This
is a story about a building that was built in the late 1960’s. We initially went to the building in 2008 to
bid some State of Illinois Mandate work[someone else did the work] and began working with the building in
2014 for elevator maintenance. This is a pretty vanilla
condominium in a Chicago suburb called Oak Park. The building is full of working class and
seniors. As an elevator industry we sometimes forget for these buildings this
is a huge decision for them, one of the largest expenditures they will make
during their tenure on the board or even living in the building, not to mention
how important the elevator is to some of the residents. I was pretty excited about this
modernization, nothing flashy, just great people who live in the building who
will love their new elevator!
Existing elevator &
project scope
– We replaced all of the original electrical and mechanical equipment;
controller, fixtures, power unit, door operator. The building really needed the upgrade to be
able to service their aging population that depends on their elevator to run
24/7 for their 1960s vintage ESCO Elevator
New
equipment providers
Controllers
– Smartrise
Door
operators – GAL MOVFR
Fixtures
– Innovation Industries
Power
unit – Quality w/Maxton UC 4 valve
Elevator controllers – The existing elevator
controller was an ESCO Elevator controller and was having reliability
issues. While all of the issues where
resolvable they began taking longer and longer to resolve due to the older
elevator controller[wire fatigue, relay issues, door circuit issues, etc].
[Old ESCO Elevator controller]
[New Smartrise Engineering hydraulic elevator controller]
Elevator door operators
– We
replaced the 55 year old GAL MOD door operator with a GAL MOVFR door operator
[Old car top with 55 year old GAL MOD door operator]
[Updated car top with GAL MOVFR door operator]
Elevator fixtures – We installed
Innovation Industries hall and car fixtures to replace the original ESCO
Elevator fixtures.
[Old ESCO Elevator fixtures]
[New Innovation Industries car station]
[Old ESCO Elevator 1st floor hall station]
[New Innovation Industry 1st floor hall station at ADA height with code required items incorporated]
Hydraulic power unit – We removed the ESCO
Dry unit and installed a Quality Elevator submersible power unit with a Maxton
UC4 hydraulic control valve.
[Old ESCO Elevator dry power unit]
[New machine room layout]
[New Quality Elevator hydraulic power unit with Maxton UC 4 valve]
Take away – This was a very
important decision for the board to understand the elevator modernization
process, what was staying, what was being replaced and to get to know the team
that was going to be doing the work. Now
the building has some great new nonproprietary elevator controllers and a fully
nonproprietary elevator system.
Team work– The sales person and
the project team who finishes typically get the glory on a project. In between the initial contract sale and the
final acceptance are many other people who work on the project to make it
successful. From the truck driver to the
engineer to the billing department to the assist when needed, 10 Colley Elevator
employees where involved in the project and we had tremendous team work on
it. Thank you everyone without you we
would not have had such a successful delivery!
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.
