Easy lift installation in a wooden shaft

It is becoming more common for lift shafts to be made out of wood. Schindler has developed a standard procedure for simplifying the mounting of lifts in wooden shafts.

You can’t see any wood!"the photographer was surprised to discover, who had been asked to photograph the lift mounted in a wooden shaft. He was right. For fire protection reasons, the wooden walls of the shaft are completely clad with fibre gypsum panels. In the event of fire, the walls would then resist the flames for at least 90 minutes.

Not so long ago, the lift shaft would have still had to be brick-lined or made of concrete. However, wooden construction has made huge strides in recent years and is now enjoying a boom, making new solutions possible. Jörg Bächi is pleased by this. The wooden construction specialist is simultaneously building owner and general contractor of the multifamily building in Embrach (Switzerland), whose lift shaft is photographed.

Lift shaft is free-standing

For fire protection reasons, the wooden walls of the shaft are completely clad with fibre gypsum panels. Photo: © Beat Brechbühl

He is enthusiastic when describing how the 11 m long and 12 cm thick wall elements were lowered from above into the shaft by a crane at the building site. "To prevent the elements from breaking when they bend during lifting, we left joints open between the gypsum fibre panels," he explained. These were retrospectively sealed to restore the fire protection effect.

Incidentally, to ensure the building residents are not disturbed by the noises made by the lift, the lift shaft is free-standing, without contact points with the rest of the building. This is possible in wooden construction.

New standard procedure

Installation of the lift in a wooden shaft is technically unproblematic. Since residential buildings with several floors are increasingly being built as wooden element structures, Schindler has developed a new standard procedure, which had its premiere in the multifamily building in Embrach.

"We have installed lifts in wooden shafts in the past. But up to now, we regarded every lift as an individual case, which in each case resulted in considerable planning effort," Pascal Goetschi noted, product manager in the field of new installations and modernisations.

Thanks to the standardisation of the installation process by MDC, Schindler’s engineering department, the fitters are now given clear and consistent guidelines regarding what material and tools they will need on the building site and what the course of installation will look like. This simplifies the planning and work on the building site.

Bigger lifts are to follow

Photo: © Beat Brechbühl

Schindler now provides passenger lifts with a conveyance performance of up to 675 kg as a standard product. Work on expanding the range is underway. As a result, larger lifts will soon be available too for installation in a wooden shaft without additional preparations.

And just to remove any reservations: lifts mounted in wooden shafts are just as safe as those mounted in concrete shafts. The lift is not suspended on the wooden walls. The guide rails are only screwed onto the shaft walls for fixation. The rails are embedded in the concrete base plate and the counterweight is transferred vertically.

More information: group.schindler.com

New publication: The Holzbau Deutschland Institut (German Wooden Construction Institute) is currently working on a new edition of its publication on wooden construction lift shafts. The aim is to provide those involved in building with concepts for successful implementation of wooden construction lift shafts, particularly with regard to fire and noise protection, based on measurement results and key details.

"Given that a forecast of the noise insulation qualities of a wooden lift shaft cannot be made with the currently available normative codes, the existing noise insulation quality should be investigated on the basis of reference buildings," according to the homepage of the Holzbau Deutschland Institut. To this end, measurements were carried out in rooms adjacent to cross-laminated timber lift shafts in existing wooden buildings, presented and evaluated as examples. The results could be used in additional projects as a foundation for a computational verification procedure for determining the noise insulation quality to be expected of a wooden construction lift shaft.

In addition, the aim is also to work out key design details for companies and implementing companies and to point out typical problems. To do so, reference is made to reference buildings, for example, which illustrate what designs and solutions can be utilised in particular cases to meet fire and noise protection requirements.

institut-holzbau.de