Making elevator car tops great again!

We are in between political conventions where there is a lot to talk about.  At Colley Elevator we like talking about making your elevator car tops great again!

 We recently started working with a building owner of a large portfolio of elevators that have experienced deferred maintenance.  What does deferred maintenance mean?  Most of the time it means the company or elevator tech isn’t maintaining the elevators correctly.  One of the first signs an elevator may not be being maintained correctly is the cleanliness of a elevator.

Commonly heard phrases within the elevator community

 “I’ll get it next time”

“They don’t pay me to clean”

“No one sees a car top or pit, why should I clean it”

“No one will look”

“I’ve done my cleaning in my career, its someone elses job now”

“Too busy”

And my favorite

“I keep elevators running, I don’t clean”

A clean car top, hoistway, pit probably means the mechanic is looking for other items that will require preventative maintenance. We have an elevator mechanic who is tackling a 20+ car portfolio who hasn’t had a car top cleaned in many years and is making car tops great again!  We love seeing this stuff!

[Car top before cleaning]

[Car top after cleaning]

[Car top before cleaning]

[Car top after cleaning]

A clean car top will not prevent an elevator from shutting down but it shows that you have a company/mechanic who cares and is willing to put in the effort. If the elevator mechanic cares enough to clean your elevator system, they most likely will take the time to make sure your elevator is cared for correctly.  If we keep cleaning, Colley will keep buying the simple green!

Will you vote for 45 or 46? I vote for more car top cleaning!  Elevator companies should give their elevator professionals time to clean, and the elevator professionals should take that time to clean.

Hey! Sign up for our mailing list!  Each month you will get some great info on Colley!  It is short and quick to run through, you’ll like it!

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 or on our web page at www.colleyelevator.com

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

Smartrise safety bulletin - Unexpected Elevator Movement

Please find a recent safety bulletin publish by Smartrise Engineering that for anyone who works on them should review.

 

 

Hey! Sign up for our mailing list!  Each month you will get some great info on Colley!  It is short and quick to run through, you’ll like it!

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 or on our web page at www.colleyelevator.com

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

Help Colley bring home the Ellie!

Colley Elevator was fortunate enough to be nominated again for Elevator World's Best Contractor of the North.  Help us bring the Ellie home for a 2nd year in a row!  

https://www.elevatorworld.com/elliesvote/

2020 Ellies Nomination – Best Contractor, North

We are proud to be nominated for the Ellies Award of Best Elevator Contractor - North. Presented by Elevator World magazine, the preeminent elevator industry trade publication, a win this year would give us bragging rights for back to back Ellies.

Designed to celebrate companies that, “Go above and beyond for their customers, employees, communities, and the industry as a whole,” The Ellies Awards have become the go-to source to recognize elite companies in the elevator industry.

Click and scroll to Best Contractor – North to cast a vote for Colley.

Great elevator cylinder replacement story – Chicago, IL

Colley Elevator completes a lot of cylinder replacement projects.  Each project is unique, each project takes a team to complete.  This particular project is one that took a team of 12 from start to finish to complete.

We got a phone call from a building owner indicating he had gotten our phone number from a retired elevator inspector and asked if we did elevator cylinder work.  We told him, yes we do, we do more cylinder work than any other company in the Chicago area.  We made a time to visit the building and the elevator was shut down and locked out and on pipe stands.  The sales person went out and after initial review there was some signs that this could have been a false positive because of a few things.  The last thing we want to do is replace a cylinder that was misdiagnosed.  We had a free service team in the area and they came over, did some diligence and retested the cylinder and indeed the incumbent company was correct, it was a cylinder leak. No charge to the building, something we like to do just to be 100% we have a leak.

[Initial visit to building]

It took a few weeks for the building to decide who to work with, they ended up working with Colley.  We had the measurements from our first visit so we were able to order everything right away.  The cylinder took about 4-5 weeks to get.  When we found out it was actually going to ship, we pulled the cylinder out.  While the cylinder was being pulled out the new cylinder & piston hit the dock, we prepared it with a tape coat wrap for extra protection.

[Cylinder hole after cylinder was removed - No visible hole]

When the cylinder came out the hole did not look promising.  The hole backfilled on itself and we only had a 7” diameter hole.  We notified the building owner that this did not look good and prepare the building for a well driller. But!  First we were going to give it our best shot.  We bought a cylinder bag instead of using rigid PVC, we scheduled the debris removal truck, we scheduled the welder to be there the same day.  Good news!  Debris removal truck got us a 24” diameter hole and welder zipped it up, we pretested the welds[not too many companies still pretest welds, we believe this is very important before it gets buried.] and plumbed the cylinder.   A few days later, we are back filled, the piston is in and car is unhung.

[Completed cylinder replacement]

Equipment providers 

Cylinder - Elevator Equipment Corporation EECO

Shut off valve - Maxton

While the building owner sees or talks to  3 or 4 people from Colley behind the scenes there was 12 people who worked on this project in one form or another.  Without each person doing their part of the project it would not have been a success.  From top to bottom this was a complete team effort!  Project team kicked tail! A win for the building!  A win for Colley!  Good work everyone!

