3 Passenger Compact Home Elevator for Small Homes

1. Is a three-passenger lift the right size for your house?

A 3 passenger compact home lift is a small residential elevator rated for one to three people, built to take as little of a house as the drive and the doors allow. The capacity on this sheet is 1–3 passengers, with the three-passenger configuration as the one this page documents. The rest of the specification — gearless drive, 0.3–0.5 m/s, automatic doors, PLC control, 220 V / 380 V supply — exists to keep that car usable in a house rather than a commercial shaft.

The number matters because it is the only input that cascades. Passenger count sets the car area, the car sets the shaft section, and the shaft section decides which wall can take the lift, whether a landing is wide enough for the doors, and whether the structure above has depth for the rails. Price follows the same path.

In daily use three passengers covers more than the count suggests: two adults and a child, a resident with a carer, or a person in a wheelchair with the clear opening to match. What it does not cover is a car sized for furniture.

Keep two numbers apart at enquiry stage, because buyers mix them up. Capacity here is in passengers: 1–3. Rated load in kilograms is a different figure and is not printed on this page, so ask for it in writing before comparing offers — two compact cars can look identical in a photograph while being built to different loads. For the single-user end of the range, see the 200 kg compact personal home lift and the compact elevator category.

2. Two, three or four passengers: picking the tier

Tiers are usually sold as a choice of cabin size. In a house they are really a choice of shaft, and the shaft is the part you cannot move once the floors are finished. The table below puts the three tiers side by side on what actually changes an order: who travels, what it does to the car, and what it costs you in floor area.

Cells that stay open are marked because this page publishes no figure for them. Treat any other quotation that prints a dimension for the same tier as a claim to be checked against a drawing.

How to decide in one pass

Three questions settle the tier faster than a specification comparison. Who travels together on a normal day, not on moving day. Does anyone travel with a frame, a wheelchair or a trolley that is wheeled straight in. And how much landing width can the plan give up at the busiest level, because that limits the door and the door limits the car.

Two habits cost projects money: sizing for a once-a-year event and then finding the shaft no longer fits the only wall available, and going down a tier to save area and then living with a car that cannot take the household's normal trips. The compact tier exists because most domestic journeys are one to three people.

3. The specification in detail

This is the unit's specification as published on this page. The one figure with an imperial equivalent is converted in brackets, so switch the buttons above the table rather than matching two columns by eye.

Values as published on this page's own specification tables, which agree with each other where a figure appears twice.

What the three key lines mean

Gearless means no gearbox sits between the motor and the drive, which is what makes the machine small enough to live with a domestic shaft instead of a plant room. 0.3–0.5 m/s is a domestic speed: seconds per storey, and a gentle stop. 220 V / 380 V, 50 / 60 Hz means one unit is quoted for a single-phase house and a three-phase building, in both the 50 Hz and 60 Hz worlds — the point where imported lifts most often fail to match a site.

The safety line names three systems: an emergency stop button for the resident, safety sensors watching the door path, and a backup power supply that keeps the control system alive when the mains drops. Section 8 turns those into things to see working.

What this sheet does not state

These decide whether two offers are for the same machine. None is printed on this page, so each comes from the factory or from your own measurement.

One habit makes quotations comparable: ask every supplier for the same five lines in writing — car and shaft dimensions, rated load, speed, clear door opening, and what the price excludes. A quotation that cannot answer those five is an estimate, whatever it is called. A compact lift is won or lost on the details at the lowest landing, the fixing points along the travel and the headroom at the top.

4. Shaft, footprint and where it goes

Compact is a relative word, so it is worth being concrete. In a small residential elevator three things claim space: the car, the room the guide rails and the drive need around it, and the landing at each stop where the doors open and a person steps out. You choose the car; the drawing fixes the other two, which is why an identical car can need two different shafts in two different houses.

The plan below shows how those parts stack up. Every dimension on it is left open on purpose: this page publishes no car or shaft figure, and a plausible-looking number here would be quoted back as a commitment.

Three positions that work, and what each one costs you

• A stairwell void. The most efficient position, because the space is already given to circulation on every floor. It asks for a landing wide enough that the doors open without blocking the stairs.
• A spare corner of a room. A straight run between floors and a simple structural path, at the cost of the best corner of that room — a glass cabin makes the trade visible.
• Against an external wall, kept indoors. This unit is specified for indoor installation; a wall position gives a straight vertical route plus a place for the machine and panel. Check what is inside the wall first.

Two arrangements usually fail: a first-floor landing that is really a hallway, which has to stay walkable once the doors open, and a roof or attic position with a shallow structure above it, where lowering the travel is the only honest answer.

Position self-check before you ask for a drawing

Eight questions, none of which needs an engineer. An afternoon here prevents the most expensive change in the project: moving a shaft after the openings have been cut.

One note on the third item. A landing that is technically wide enough is still useless if the doors open into the walking line between the stairs and a bedroom door. Draw the open doors on a plan and walk the route on paper.

