1–2 Person Screw Drive Home Elevator for Compact Homes and Annexes

1. Is a 1–2 person screw drive lift the right size for your house?

A 1–2 person screw drive home elevator is the smallest configuration in this range: a domestic lift for one person, or two travelling together, driven by a screw-and-nut mechanism instead of a hydraulic ram or a traction machine. Its point is not that it lifts less weight than a bigger car. Its point is that it fits houses where a larger lift cannot go — a stairwell void, a corner of a ground floor, an annexe, an outbuilding, or a retrofit where nothing may be dug out.

The single number that cascades through the order is the car. Passenger count sets the car area, the car area sets the shaft section, and the shaft section decides which wall can accept the lift, whether a landing takes an automatic door, and whether the structure above has depth for the guide rails. Price follows. That is why this page starts with the tier.

In daily use, one to two passengers covers more than the count suggests:

• A resident plus a carer, travelling together
• A person with a walking frame or a wheelchair, with a clear opening to match
• A household that wants shopping, laundry and luggage carried up rather than walked up
• Not, however, a car sized for furniture, appliances or a stretcher

The drive matters as much as the size. A screw-nut lift needs no machine room and no hydraulic oil: no plant space to build, nothing to store, and no ram buried under the lowest floor. Read with a 0.15 m/s travel speed, that is a deliberate trade — a lift you ride for a few seconds between floors.

Keep one distinction clear at enquiry stage. This page carries a passenger description (1–2 person) and a capacity range (500–5000 kg). They are not the same figure, and the match between a given passenger count and a given load is confirmed on the approved drawing. Contact us. For the wider family see the screw driven elevator range; for the smallest personal lift see the 200 kg compact personal home lift; for a larger car see the 3 passenger compact home lift.

2. How a screw-nut drive actually works, and why it changes the site

The specification on this page names the drive in four words: screw-nut, microprocessor controlled. Those four words are the reason a lift in this class can be fitted to an existing house, so they deserve a plain explanation.

A screw drive works on the same principle as a screw jack. A threaded steel screw runs vertically for the full length of the travel. A nut on that screw is turned by the motor; as the nut rotates, it climbs the screw, and the car travels with it. There is no piston, no hydraulic power unit, and no traction sheave with ropes. The load is carried by the thread, and the car is held where the thread leaves it.

Three site consequences follow, and all three show up in what a contractor has to build:

• No separate machine room. The drive sits within the shaft envelope rather than in a plant space beside it.
• No oil. Nothing to fill, change or store, and no hydraulic line or cylinder seal to leak into a finished house.
• No ram below the lowest floor. The floor arrangement is a shaft decision rather than a hydraulics decision.

The exact floor and headroom details still come from the approved drawing for your configuration. Contact us.

Microprocessor control is the second half of that sentence, and it is not decoration. The controller sequences the motor, holds the car level at each landing, and coordinates the door cycle with the call logic. It also receives the safety inputs — the emergency stop, the overload signal and the safety gear contacts — and decides how the lift behaves when one of them acts.

One characteristic decides whether this is the right machine for a house. It travels at 0.15 m/s — a domestic pace, not the pace of a passenger lift in an office block. It is also a positive-drive mechanism: when the car stops, the thread holds it. That is a handling characteristic rather than a marketing point, and it is why quiet operation is a design claim here rather than a published number. If noise against a bedroom wall decides the project, ask for the measured figure. Contact us.

3. One, two or three passengers: choosing the tier before the finish

Tiers in this class are sold as a choice of car; in a house they are really a choice of shaft, and the shaft cannot be changed once the floors are finished. The table below lines the three tiers up on what actually moves an order.

Fix the tier first because of arithmetic, not preference. Every dimension on a lift drawing is derived from the car, and the car is derived from the passenger count. Decide the tier late and the drawing gets reissued, usually after the openings have been formed. Decide it early and the enclosure can be ordered, the doors sized and the supply run to a known position.

There is one honest exception. If a household member's mobility will change over the next few years, the tier that fits today may not fit in five. A two-person car that accepts a wheelchair with a carer is worth more than the smallest car behind the same opening. Ask what clear opening the door gives and what car area sits behind it, rather than comparing labels. Contact us.

4. The specification in detail

Everything below is as printed on this page's specification tables. Metric values are shown first; switch to imperial if your drawings are in feet and pounds. Nothing in this table is inferred, rounded from another model, or carried over from a different lift in the range.

Two figures on that table are frequently misread, and both misreadings cost money. The capacity range of 500–5000 kg describes the family of machines behind this page, not the rating of a one-to-two-person car. The 2–10 stop envelope is a limit, not a plan: a two-stop and a ten-stop installation share the same drive and speed here, and differ in rail length, landing doors and site work.

Treat the table as the floor of the conversation. What it does not print is what the drawing has to settle: car and enclosure dimensions, clear door opening at each landing, headroom above the top stop, the lowest-floor arrangement, the sound figure and the electrical detail at the connection point. Contact us. All six change the site work rather than the lift.

5. Where it goes: indoor, outdoor and the checks that decide it

This page lists installation as indoor or outdoor, and that one line changes the scope more than any other option here. Indoors, the lift occupies a corner, a void or a stack inside the thermal envelope, finished like the room around it. Outdoors, the same drive sits in an enclosure that has to handle weather: a base that drains, a structure that sheds water, a supply run that survives, and a landing that stays safe when wet.

