LULA Elevators: Low-Rise Accessibility Explained

01 · What a LULA actually means

Read the name literally and the category explains itself: Limited Use, Limited Application. A LULA is an elevator permitted to be smaller, slower and shorter than a passenger elevator, in exchange for staying inside hard limits.

That trade is why the category exists. A two-storey library cannot justify the machinery, the shaft and the cost of a passenger elevator, and a wheelchair lift does not give a standing passenger an enclosed car or an automatic door. The LULA fills the gap between them with an enclosed car and automatic doors. It carries a wheelchair user, a person with a walker and a parent with a pram, and it reads as an elevator to everybody else in the building.

The wording also settles arguments. A LULA is not defined by the height of the building it serves or by how that building is used. It is defined by what the equipment is allowed to do. Two buildings of similar height can face different answers if one of them needs more capacity than the class permits, or if the lift has to be the building's main route between floors.

The three routes a low-rise building can take, on the four figures buyers compare. The LULA is the only one of the three defined by an upper bound on all four.

One consequence is worth stating at the start, because it changes how you read the rest of this page. A LULA is a commercial accessibility product, and this article is about that class of equipment. Our own product line is residential elevators, which are built and described for a single household. Where this article describes capacity, travel, speed and features, it is describing the LULA class. Those figures are not a description of our residential elevators, and our residential elevators are not offered as LULA equipment.

Why a category page, and not a product page

Buyers search for this term before they have a supplier, and what they need at that moment is a way to tell whether the route is even open. That is what a filter page can do and a specification page cannot. Read the next section as a checklist against your own building.

02 · The four figures that define the class

Four published figures carry the whole category. Treat them as the walls of the room you are planning inside, because every other decision follows from them.

1,400 lb

Maximum capacity · about 635 kg

The total inside the car: riders plus anything they bring. A mobility scooter plus its rider uses most of it, and two scooters exceed it.

25 ft

Maximum travel · about 7.6 m

Measured from the lowest landing served to the highest, not the height of the building. Basements and mezzanines count towards it.

30 fpm

Rated speed · about 0.15 m/s

Roughly a tenth of a passenger elevator's speed. It is a defined value for the class, not a shortfall in any particular machine.

18 sq ft

Maximum car area · about 1.67 m²

Platforms commonly sit near 42 x 60 in (107 x 152 cm) or 51 x 51 in (130 x 130 cm), and a 90-degree arrangement is normal at the entrance.

The two figures that work as a pair

The capacity figure and the car-area figure work as a pair, and the pair explains most of the surprises. Eighteen square feet is a platform of roughly 42 by 60 inches. Inside that footprint you can place one wheelchair with a companion standing near the door, or two people side by side with nothing else in the car. What it will not do is move a household's furniture, a catering trolley, a delivery pallet or a group of people. A building that needs those is not a LULA building, however low it happens to be.

What 30 ft per minute means at the landing

Travel time is distance divided by speed, with door movement and levelling on top of it. At the published 30 ft per minute, which is half a foot per second, the arithmetic is simple enough to do before anybody promises a quick ride.

0 s25 s50 s of travel

12 ft rise

About 24 seconds of travel. Two 6 ft storeys. Door movement at both ends pushes the door-to-door figure past half a minute.

20 ft rise

About 40 seconds of travel. A tall two-storey or a low three-storey, and this is where the class starts to feel slow.

25 ft rise

About 50 seconds of travel, the published maximum. Add door time and a regular passenger will notice the wait.

Arithmetic from the published speed, not a performance promise. The same trip measured by stopwatch will read longer, because doors, levelling and the gentle start and stop are not in the calculation.

What 25 ft and 30 ft per minute really allow

Speed is where this class is misread most often. Thirty feet per minute is a defined value for the category, and the ride time above is the honest consequence of it. Buildings whose users move between floors in a hurry, such as a school between periods, will feel that time every day. Buildings where the ride is occasional, or where the alternative is no access at all, will not.