5. Power supply and control

Electrical work is where a compact retrofit either stays simple or becomes a project of its own. The sheet gives 220 V / 380 V, 50 / 60 Hz and PLC control, so one model is quoted for a single-phase house and a three-phase building, in both the 50 Hz and 60 Hz worlds. That range is worth checking early: an imported lift that assumes one phase and one frequency is where a straightforward order stalls.

What the sheet cannot tell you is what your own installation will accept. The card below separates the four lines this specification fixes from the four your site has to answer.

What PLC control changes for the household

A programmable controller changes three things a resident notices. Levelling becomes consistent, so the step at each landing stays where it was set. A fault can be reported rather than only stopping the lift, which turns a service visit from a hunt into a fix. And adjustment is a parameter change: how long the doors stay open, how the car answers a call, how the panel behaves.

What it does not change is the electrical scope: the panel still needs a clean supply, an isolator and an earth. Ask for the wiring diagram in English at handover; it is what lets a local technician work on the lift without asking the factory to explain the logic by email.

Where the machine and the panel should live

A gearless drive is quieter than a geared one, but it is still a machine in a house, and position decides how noticeable it is. Keep it out of the wall a bedroom shares, give it ventilation rather than a sealed cupboard, and leave clearance to reach the panel and read a fault code.

6. Cabin, glass and doors

In a compact lift the cabin does two jobs: it carries people, and it is part of the interior. The sheet names stainless steel and glass and a sleek and modern design. Stainless steel gives a clean frame that survives daily use; glass keeps a small shaft from reading as a solid block in a room.

Choosing between a closed and a glazed cabin

The choice is not mainly about appearance; it is about which rooms the lift passes through. A glazed cabin in a stairwell that already has daylight is a small gain. The same cabin in a dark internal corner changes how that corner is used. Where privacy matters, glass on one face with stainless steel on the rest solves both problems at once.

One caution, since compact shafts are tight: the car has to keep a clear opening at the doors and a clear step area inside, and heavy glazing frames eat into both. Contact our engineers.

Look at the cabin on the actual page

The photograph in the gallery at the top of this page opens full screen when you click it, which is more useful than a thumbnail when you are judging a finish, and it answers something a specification table cannot: how much of the room the shaft takes. If the finish matters, ask for the finishes included at the quoted price and the weight of the cabin as specified, because that weight feeds straight into what the structure carries.

7. Installation sequence and time

A compact lift is judged by the state of the house afterwards, so this section describes the order of work and what it disturbs. Delivery is quoted at 40 working days from order confirmation with the approved drawing signed, packed in an export non-fumigation wood box.

8. Safety devices and backup power

This specification names three safety features: an emergency stop button, safety sensors and a backup power supply. That is also the list to build a handover around, because a feature that has never been demonstrated is only a line on a sheet.

What the backup power supply does, and does not

Backup is the safety feature buyers ask about most and the one most often misunderstood. It keeps the control system alive during a mains failure, so the lift is not left in an unknown state: the panel can show the condition, the car can be brought to a landing and the doors opened. It is not a second power source for normal service. How many operations it supports, and whether it returns the car automatically, is not stated on this page. Contact our engineers.

One point worth having in writing: a gearless lift with a safety gear does not free-fall when the power fails. The machine holds the car, and the rescue is a controlled movement rather than an emergency. The procedure still has to be demonstrated.

Approval and local rules

Domestic lift rules differ by country, and sometimes by state or city. This sheet evidences ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and UDEM; the standards your installation is inspected against belong to the authority where the house stands. Ask two questions locally before the order: what approval a residential lift of this type needs, and what evidence the authority expects from the supplier.

9. Service, warranty and spares

The warranty on this specification is one year. What happens after that depends on the service arrangement you set up and on how carefully the unit was installed. What follows is what a compact gearless home lift actually asks for over its working life.

Service intervals and the exact contents of the schedule are not printed on this page, so ask for both in writing and keep them with the handover file. Contact our engineers. Two habits make the schedule easier to keep: leave the panel and the machine reachable rather than boxed behind finished joinery, and write the date of each visit inside the lift or beside the panel.

What decides the running cost

Cost of ownership on a compact gearless lift is dominated by doors and electronics rather than consumables, which is the opposite of a hydraulic drive. What both share is that machine and panel position decides what every service visit costs.

10. Compact home lift FAQ

These are the questions that come back most often from homeowners, contractors and distributors looking at a small residential elevator. Answers stay inside what this page's specification states; where the page is silent, the answer says so.

11. What to send for a quotation

A quotation for a compact home lift is only as good as the inputs behind it. The list below is the full set needed to fix a layout, a price and a delivery date for a three-passenger unit in an existing house. Send what you have; answering the gaps once is faster than answering them three times.

Commercial terms on this specification

One last point about scope, where most compact-lift projects lose time. The lift price covers the lift; the openings, the shaft preparation, the supply run and the making good are yours. Send the passenger count, the landing width and the two measurements above the top stop and below the lowest one, and the layout can be fixed in one pass — rather than after the floors have been cut to a shaft that turned out to be the wrong size.