Heavy Duty Home Elevator with 15 m Travel

1. Is a heavy duty home elevator right for your house?

Buying a lift for a house is a different exercise from buying one for an office. The building is fixed, the floors are finished, and the machine has to be carried in through whatever opening already exists. A heavy duty home elevator trades speed for carrying capacity, and that trade only works when the house can accept the machine at all.

The published list for this model is short enough to read in one pass. Travel is published as up to 15 m and the stop count as 2 to 10. Drive is a screw drive, running speed is 0.15 m/s, and control is microprocessor-based. Doors are automatic with a centre or side opening, maintenance is described as low, and installation is published for indoor or outdoor positions. Safety devices named on the specification are an emergency stop, overload protection and safety gear. The parameter table beside this article names the certification for this model.

One machine under several names

Households and contractors reach this page under different phrases. A heavy duty home elevator, a heavy duty screw lift for home, an outdoor heavy duty home lift and a screw drive home lift all describe the same arrangement in this range, and this page treats them as one machine. The wording changes what people type into a search box; it does not change the guide rails, the drive or the drawing.

The three questions that sort an enquiry

Three questions separate a project that can be quoted next week from one that needs a survey first. How much travel does the house really need between the lowest and the highest landing? Where can the machine stand, and is that position inside the building or outside it? And what has to be carried, since a lift bought for a wheelchair and a lift bought for building materials are drawn differently even when they look identical in a photograph.

The fastest way to move an enquiry forward is to send three things: the floor-to-floor heights, a photograph of the position the machine would stand in, and a note of what has to be carried. Those three answer the travel, the siting and the load questions in a single exchange, and the full list is in section 13.

What this page does not publish

The gaps matter as much as the figures. This page publishes no rated load, no certified speed, no seismic or fire qualification, and no statement about what happens during a power failure. Where a project needs any of those, they have to be answered in writing for that project.

2. What heavy duty means in this market

The phrase heavy duty is used loosely in the home lift market, and a buyer who takes it at face value can end up with a machine that carries less than expected. Our own review of the first page of search results for this phrase on 19 September 2026 found established suppliers describing heavy duty home lifts at roughly 180 kg to 635 kg, or 400 lb to 1,400 lb. That is a reasonable load for a person with luggage or a wheelchair user, and it is not what most households mean by heavy duty.

The screw drive range on this site takes the same phrase further, and the two sister pages linked in section 13 publish their own figures. Those figures belong to those models rather than to this one, and the bars below show the size of the gap rather than claiming a rating for this page.

How to read the bars

The scale runs to 5,000 kg, so the retail figure of 635 kg is the short bar on the left: the top of the market's heavy duty band sits at about an eighth of what this site's screw drive range publishes. A buyer who needs to move stone, tiles or a mobility scooter is shopping in a different category from one comparing residential brochures. What this page adds is travel and siting, with published travel of 15 m, stops from 2 to 10, and indoor or outdoor installation.

Read the bars as market context and nothing more. If your project needs a stated load, the figure has to be written on the approved drawing for your machine. Treat any load figure quoted from a webpage as a question to be confirmed, not as a specification to be assumed.

3. How a screw drive carries a 15 m travel

Most home lifts people have seen run on ropes. A screw drive works on a different principle, and the difference explains what this machine is good at and why its published speed is modest. A threaded screw stands vertically beside the car. A nut travels up and down that screw, the car is attached to the nut, and the load is carried by a steel column in compression rather than by ropes over a sheave.

That arrangement changes what the building has to provide. There is no rope set to re-tension, because the drive lives at the machine position rather than in a plant room. What the building provides instead is a base that can take the loads the screw passes into it, and a shaft or enclosure that keeps the guide rails plumb over the full travel. Both are drawing decisions, and both are cheap before the frame is fixed.

Where the speed trade shows up

The published running speed for this model is 0.15 m/s from the specification note on this page. A screw drive is a positive, mechanical drive, and the figure reflects a machine built for control and load holding rather than speed. Households rarely regret it; what they notice instead is that the car holds its position when it stops.

What 15 m of travel means in a house

Fifteen metres is easy to underestimate on a drawing. At a typical storey height of about 3 m, the published travel of this model reaches roughly five levels, which on a house usually means a basement or garden level, ground, and three upper floors. A house with generous ceiling heights reaches that limit with fewer storeys. Measure floor to floor, never by counting windows.

What 0.15 m/s means in practice

At the published speed of 0.15 m/s, a full 15 m trip takes about 100 seconds. That is the honest way to read the figure. It is a calm ride for a household lift and a poor fit for anyone who wants a fast shuttle between two floors all day. Where speed matters more than load, a traction machine is the right conversation; where load and control matter more than speed, this drive is the one to look at.