The 25 ft travel figure is the other hard wall, and it is the one most often tested by accident. Add the basement, the mezzanine and the top floor before anything else, because a route of 26 ft is not a marginal version of this category. It is outside it, and the answer becomes a different class of equipment.

Published figures, arithmetic, and nothing else

The capacity, travel, speed and car-area values are the ones published for this class of equipment. The ride times in the bar above are arithmetic from the published speed, and the door-to-door figures are described as estimates rather than measurements. Neither set is a statement about your local code path, and neither is a claim about our own certification or our own product range.

03 · Safety features and the failure each answers

A safety feature is easier to judge by the accident it prevents than by its name. Six items cover almost everything that goes wrong on a low-rise accessibility lift.

Read the list below as a set of questions to put to whoever is quoting. The useful question is not whether the equipment has safety features, because every supplier will say it does. The useful question is which of these six is included, and how each one is demonstrated before handover.

Six devices, and the moment each one exists for

Door sensors that detect an obstruction and reopen or hold the door. They exist for the moment something is caught in the closing edge.
An emergency stop button inside the car. It exists for the rider who needs the car to stop now, without waiting for it to reach a landing.
A call or alarm button that reaches somebody outside the car. It exists for the rider who cannot leave and cannot reach the landing.
Back-up power with manual lowering. It exists for a supply failure with somebody inside, so the wait can end without anyone forcing a door.
Emergency lighting that comes on when the supply fails. It exists because a dark car turns a short wait into a frightening one.
A hands-free telephone in the car. It exists for the rider who cannot hold a handset, or who is down at the level of the car floor.

0 of 6

Two of the six are devices a rider can reach, two act on their own, one is electrical back-up and one is communication. Suppliers describe them in different words, so match on what the item does rather than on the label in a brochure. A quotation that lists the devices without saying how each is tested at handover is a list, not an answer.

Ask for the handover tests too. A door sensor, an alarm call and an emergency light can each be demonstrated in a few minutes on the day the lift is commissioned, and a written note that it happened is worth more than a page of description. If a site has regular visitors who use a wheelchair, put one of them in the car during that demonstration.

What back-up power does, and what it does not do

Back-up power and manual lowering are not a way of keeping the lift in normal service during an outage. Their purpose is to end a wait safely: to lower the car, keep the car lit and keep communication working. Ask which of those three the back-up covers, and for how long.

04 · The features that decide whether people ride

A compliant lift and a used lift are different things. These are the features that decide whether the person the lift was bought for will ride it alone, without asking for help.

The set below is the accessibility and experience list published for this class of equipment. None of it is exotic, and all of it is the kind of detail that gets settled by a quotation rather than by a drawing, which is exactly why it is worth reading before the order.

Doors

Automatic horizontal sliding doors, with two-speed movement

A door that slides sideways and slows as it closes is easier to enter with a wheelchair than a swinging or folding door, and it asks for less clear space in front of the landing.

Controls

Illuminated floor selection buttons

Lit buttons are found by a rider with reduced vision, and they stay findable as the building's own lighting changes around them.

Controls

Simple automatic operation

A single press to travel. Every extra step in the control sequence is another step that a rider has to be taught, and another step that can be forgotten.

Access

Key-operated control where the building needs it

A key switch lets a facility restrict use without turning the lift into a staff-only device, which matters in schools, clinics and small residential blocks.

Feedback

Audible and visual floor indicators

Two channels instead of one. A rider who cannot see the panel clearly, or cannot see it at all, still knows where the car is and when it has arrived.

Inside the car

Braille labelling, and a stainless steel handrail

Both are used far more often than buyers expect, because the largest group of riders is not people in wheelchairs but people who are standing and unsteady.

If the budget has to cut something

Cut the key switch first and the handrail last. A handrail is touched on almost every ride by almost every rider, including people who walked to the lift and would not describe themselves as having a mobility problem. The key switch, by contrast, only earns its place where the building has a specific reason to restrict use.