[Unpainted machine room]

[Finishing touch! Machine room paint job!]

Hey! Sign up for our mailing list!  Each month you will get some great info on Colley!  It is short and quick to run through, you’ll like it!

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 or on our web page at www.colleyelevator.com

Hydraulic Elevator Modernization – Montgomery MiProm – Des Plaines, IL

This is another building we did an incredible modernization project on that improved the reliability of the elevator system.  We had been talking to the building about equipment replacement since we took over the account 2012 to start giving them a chance to budget for this major project.

Existing elevator & project scope – The existing equipment in the building where Montgomery Mi Prom 7 story hydraulic elevators.  In Des Plaines, IL there are a lot of MiProms and a lot of US Elevators.  Neither MiProm or the US Elevator are user friendly controller, unless you are a Montgomery or US elevator mechanic that grew up on these. The good news is that a lot of the existing control systems are to a point where they are getting replaced.

 

New equipment providers

 

Controllers – Smartrise Engineering

Power units – MEI

Door operators – GAL MOVFR II w/MAC car and hatch door equipment

Fixtures – Innovation Industries

 

Hydraulic elevator controller – The original controllers have been through a lot including undersized original mainline disconnect wiring and very hot machine rooms.  Look at the difference in how many wires and boards from the old Miprom control system to the new Smartrise system.

 

[Old Montgomery MiProm Elevator Controller]

[New Smartrise Elevator Controls]

Hydraulic elevator power unit – The old Montgomery power unit was wearing and experiencing fatigue.  It also was leaking a decent amount.  This replacement was part of phase I which occurred a few years prior.

 

[Old Machine room layout]

[New machine room layout - after phase I]

Door operators – The elevator had MAC operator and equipment.  We replaced the operator with a GAL MOVFR and replaced the existing MAC equipment with new to reduce some of the expense with replacing with all GAL.

[Old MAC door operator]

[New GAL MOVFR door operator]

Elevator fixtures – The old Montgomery fixtures went away and new Innovation flush mount fixtures to meet ADA and elevator code requirements were installed.  Originally there was only 1 button stack so we put the new button stack on the other elevator to eliminate any downtime.  We also combined the directional arrow with a position indicator because the original man lobby fixture was already busy with all the devices, when adding the emergency communication, it became challenging to make everything fit.

[Old first floor fixture layout]

[New first floor fixture layout]

Take away – The big take away for this project was that a building planned for many years to do the project.  We started working with the building in 2015 on budgets and phasing.  We broke this project up into 3 phases many years ago; power units & soft starts, door operators and finally the control and operating system.  Eventually we decided to wait to complete phase 2 and 3 together and kept the cars running an additional year so it could all be done at the same time.

 

Hey! Sign up for our mailing list!  Each month you will get some great info on Colley!  It is short and quick to run through, you’ll like it!

 

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 or on our web page at www.colleyelevator.com

 

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

Elevator hydraulic fluid/oil water contamination – Arlington Heights, IL

We have always had a challenge when we have water contaminate the hydraulic fluid in elevator systems.  It could be from a water pipe breaking in the machine room or the pit flooding or a rec pump, pumping water back into the reservoir.  What do you do?

We had 2 issues in the last 2 months of massive water contamination of hydraulic fluid in oil reservoirs. We will discuss one that occurred in Arlington Heights, IL which we just completed the process of replacing the valve and hydraulic fluid.

What happened – We got a call that pipes where breaking in the building and one of them was in the elevator machine room.  This had occurred before so there was a pan above the drop ceiling to catch the water. However the pipe break overwhelmed the pan and it sent 50+ gallons of water onto and into the hydraulic power unit.  The entire power unit should have been replaced but the building opted to do the valve and the hydraulic fluid.

 

 [This is the pan that was above drop ceiling below pipe]

 [Aftermath of pipe breaking/leaking]

What did we do? The elevator valve was replaced, oil was replaced but there was still a lot of water in the system within the hydraulic piping and cylinder. This was caused by the elevator running during the water leak.

What happens if there is still water in the system after you replace the hydraulic fluid – If there is still water in the system eventually the valve will start to build up rust/corrosion and create leveling problems. That new valve you installed will be rusty inside and you will have trip and fall potentials. You may also experience other general shut downs from the small ports in the valves getting clogged and the pistons not moving as freely as they need to for proper operation.  If not taken care of, you can have a major safety issue on your hands.

 [Take a look at the valve blow out and notice all the small ports and moving parts that are sensitive to any foreign material including rust/corrosion]

How do you get the rest of the water out of the system? There is a wonderful device from Gorman that filters and removes water from the hydraulic fluid.  Typically when we have water contamination, we remove as much hydraulic fluid as we can, replace it and run this machine for 30-60 days until the contamination is gone. No problem we move on to the next building.

Final result – The final result was clean and clear oil ahead of schedule in less than 30 days.

 [Before oil/water device was installed - milky coffee w/cream colored contaminated oil]

 [After oil/water device was installed - Clear hydraulic fluid]

Hey! Sign up for our mailing list!  Each month you will get some great info on Colley!  It is short and quick to run through, you’ll like it!

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 or on our web page at www.colleyelevator.com

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