Where the screw changes a specification

Two items in a tender change when the drive is a screw. The first is the base: the load reaches the building through the machine position rather than through a plant room, so the floor or footing under the lift has to be checked by somebody who can see the structure. The second is alignment, because a screw and its nut work best when the guides stay true over the whole run, which is why a shaft that is plumb and square is worth more here than on a rope machine.

Everything else follows the drawing. Where the machine stands, how the landings are formed, what the doors open onto and where the supply terminates are settled once on paper and then built. An overview of how a screw drive carries the car is worth reading before a site meeting, because it explains why the base and the alignment come up in every conversation.

One number to carry into the survey: published travel is 15 m and the published stop count is 2 to 10. If your house needs either pushed, this is the wrong model, and finding that out before a deposit is much cheaper than after.

4. Choosing a load tier before you order

This page publishes no rated load, so it cannot answer the load question with a figure of its own. What it can do is set out what each tier asks of a project. Work through the four tabs in order of what your project has to move rather than what looks impressive, because the tier you choose changes the base, the route and the door clear opening long before the machine. The figures come from the sister models linked in section 13.

The tabs carry figures published on the sister models, not on this page. Treat them as the range you are shopping in, and the written load on your approved drawing as the specification you will hold.

5. The specification this page publishes

Every figure below comes from this page's own material, and the third column names which part of it. A figure from the parameter table is a standing specification. A figure from the specification note is worth confirming against your drawing before it goes into a contract. Switch the units if you work in feet and inches: the metric values are the published ones and the imperial figures are rounded conversions.

What is published, and what is not

Read the table as a list of what can be quoted safely and what cannot. Travel, stops, drive, speed, control, door arrangement, maintenance wording, installation position and the named safety devices are published here. The certification named in the parameter table is a quality management certification about how the product is made, not how a machine performs on a particular site.

Three items are missing and none of them can be filled in from this page. There is no rated load. There is no certified speed, so the published figure is a working figure rather than a third-party performance figure. And there is no statement about power failure behaviour or automatic rescue, so a project that needs one has to ask rather than assume.

Commercial terms stay on the parameter table beside this article rather than being repeated here: minimum order quantity, price band, payment terms, supply ability, delivery time and packaging are all listed there. Section 13 covers what to send so those terms can be quoted against your project.

6. Indoor and outdoor positions

Installation is published for indoor or outdoor positions, which is unusual among home lifts and is one of the reasons this machine appears in garden and terrace projects. The two positions are not interchangeable in practice, and what changes is the work around the machine rather than the machine itself: weather protection, drainage, fixing, access and cleaning all change when the lift steps outside the walls.

Whichever position you choose, send a photograph from outside as well as inside. The outside view shows exposure and access, and it is the one photograph that changes a quotation the most.

7. Checking your own site conditions

Before a survey is booked, most of what matters about the position can be answered with a phone camera and a tape measure. Pick the description closest to your project and the list underneath sets out what to look at. None of it replaces the survey; all of it makes the survey shorter.

Whichever panel applies, the deliverable is the same three items: heights, a photograph of the position, and a note of what has to be carried.

8. What the building has to provide

Three checks decide whether a quotation can be priced at all, and all three can be done before anyone visits: the travel the house needs, the headroom at the top stop, and the base under the machine. A project that answers all three can be quoted quickly. One that answers two usually stalls while somebody finds a tape measure.

Who supplies what

Retrofit projects run smoothly when both sides of this list are written down on day one. The lift arrives as a set: the drive, the guide system, the car, the doors, the control system and the named safety devices. The building supplies the space around it, the supply to the machine position and the access to install and service it.

How the installation runs

Once the survey is confirmed and the drawing approved, the sequence is mechanical and short. Prepare the base. Fix the guide rails and set the drive at the machine position. Fit the car and the doors, make the electrical connection, then run the checks before handover. On an occupied house the work stays at the lift position rather than spreading through the rooms.

What delays these projects

Two items delay a home lift more than anything else. A base that needs a structural solution after the machine has been ordered is the first. An enclosure built by another contractor to dimensions that differ from the lift drawing is the second. Both are avoided the same way: settle the base and the enclosure dimensions before production starts, and send the drawing to be checked against the machine.

Two numbers and three photographs get a project to a firm answer. The numbers are the total travel and the headroom at the top stop. The photographs are the base, the top landing and the route in.

9. Car, doors and the photograph on this page

Door arrangement is the part of the specification a household actually lives with, and the part most often left to the last minute. Automatic doors with a centre opening or a side opening are two different demands on the wall beside the landing.