The two questions that matter more than the feature list

Can the person this lift is for ride it alone, from anywhere in the building, without asking anyone for help? If not, the missing features are the reason, and they are cheaper to settle before the order than after the handover.
Would somebody here use the lift to carry something upstairs? If the honest answer is no, the building will keep using the stairs for everything except access, and any traffic assumption built into the choice is wrong.

05 · Which buildings fit, and which do not

Six kinds of low-rise building account for most installations of this class, and they share three things: the change of level is small, the traffic is light, and the alternative is no access at all.

The three questions below are the filter. Answer them for the building as it stands today, not for the lift you have in mind, and any answer on the right-hand side closes the route.

Three questions before you go further

Each pair of answers is a statement about the building, not about the equipment. The reading below updates as you choose.

1. Travel from the lowest landing served to the highest

2. The heaviest single journey the car has to make

3. What the lift has to be for the building

All three answers sit inside the class

This is the profile the category was written for: a modest change of level, a lift that carries people rather than goods, and stairs that remain available to everyone else. The next step is a site measurement, not a request for a price, because the answers that decide the drawing are physical.

Measure the travel, then measure it again including any basement or mezzanine.
Confirm what overhead clearance and what space below the lowest landing the building can actually give.
Decide where the doors open at each level, and what has to stay clear in front of them.

When all three answers sit on the left, the class is a candidate. When one of them sits on the right, the project does not become a larger version of this lift; it becomes a different class of equipment, and the budget conversation changes with it. The most common version of that mistake is a three-storey route measured after the drawings were finished.

The six building types below are the ones where the three answers usually come back on the left. Read them as a description of the pattern rather than a list of permissions, because what governs a given site is local.

Schools and colleges

A single change of level between wings, the hall or an annexe. The lift serves visitors, staff and students who cannot use stairs, and it is busy for a few minutes around the bell.

Places of worship

A raised sanctuary, a hall above the entrance, or a level change between the nave and the meeting rooms. Traffic concentrates on one day of the week and is light on the others.

Libraries, community centres, small museums

Public buildings with a mezzanine or a first floor. An accessible route is expected rather than optional, and visitors have to be able to use the lift without a member of staff.

Multi-unit residences and small care facilities

Low blocks and small homes where residents and visitors need to reach an upper floor. Travel and load usually sit well inside the class.

Restaurants, bars and cafes

A dining room above the kitchen, or a raised seating area. The lift carries guests and staff, and it is not asked to carry stock.

Boutique hotels, small offices and clinics

Buildings of two or three floors with modest occupancy. The lift keeps the accessible route inside the building instead of sending visitors round to a back entrance.

The pattern behind the six

In every one of them the accessible route either exists or is expected, and the change of level is modest. A building that needs the lift to carry groups, deliveries or building materials belongs in a different category, and no amount of good intentions changes that. The three questions above are the whole filter.

06 · LULA, a standard elevator, a wheelchair lift

The three routes differ on six things. Two of them decide whether the project is available at all, and four are what buyers compare afterwards.

Three routes compared · cost and complexity given as directions, not amounts
What is compared	LULA elevator	Standard elevator	Wheelchair lift
Design focus	Accessibility and safety	Speed and volume	Basic mobility
Capacity	Up to 1,400 lb (635 kg)	Higher capacities	Lower capacities
Travel distance	Up to 25 ft (7.6 m)	Greater distances	Shorter distances
Speed	30 ft per minute (0.15 m/s)	Higher speeds	Lower speeds
Cost	Moderate	Higher	Lower
Installation complexity	Moderate	Higher	Lower

Read the table from the top down and the two decisive rows come first. Capacity and travel settle whether the class is available: a building that needs more than 1,400 lb or more than 25 ft is not choosing between three routes, it is choosing between two. Speed, cost and installation complexity are the comparison that follows, and they are the rows where this class holds its advantage.

