With the temperatures soaring into the red this week, now is a good time to remember how seasonal temperature fluctuations affect lifts, causing power disruptions and potentially resulting in major breakdowns and unhappy tenants.
Motor Room
Nobody likes to work in the summer heat and humidity, and our lifts are no different. When there isn’t a machine room climate control, it can cause lift failure or equipment damage in the room.
If you consider that most high-rise buildings have the machine room located on the roof of the building, with the hot air rising, it is easy to anticipate that if the outdoor temperatures are above 30°C, it will be much hotter as we go up in building height. Adding to this is also the equipment’s own energy expenditure in heat form, causing an overall increase in room temperature.
Remember: Keep your lift’s motor room between 7 and 32 degrees Celsius, with relative humidity not to exceed 85%.
Power Outages
With extremely hot and humid weather, there is always the potential for power outages which can create serious emergency situations if there are no provisions for emergency backup power, potentially shutting down a lift with trapped passengers.
Hydraulic lifts which operate via the transmission and pressure of oil can be retrofitted with an emergency device (thermal overload sensor) that allows for the respective lift to lower itself to the main landing, whereby the doors will then open allowing for passengers to exit safely. On traction lifts, the same auto-rescue principle applies when an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) is installed.
Lift Shaft Ventilation
Maintain proper ventilation within the lift shaft and properly secure all doors and hatches that are exposed to the outdoors. Since 2014, with the introduction of European standards EN81-20 and EN81-50, the requirements for lift shaft ventilation have been revised, and have now become the responsibility of the building designer. However, the lift manufacturer must provide all the necessary information about the lift equipment, namely the heat output of lift components.
This approach facilitates energy-efficient building design, where ventilation requirements are determined based on the most energy-efficient solution, whilst at the same time, considering both lift engineers working conditions in the lift shaft and the comfort of the passengers in the lift car.
To ensure that your lift investments are protected, you might want to consider a comprehensive maintenance plan to prevent any inconvenient breakdowns.
Temple Lifts’ preventative planned maintenance is aimed at reducing unexpected lift and escalator failures and the inconvenience of equipment downtime. All of the lifts and escalators that we maintain undergo an initial survey, to establish a performance benchmark for your equipment. For more details, visit: https://www.templelifts.com/lift-escalator-maintenance/planned-maintenance/