Hydraulic Elevator Modernization – Forest Park, IL

Here is an original Colley Elevator from 1967 that had been modernized with a MCE in 1989 back when companies may or may not have been changing the wiring to all of the devices.  This is a fairly busy building, it is 6 floors and has a large foot print with one elevator.  Over time the building replaced their controller in 1989, their power unit in 1998, their door operator in the mid to late 2000s and it has the original cylinder.

Why now? The elevator didn’t have any issues but the building was planning for the future.  The building had a mix mash of elevator components from different years and they knew eventually they would have to address their elevator globally.  Over the last 10-14 years we have been talking on and off to the building when they showed interest in learning more. 

Project scope – We replaced their control system, fixtures, power unit and cylinder.  Since the elevator door equipment was newer, we retained it and replaced as necessary some of the smaller component parts.

New equipment providers

Controllers – Smartrise

Fixtures – Innovation Industries

Power unit – Quality

Cylinder - EECO

Elevator controllers – The existing elevator controller was replaced in 1989 with a MCE.  The white logic box is now more and more challenging to get replacement parts for or to even have it repaired.  The building made a good decision to replace it with a more serviceable control system, Smartrise Engineering.

[Existing - Motion Control Engineering MCE hydraulic elevator controls]

[New - Smartrise Engineering hydraulic elevator controls]

Elevator fixtures – We replaced the original EPCO elevator fixtures from 1967 with new Innovation Industry fixtures that are up to code, ADA accessible and have the new visual/text communication.  Since Forest Park, IL does not monitor visual emergencies systems yet on elevators the building is working with Kings III for monitoring of their phones and visual systems.

[Existing - EPCO elevator car station]

[New- Innovation Industries elevator car station]

Hydraulic power unit – We removed a Colley Elevator power unit that was installed in 1998 and put a Quality Elevator power unit in, both have/had a great Maxton UC4 valve on it.  We used a Dover/TKE heavy duty muffler[not shown] to minimize machine noise.

[Existing - Colley Elevator hydraulic power unit with Maxton UC4 valve]

[New - Quality Elevator hydraulic power unit with Maxton UC4 valve]

Elevator cylinder – Back in the 1960’s Colley Elevator would buy cylinder heads from Atlas Elevator in San Francisco and make out own cylinders and buy pistons from EECO. Back in the 1960’s this may have been a great cylinder head, but, today, not so much.  We got rid of the Atlas head[that requires rope/hose packing] and replaced with it a more familiar cylinder, Elevator Equipment Corporation[EECO].  The new cylinder has a double bottom bulk head as well as PVC protection underground. 

[Existing - Colley Elevator cylinder with ATLAS head]

[New - EECO cylinder]

Other items – The building did a new cab interior with Cab Works that turned out great!  We also gave the car top a nice new fire proof paint job because it is still a wood cab from 1967.

[New 1st floor hall station and cab interior]

[Car top with fire proof paint]

Take away – I remember Owen, Ruth, John, Wei from 2006 when we started talking about proactive equipment replacement.  I remember the 4 management companies that where in and out of the building. In 2008-2014 we talked about door operators and solid state starters.  Our service at the building that had been from 1967 to 2014 ended and in 2017 and they went with an upstart, then a larger independent and the building came back to Colley in 2017 and we again had a great dialog about the future of their equipment.  The biggest idea here is the people in the building where taking the time to educate themselves on a regular basis, this is a working class building where the building needs to be judicious about how they spend their money.  Over the last 4-5 years we had quite a few meetings and they finally decided to jump in the pool.  The building got a great product that will be reliable for the next 20-30 years. 

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, 15 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.