The installation row is worth one sentence of explanation, because it is where the class earns its place. Lower speed and shorter travel reduce what the equipment asks of the building, which is why these lifts tolerate a smaller equipment space, less foundation depth and lower headroom than a passenger elevator. They reduce those demands; they do not remove them, and the section below is about the conditions where reducing is not enough.

Why the cost row carries no number

A single figure would be wrong for most readers and would be quoted back at all of them. What is useful is the order of the three routes and the reason for it. A wheelchair lift costs least because it does least; a passenger elevator costs most because it is built to carry a building. This class sits between them, and how far between depends on the site rather than on the equipment.

07 · Three conditions that end the conversation

Three conditions close this route immediately, and a fourth limits it. None of them means the equipment is poor. Each means the class is doing exactly what its name says.

Test each condition against the building before a supplier visits. Two of the four can be settled with a tape measure and a short conversation, and the third is a question about who the lift is for rather than what it is made of.

Inside the class

Travel of 25 ft or less between the lowest and highest landing served.
A car sized around one person and the equipment they bring with them.
Stairs that stay in use by everyone else in the building.
A site that can give some clearance above the top landing and some space below the lowest one.

Outside the class

More than 25 ft of travel once every basement and mezzanine is added in.
Goods, trolleys, stock or building materials that the car would have to move.
Every journey in the building depending on the lift, all day and for everybody.
A site with no tolerance at all above the top landing or below the lowest one.

The last item in the right-hand column is the one buyers push back on, so it deserves a straight answer. Lower speed and shorter travel reduce what the equipment asks of the building; they do not remove the asking. A lift still has a car, a drive and a set of doors, and the building still has to make room for all three. A site that can offer nothing above the top landing and nothing below the lowest one is a site where the supplier needs that information early, before a drawing exists.

What to do when one condition fails

There is no larger version of the class to move up to; the figures are the figures. Move to one of the other two routes, and say which condition failed when you ask for a quotation, because a travel failure and a traffic failure lead to different answers at different costs.

08 · The order to settle decisions in

Six steps, in the order that avoids rework. Each one is cheap where it appears on this list and expensive further down it.

The sequence is short because most of the difficulty in these projects is created by settling decisions in the wrong order. A price asked for before the travel is measured, or a drawing made before the entrance side is chosen, both produce work that has to be done a second time.

Step 1

Measure the travel

Lowest landing served to highest, basement and mezzanine included. This single number decides whether the class is open, and it is also the number most often taken from an old drawing instead of a laser measure.
Step 2

Count journeys, not people

How often will the car move, and at what times? A lift that carries one person twice a day and a lift that carries a queue twice an hour are different projects at the same travel.
Step 3

Decide what the car has to carry

People and their own equipment, or goods as well. This is the point where under-specified and over-specified projects separate, and it costs nothing to answer honestly.
Step 4

Walk the site for what is above and below

What the building can actually give above the top landing and below the lowest one. Measure it on site with the finished floor levels in place, not from a ceiling plan.
Step 5

Fix the entrance side at every level

Where the doors open, what has to stay clear in front of them, and whether the car needs a 90-degree arrangement to fit the space available. Door clearance is what decides whether a wheelchair user can use the lift unaided.
Step 6

Confirm what governs the site, then ask for prices

Local rules decide which route is acceptable in your building. Bring that answer to the quotation, together with the figures from steps 1 and 4, and two suppliers will finally be quoting the same project.

Two of the six cannot be done from a desk. The travel and the space above and below the landings are physical facts about the building, and every later decision inherits them. Every other item on the list can be changed later at some cost. Those two cannot be changed at all.

Who needs to be in the room

The owner or the manager, who can say what the building needs the lift to do and who will live with the traffic assumption afterwards.
Whoever runs the building day to day, who knows about deliveries, cleaning equipment, storage and what actually happens at each level on a normal morning.
The designer, if there is one, because the entrance side and the clear space in front of the doors are drawing decisions rather than equipment decisions.

09 · Words you meet in a quote package

The vocabulary of a quotation is small, and most of the risk in these projects hides in four of the eight terms below.

