Hydraulic elevator modernization – Chicago, IL – Elevator #1 & #2

We recently completed a 4 car hydraulic elevator modernization at a group of buildings that are 80-90 years old and have been merged together.  We will focus on elevators #1 & 2 in this blog.  The elevators had two separate machine rooms and ran on separate button stacks even though they were right next to each other.  Each elevator machine room was hot and suffered a lot of heat related issues.  What I found was that most people hit both elevator buttons and both would respond which exacerbated the production of heat from both elevator machines because both elevators chased themselves on every call.  Some people even hit the up and down button hoping that would get them an elevator faster.

 [The building did their cab interiors which completed the look for the new elevators]

Initially our solution was like the other companies who bid the project, there were two machine rooms, keep them 2 machine rooms and simplex.  After final engineering visits we worked with the building to get a bigger machine room and duplexed the cars.  The goal here was reduce elevator heat.

Controllers – Smartrise Engineering

Power units – MEI

Door operators – GAL

Fixtures – Innovation Industries

Machine rooms & Controllers – Each of the existing machine rooms where fairly small and 60 feet away from eachother.  The picture below is the machine room, I didn’t have enough room to get a good picture of the entire elevator machine/controller because it was too small.  We replaced the traditionally reliable Dover DMC which where simplexed with Smartrise duplexed controllers. 

 [Lots of stuff in this elevator machine room - Pre MOD]

 [This dungeon has electrical pipes, water pipes and a lot of stuff collected from the years - Pre MOD]

 [New disconnect layout - Post MOD]

 [Old Dover DMC work horse on dry unit - Pre MOD]

 [Old Dover DMC work horse on submersible - Pre MOD]

 [New Smartrise Engineering duplex controllers - Post MOD]

Hydraulic elevator power unit – The elevators were running a dry 60HP and submersible 25 for the smaller car.  We replaced them with new MEI power units.

 [New MEI power units - Post MOD]

 Door operators – The cars had all Dover equipment on them.  We replaced the Dover door operators with GAL MOVFRs and replaced all the Dover hatch equipment.

 [Car top with Dover door operator - Pre MOD]

 [Car top with GAL door operator - Post MOD]

Elevator fixtures – All hall and car push buttons where replaced with Innovation Industries fixtures.  The fixtures ended up turning out great and are a major feature of the elevator modernization for the building. 

 [Dover fixtures - Pre MOD]

 [Innovation fixtures - Post MOD]

 [Typical hall Dover hall fixtures - Pre MOD]

 [Typical hall Innovation hall fixtures - Post MOD]

 [Dover Elevator car station - Pre MOD]

 [Innovation Industries car station - Post MOD]

Take away – This was a challenging installation and we had a great team at the building that worked with us to getting two reliable elevators back into service with a new feature to them called Duplex.

If you have any questions or would like additional information feel free to contact me at CraigZ@colleyelevator.com or 630-766-7230 ext. 107.