A centre opening splits the doorway into two leaves that meet in the middle and part to both sides. A side opening takes the leaf or leaves to one side. Neither is better in the abstract. The choice is decided by how much wall is free at each landing, where a person has to stand while the doors move, and whether the door travels into a tight corridor.

Four door decisions worth settling early

The photograph on this page

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An honest note about pictures. This page carries one product photograph of this model. The diagrams in sections 3 and 9 are drawings produced to explain the arrangement, and the thumbnails in the similar products strip belong to other models. If you need photographs of a finished installation, ask before the order rather than after it.

10. Safety devices and handover

The safety position published for this model is short, and it is worth reading exactly as written rather than expanding it by assumption. Three devices are named on the page specification list: an emergency stop, overload protection and safety gear. Control is microprocessor-based and the doors are automatic. The certification named in the parameter table is a quality management certification, and it says nothing about the verified performance of a particular machine.

Nothing else in the safety column is published here. There is no certified load, no certified speed, no fire rating and no seismic qualification, and this article claims none of them. Where a project needs one of those, it has to be answered in writing for the destination rather than inferred from a page of this kind.

What an emergency stop is for

An emergency stop takes the machine out of service when a person decides something is wrong: a lift that sounds or moves differently, a door that will not close, or somebody in the way. Pressed in that situation it is the right response, and every adult in the house should know where the button is before the first ride.

It is not a way to stop the car between floors for convenience, and it is not a substitute for the service line. A lift left stopped with people inside is a rescue, and a rescue takes longer than the fault that caused it. Three habits keep this simple: the button stays pressed until a technician releases it, nobody opens a door or reaches into the shaft, and the service number lives within arm's reach of the lift.

Overload protection and safety gear

Overload protection watches what the car is carrying and prevents a journey the machine should not make. On a heavy duty lift this matters more than on a domestic passenger lift, because the loads people expect to move are not always what the drawing anticipated. Safety gear is the mechanical backup that holds the car if it moves when it should not.

Neither device is a licence to overload the machine, and neither removes the need for a written load figure. Treat the published devices as the last line of defence and the drawing as the first.

Handover: twelve items worth recording

Most disagreements after an installation are about what was agreed rather than about what was built. The handover visit is the moment to settle that, and the list below takes about twenty minutes. Tick the items as they are confirmed and keep the list with the machine documents.

Four items are most often missing from a home lift handover: the built-to drawing revision, the load and speed in writing, what happens on a power failure, and who looks after the enclosure. Ask for all four on the day the machine is handed over.

11. Service, spares and the warranty line

Any lift is a machine with parts that wear, and a home lift is serviced less often than a commercial one because it makes fewer trips. That makes the arrangement around the machine more important than its reputation. Who answers when it stops, how quickly they arrive, and whether the parts that stop a lift are available locally decide how the next fifteen years feel.

Start from what this page publishes. The specification note carries a one-year warranty line and the parameter table lists the commercial terms of supply. Write both down accurately on the quotation, including what the warranty covers and what it excludes, because a term that names parts but not labour is read differently by the two parties at the first claim.

Three things to settle in writing

First, the warranty term together with its exclusions, so nobody argues about interpretation later. Second, the service interval and what the first visit includes, so a small fault is found before it becomes a stopped lift. Third, the response arrangement when the lift stops with somebody inside.

The published warranty line on this model is a one-year term from the specification note. Confirm it on the quotation for your project, and ask about spare part lead times in the same conversation, because those matter more than the length of the warranty.

12. Common questions about heavy duty home lifts

The questions below are the ones that arrive most often on enquiries for this model. Where this page publishes a figure, the answer quotes it. Where the page is silent, the answer says so rather than filling the gap with a guess.

13. What to send for a quotation

A made-to-order lift is priced from the building rather than from a catalogue, so the enquiry that gets a firm answer quickly is the one that arrives with the building attached. The list below is what we work through. Anything you cannot answer is still worth sending as a gap, because a missing dimension we can ask about is faster than a complete set of guesses.

What happens after you send it

We check the travel against the published 15 m, the stops against the published 2 to 10, and the position against the base and the access route. You get back an arrangement drawing to approve, a question, or a plain statement that the building does not suit this model.

Where to look next

Three pages go deeper on the choices this one raises. The screw driven elevator range compares drive options across the range. The screw drive home elevator page publishes a small footprint model at 500 kg to 5,000 kg, and the heavy duty screw drive elevator page publishes a 5,000 kg machine. Those two are the source of the range figures in sections 2 and 4, and the pages to read if the load matters more to you than the travel.

Two of the thirteen sections decide most projects: section 1 tells you whether the building fits the published envelope, and section 5 lists every figure this page publishes together with the source of each one. Everything between them is detail that follows from those two answers.