LULA

Limited Use / Limited Application: the class of elevator described here, allowed to be smaller, slower and shorter than a passenger elevator while staying inside the figures in section 2.

LU / LA

The same class, written as an abbreviation. You will meet both forms in supplier documents, and they point at the same equipment.

Travel

The vertical distance between the lowest landing the lift serves and the highest. It is not the height of the building, and basements and mezzanines count towards it.

Overhead clearance

The space above the top landing the lift has to stand in. It is one of the two physical asks a short-travel, low-speed design reduces but does not eliminate.

Below-floor space

What the building can give below the lowest landing. Some designs ask for less than a passenger elevator does; none asks for nothing, so this is worth measuring before the first drawing.

Rated speed

The value the equipment is described at, quoted here as 30 ft per minute (0.15 m/s). It produces the travel times in section 2, and it does not improve with age or with use.

Two-speed sliding door

An automatic horizontal door that starts quickly and slows before it closes. It is the door type described for this class, and it matters more to a wheelchair user than the name suggests.

Hands-free telephone

A car telephone that can be used without lifting a handset. It sits in the safety list in section 3 because it is how a rider inside the car reaches somebody outside it.

Two of these words carry most of the misunderstanding. Travel is quoted as a ceiling for the class and as a measurement on a site, and both figures belong on the same page of a quotation. Rated speed is a property of the class, so a reader who compares it with the speed of a passenger elevator will conclude that something is wrong, when the equipment is behaving exactly as defined.

The word that is not on the list

You will also read the word compliant. It is worth knowing that compliance belongs to a specific installation in a specific place, judged against the rules that apply there. It is not a property of a catalogue or of a class, and a supplier who offers it as one is describing something nobody can deliver.

10 · Questions buyers ask

Ten questions that arrive in the same order from almost every buyer, answered with the same figures used above and no promises attached.

What does LULA mean for elevators?

What is the difference between this and a regular elevator?

How much does one cost?

Where can one be installed?

Is a LULA elevator ADA compliant?

Is it allowed in my state or my country?

How many floors can it serve?

How many people fit inside?

Does it need a machine room or a pit?

Can one be added to an existing building?

11 · Convert the figures in your own documents

Drawings, surveys and quotations arrive in whichever units their author uses. Convert them before you compare two documents, because a mixed pair of units is how a 7.6 m route gets read as 25 ft of clearance.

Convert the figures used on this page

Type into either box in a row and the other side follows. The factors are the standard conversions for mass, length and speed.

Capacity

lb

kg

Travel

ft

m

Speed

ft/min

m/s

The published metric value for the rated speed in section 2 is the rounded 0.15 m/s. The exact conversion of 30 ft per minute is 0.152 m/s, which is why a document written to two decimal places may disagree with a rounded figure by one digit.

Use the converter on your own paperwork rather than on this page. The two figures worth converting first are the travel on the survey and the capacity written into a draft specification, because both of them get copied forward into every document that follows.

12 · What to have ready before you ask for a price

Ten items, all of them facts about the building rather than wishes about the equipment. A supplier who receives them can quote one project instead of three.

The list is written to be handed to whoever is quoting, and to be printed. It is deliberately short, because a long list of requirements invites a long list of assumptions in return.

Two of the ten arrive from other people: the answer from whoever administers the local rules, and the answer about who looks after the equipment afterwards. Both are easier to obtain before a purchase than after it, and both change the shape of a project more than any finish or control option does.

Where this page sits on our own site

Read this article as background on a commercial accessibility category, not as an offer. Our own product line is residential elevators built for single households, and those products are not described or sold as LULA equipment. If you are comparing lifts for a public or commercial building, see the special elevator range and the project gallery, and ask us directly when a description does not match what your site needs.

The whole category comes down to four figures and three questions. Measure the travel, test what the car has to carry, decide what the lift is for, and the route either opens or it closes. If it opens, the rest of the project is a sequence rather than a puzzle.

LULA Elevators Enhance Accessibility in Lowrise Buildings