Sunday, January 26, 2020

Elevator Preventative Maintenance – How often should my elevator technician come by?


Back ground - We have been getting a tremendous amount of calls for maintenance proposals and more than ½ the time the reason is that the incumbent company doesn’t even show up, but, the building is still being billed.  I only go on a small percent of the walk throughs but I get to see all the pictures and when we are only showing up to take service calls we are deferring maintenance and putting the building owner’s elevator equipment in a compromised position.




What’s the big deal? Elevator maintenance is important because the elevator is most likely the most complicated piece of equipment in the building.  We have hundreds of moving parts on an elevator and it is very important that you have a qualified and competent service technician reviewing your equipment on a regular basis.  If no one is looking at the equipment, cleaning the equipment, etc your issues will snowball to having a elevator that looks like the surface of the moon because no one has cleaned it or having an electrical or mechanical failure because we are not checking the critical components of your elevator system[start contacts, motor brushes, suspension cables, etc].  You also are required to have functioning emergency phones, lights, fireman’s recall, etc that should be checked on a regular basis to ensure they function correctly in the event of an emergency.

How often should someone come?  This is a good question.  Every elevator is different and should be looked at differently.  At Colley we sit down after we visit a building and ask questions like; What kind of building is it?  What is the traffic like?  What is the environment?  Who is using it? Etc.   Ultimately we can give our recommendation for how frequent someone should visit but if the elevator contractor recommends X and the building owner only wants to pay for X minus Y then the  choice for an elevator contractor is to give it to them or walk away from the opportunity.   Make sure when you talk to a potential elevator maintenance company you ask them “why are you recommending quarterly/monthly/bi monthly, semi annual  visits”?  What are my building’s needs.  

Monthly to Quarterly – For many generations the elevator technician has been going to most elevators on a monthly basis.  This has been changing over the last 10 years.  Now we go quarterly or “systematically”.  “Systematically” typically means as little as possible. This goes back to the conversation you have with your current or potential elevator contractor and finding out why they come to your building when they do and if it makes sense for your elevator(s).  The biggest issue with no going to buildings on a monthly basis is who is going to exercise fireman’s recall Phase I & II, it is required to be checked monthly in our elevator code and is a State of Illinois/City of Chicago requirement.

OEMs – The Otis, Schindlers, Kone, Thyssen Krupp’s of the world are very busy and in our area do not have the man power to go to the maintenance stops on a regular basis.  We are seeing deferred maintenance.  We are hearing buildings who call in at 8am and get “if you want someone out there today, it will be after hours at $900.00 an hour”.   There are a lot of great elevator mechanics at OEMs, the issue is they don’t have the hours in the day to complete the required work load.  Some of this is due to looking for short term profits[you remove a few guys here or there and the bottom line looks better], some of this is due to a lack of elevator mechanics available.

Remote monitoring – I am not yet a believer in remote monitoring yet.  I’m sure the different remote monitoring devices have great capabilities to capture data 
There is something to be said about having trained eyes and ears riding your elevator to identify if something doesn’t feel right.  Remote monitoring is a wonderful selling point but I’m not sure how great it works in practice other than allows the company implementing it to not send an elevator mechanic to the building.  I have not seen an elevator monitoring device from an OEM that will tell you if your elevator pit is filled with water or you have a pipe that is dripping on your controller in the machine room that is about to damage your solid state circuit boards. If I’m wrong, please let me know.

[Not sure any remote monitoring system will pick this up]

Take away – Preventative maintenance is required on anything with moving or building critical parts; furnace/AC, alarm systems, sprinklers, elevators, etc.   Your elevator is a huge capital investment and the building’s users rely on it to get around in the building.  Educate yourself on what you are getting from your elevator contractor and it should make sense to you as an building manager, building owner and elevator contractor.  We collectively need to be on the same page on what type of elevator maintenance your building requires.

Hey! Sign up for our mailing list!  We should be getting a monthly email going out sometime in Q1 of this year.

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.

Sunday, January 19, 2020

Immediate Stop Use Notice: Guardian SRL-LEs with Stainless Steel or Web Lifelines

This notice is intended to communicate product information regarding Guardian Fall Protection leading edge - compatible self-retracting lifelines (SRL-LE) that utilize a stainless steel or web lifeline. A small number of these SRLs were identified as non-compliant with ANSI Z359.14-14 and must immediately be removed from service. Please ensure the widest possible dissemination of this information.




Hey! Sign up for our mailing list!  We should be getting a monthly email going out sometime in Q1 of next year.

