavailable to home users. Now this has changed with the introduction of
safe, convenient, and surprisingly affordable home elevator technology.
At least one manufacturer of home elevators today, Vertechs Industries Inc., a leader in elevator safety based in Ontario, Canada (www.vertechs-elevators.com), makes it physically impossible for children or pets to get between two sets of automatic double doors. With just a 1.5-inch gap between the two sets of doors and full range light curtain sensor detecting obstruction and movement, this provides a much-needed margin of safety.
Because of the convenience of fully automatic doors, there's no need to try to bypass the home elevator's safety features. But just in case, its advanced controller system detects any unauthorized alterations from its original set up, providing fault signals that prevent the elevator from moving until the fault is cleared and the elevator is safe to move.
"Why should people be protected in elevators outside their home but not in it?" asks Luis Barrios, General Manager of Vertechs Industries. "We promote home elevator safety and affordability in everything we do from the way it's designed, installed, used, and maintained."
The company, which sees itself on a Dell Computer-like quest to bring a perceived luxury item to the mass public, has re-engineered the home elevator to promote safety, affordability, and ease of use in both the new construction and retrofit markets. It's done this to help building professionals expand their market of potential buyers and to help aging baby boomers satisfy their mobility needs.
"For safety and liability reasons, nobody should drive a car without a thorough safety inspection; for the same reasons nobody should use a home elevator unless it's built to code," declares Barrios, whose elevators are built to national, state and local codes including ASME/ANSI A17.1 2004, ICC/ANSI A117.1, and the NFPA 70 National Electric code.
"Home elevators give you an independence you just don't have if you're not able to use the stairs safely and easily," agrees Linda Krause, who uses a Vertechs elevator in her family's two-story home with basement in Ottawa, Canada. "Regardless of age or mobility, your home should be a place of safety, independence, and comfort. My home elevator provides that, and I use it just about every day to go from the basement to the second floor. It's great for moving laundry, groceries, heavy loads, and kids. For me, it's not a luxury, but a necessity."
To further safety and expedite correct installation while reducing cost, Vertechs has simplified home elevator design in a number of areas. On critical elevator guide rails, which must be perfectly aligned for a safe, smooth ride, installers can typically take days to get the alignment, distance, and welds just right. To compress this process into a few hours, Vertechs pre-welds and pre-aligns the guide rail sections. Installers just align the guide rail sections with a laser beam then stack them.
Where the typical elevator chassis that rides the guide rail is comprised of at least ten components that must be assembled, including uprights and cross members, the company has re-designed this into two pieces. When installers join these with six bolts, they can assemble the entire elevator frame in about 20 minutes.
The company has removed much of the guesswork and time consuming interpretation from architects' and installers' jobs as well. Where typical home elevator drawings provide just the layout with the minimum dimensions and require the architect to decide many details, the company provides all the architectural specifications and details so there's no delay or misinterpretation.
To ensure that the home elevators are built to code in the fastest, most efficient and cost effective way possible, Vertechs has even looked at how installers interact. Whereas installers typically must dig through their toolboxes to find the correct tool and sometimes wait for each other to finish jobs before borrowing the right tool, the company provides installers with identical toolboxes including all the tools needed for the job.
"Having a home elevator installed from the start isn't that expensive in the long-term scheme of things," says Krause. "When I think of how often I, my family, or guests use our home elevator it's really inexpensive, and a justifiable lifestyle enhancer. Anybody can come into my home, bear any load, and reach any floor safely and effortlessly. That's convenient now and will be even more so as we age."
"It's about time that someone helped building professionals adapting multi-level construction to the needs of baby boomers and the marketplace," concludes Barrios.
"As boomers get older and property more costly, safe convenient home elevators will keep boomers independent and mobile on multi-level floor plans. Home Elevators are rapidly moving from luxury to the next home appliance."
For more information, call 519-621-8443; fax 519-621-3211; email admin@vertechs-elevators.com; visit www.vertechs-elevators.com on the Internet; or write to Vertechs Industries, Inc. at 31-130 Cedar St., Suite 123, Cambridge, On, Canada N1S-5A5.
By Del Williams
Del Williams is a technical writer based in Torrance, California.
For more information regarding our marketing publicity services or any sales questions please contact John Elliott.
To view our current job listings go here: jobs.
For information regarding using articles from our news section, editor request and the like, please contact press.