Neither is better in the abstract. Indoors is usually cheaper in site work and easier to service. Outdoors is what makes a lift possible where no interior void exists, and is often the only way to serve an annexe, a garage conversion or an upper floor reached from outside.

What decides it is four measurements: the footprint available, the headroom above the top stop, the route the parts travel, and where the enclosure can be fixed. A third position also catches people out on drawings — an integrated lift, sitting inside the house but outside the heated volume, in a cold stairwell, an unheated porch or a covered external recess. It reads as indoor and behaves like outdoor for weather detailing.

The fourth item most often changes a plan after quotation. A footprint can look clear on a drawing and still contain a heating loop, a drain run or a lintel. Mark it on the floor, photograph it from above and note what is inside. That photograph frequently saves a second site visit.

For an outdoor position, take that photograph again in rain. Water pooling at the threshold, or a base below the surrounding ground level, will not show in a dry-week survey but will show in the first wet season.

6. Power supply: 220 V or 380 V, AC or DC

The specification covers four supply arrangements in one line: 220 V or 380 V, and AC or DC. That breadth is deliberate, because the houses this lift is bought for are rarely uniform. A new-build has a conventional AC supply; an older property, an outbuilding, a site with its own generation, or a building in a market with a different distribution standard may present something else.

Read the line as coverage rather than as a choice you make at order stage. Coverage means the machine can be configured to the supply you actually have, so the constraint falls on the electrical work rather than on the lift.

Three items are settled by the specification and three always need the site. They are listed separately below so the second group does not get lost in a quotation.

The electrical scope is also where quotations get read optimistically. The lift arrives configured for the supply agreed at order stage; the cable, the isolation, the protective device and the route to the panel are separate items. Put all four on the drawing before the order and the installation stays a one-visit job.

7. Doors, car and the choices that show on the plan

The doors on this unit are automatic, centre or side opening — a choice the resident notices daily and the builder notices at every landing, because the two types need different amounts of clear floor in front of the car.

A centre-opening door splits into two leaves that part from the middle. It reads as a lift door, needs less wall width beside the opening, and suits a narrow landing or a door in a short wall. A side-opening door slides as a single wide leaf to one side. It gives a clear opening closer to the full car width, which matters for a wheelchair, a frame or a trolley, but it needs unbroken wall length for the leaf to travel into.

Three further choices shape what the lift looks like in the house. None changes the drive or the specification printed here; all three change the enclosure, the finishing trade and the lead time, so fix them before the drawing is approved.

One measurement worth requesting explicitly, whichever door type is chosen, is the clear opening after the door is fully open — not the rough opening in the wall. A frame and a sliding mechanism both consume part of it, so a generous hole can still leave a tight route. On a lift bought for accessibility, that figure decides whether the car is usable as intended. Contact us.

8. Safety devices and what to verify at handover

This page lists three safety devices: emergency stop, overload protection and safety gear. They are separate systems acting in different situations, because each covers a failure the other two do not.

The emergency stop is the occupant's control: a deliberate stop initiated inside the car, independent of the call logic. Overload protection is the load guard: it prevents the car from being operated beyond the rated load for the configuration. The safety gear is the mechanical backstop, acting on the guide rails rather than through the drive.

What the page does not print is the acceptance procedure: the load test criteria, the stopping distances and the documentation your market expects. Request those in writing rather than assuming them from the specification table. Contact us.

If a household member has a significant mobility need, add one item and settle it early: how the lift is brought to a landing after a supply failure, and who is authorised to do it. It decides whether residents are comfortable using the lift alone. Contact us.

9. Service, spares and the 12-month warranty

The maintenance story on a screw drive is quiet rather than revolutionary. There is no hydraulic oil to change, no reservoir to top up and no cylinder seal to fail into a finished floor. What remains is a smaller routine: the screw and its lubrication, the drive nut, the guide rails and their fixings, the door mechanism at each landing, and the safety inputs the controller reads.

That is a list a local lift engineer can work through without a machine room, which matters where the alternative is flying a specialist to a private house. It does not make the lift maintenance-free.

Three arrangements are worth fixing while the order is placed, because each costs more to organise afterwards. First, who services the lift: a local engineer with the documentation, or the supplier on a scheduled visit. Second, what a visit covers, in a written list. Third, what happens after the warranty, including how spares are ordered and how long they take. Contact us.

The 45-day delivery time is quoted from order confirmation, which in practice means from the approved drawing rather than from the enquiry. Anything that changes the car, the door type or the number of stops after that point resets the clock, because those parts are made to your dimensions rather than taken from stock.

10. Mini screw drive home elevator FAQ

These are the questions that come back most often from homeowners, contractors and distributors looking at a small screw-drive lift. Every answer stays inside what this page's specification states; where the page is silent, the answer says so.

11. What to send for a quotation

A compact lift can be quoted to the drawing, or estimated and corrected later. The difference is five pieces of information, and all five come from the building rather than the lift. Send them together and the first reply can be a drawing and a price; send them one at a time and the first reply is a question.

Commercial terms as printed on this page

Last point on scope, because it is where compact-lift projects lose the most time. The price covers the lift; the openings, the enclosure, the base, the supply run, the controller mounting and the making good are the building's scope, and they are cheaper to cost alongside the lift than to discover afterwards. Send the items above and the layout is fixed in one pass, not after the floors have been cut to the wrong enclosure.