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

Sunday, January 12, 2020

Colley Elevator end of Year Party – K1/Cybersport – Addison, IL

Who thought Whirly Ball/Cybersport would be so much fun?  Last Saturday we had our annual end of year party a Cybersport K1 Racing.   We had over 60 people brave the crummy weather to come together to start our 112th year as an Independent Elevator Contractor.  We had 437 years of collective Colley Elevator experiencing in attendance. 


It was wonderful to see our new faces and even better to see some of the legends who were building the foundation for us long before some of us knew what an elevator was.  We had a few 5 and 10 year anniversaries and got to say thank you to some of our long time employees who keep us together.  Every year when going through anniversaries and years worked it is amazing to see how long we have been together and the memories we create.

It is always great to see everyone get together outside of work and see who we spend the other ½ of our life with.  We have a deep appreciation for everyone who work with us but a deeper appreciation for the people at home who have to listen to how our days go.

We had surprisingly great food at the facility and had a raffle where 1/2 of the people walked away with something.  Everyone did get to leave with a Colley Elevator Yeti.



The games were competitive.  We had some shining stars and some black holes, but all of it was all fun!

[Many legendary battles took place on this court]

It takes a great group of people to keep this 112 year old company going.  I have said and will keep saying, It takes a lot of people from the first phone call to the final inspection or repair for us to be successful. I am proud to part of the team and that I get the opportunity to work with everyone here.   This is the group who won the 2019 Ellie!  Thank you to everyone!

[Hoisting the Ellie]

Hey! Sign up for our mailing list!  We should be getting a monthly email going out sometime in Q1 of next year.

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.

Sunday, January 5, 2020

Hydraulic Elevator Modernization – Montgomery MiProm – Park Ridge, IL


In May of 2002 I made my first sales visit to this building in Park Ridge, IL.  Years later we ended up doing a modernization on 3 of the elevators and they left one alone as it was newer than their 1960’s equipment that was in the old part of the building.  While newer equipment it was Montgomery Elevator Miprom equipment which isn’t always everyone’s favorite to work on.


Existing elevator & project scope – A new owner bought the building and was doing capital improvements and the non-modernized elevator had a habit of shutting down on the weekends.  This piece of conveyance equipment was critical in their building traffic pattern and could not have shut downs.  We made a recommendation to replace this piece of equipment for two reasons; 1st was the critical nature of this elevator to the building and 2nd was the amount of technicians who are proficient in Montgomery equipment will be fewer and fewer as the years go by due to the retirement of domain knowledge.  The new owners agreed and wanted a completed mechanical and electrical modernization.  This was completed on 12 hour days and delivered early back to the building.

New equipment providers

Controllers – Smartrise Engineering
Power units – MEI
Door operators – GAL
Fixtures – Innovation Industries

Elevator machine room– With updated equipment, painted machine room floor and new electrical makes it look a lot better!

[old Machine room]

[old Machine room]

[New Machine room]

[New Machine room]

Hydraulic elevator controller – The original control system was in really poor condition and had a history of getting hot.

[Old crispy MiProm controller]

[New Smartrise Engineering Controller]


Hydraulic elevator power unit – The old Montgomery power unit was wearing and experiencing fatigue.  It also was leaking a decent amount.

[Old Montgomery dry power unit]

[New MEI power unit with Maxton UC4 Valve]

Door operators – The elevator had MAC operator and equipment.  We replaced the operator with a GAL MOVFR and retained the MAC hatch equipment was replaced.

[Old MAC operator]

[New GAL MOVFR II operator]

Elevator fixtures – The old Montgomery fixtures went away and new Innovation flush mount fixtures to meet ADA and elevator code requirements were installed.  I was pretty excited to see how the main landing turned out with the digital PI to replace the multi light on the right hand side of the door frame.

[Old Main landing with multi light position indicator]

[New flush mounted buttons & digital position indicator]

[Old Montgomery car station]

[New easier to use Innovation ]

Take away – With how important this elevator was to the building the modernization was long overdue.  Our project team nailed it and brought it in early.  Another great team effort from signing of contract to engineering to delivery of equipment, project support and finally field personnel execution.  We also had some help from our Park Ridge Elevator Inspector who made it out there when we requested it.  Thank you to everyone involved.

Hey! Sign up for our mailing list!  We should be getting a monthly email going out sometime in Q1 of next year.

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.

Also check us out on Instagram @Colleyelevator see what we have been up to.