Simple Elevator Repair Tips

Simple Elevator Repair Tips – The simple repair tips in this article will help you keep your home elevators up and running. These easy-to-follow steps will not only save you time and money, but they can also protect your family’s safety. You should never attempt any repairs on an elevator without the help of a trained professional service technician.

If you do need to contact a professional, write down your problem and the details so that he or she is aware of what’s going on before walking into your building. You’ll want to check if there are any parts involved with the repair needed beforehand so you know how much time it will take and how much it will cost.

If you do choose to do some or all of these things yourself, be sure to shut off the power before you start working. There are some simple things you can do when an elevator in your building breaks down, besides calling a technician out to fix it. You may want to try servicing the unit yourself if the problem is minor or you need to make a quick repair that will hold long enough for a service tech to get there.

There are simple ways you can troubleshoot problems with elevators, even something as basic as no electricity getting into the control panel. Here are issues that commonly occur and how they can be repaired, lift repair tips

1) Faulty Door Sensors

The door sensors in most modern elevators have built-in circuits designed to detect obstructions between them and the door.

If the obstruction is above the door, the elevator will stop immediately. If it’s below the door, you’ll hear a loud warning sound, and the elevator won’t move until you press any button or close the doors.

The sensors are designed to be fail-safe so that if they do break, there is still protection for people inside. You may have noticed that some older elevators have no zone between the floors where an object would cause an automatic stop—that was how they were built before sensors were available.

If your sensors are broken or missing, it could be because of vandalism or mishandling during maintenance, but sometimes rodents chew through wires to get at food particles lodged nearby

2) Faulty Doors

If all of your door sensors are working, but the doors won’t close, even after you push the close button, there could be a problem with the safety edge.

This device is designed to stop the elevator car if it passes the open zone while moving up or down.

A broken safety edge can occur due to misalignment of components or simply wear and tear over time. Replacement parts are very expensive; sometimes, this is better for building owners to invest in an entirely new system instead. Changing out this part might only cost a few hundred dollars, but fixing it properly will require specialized tools that may add up significantly.

Another factor that goes into choosing between repairing or replacing a faulty hydraulic system is whether your car is hydraulic or gearless.

3) Faulty Brake System

The brake system is what keeps the car from moving if something pulls it along its path, like a cable that snaps. If your elevator gets pulled to the top floor or pushed down to the basement, damage to cars and people inside can occur.

It’s also possible for one of these accidents to happen if you haven’t done anything intentionally wrong–there was just enough force on the cables so that they slipped out of place.

To prevent this kind of accident, many buildings have installed systems designed with locks that prevent car movement when there’s too much force pulling on cables outside their designated paths.

There are two major types of brakes: magnetic brakes and non-magnetic or frictional brakes. Magnetic brakes are more modern, but they can be hard to fix because the electromagnetic force holding them in place is so strong it’s almost impossible to lift them out of their casing without tools made for this specific purpose (and even then, you should only do this if there is absolutely no other option).

Non-magnetic brakes are easier to access; however, they require periodic lubrication that has to be done by hand. If your elevator stays stuck between floors, faulty brakes could be the cause.

4) Faulty Electric Power Supply

If you’re experiencing intermittent power interruptions with your elevator system—things seem fine one minute and won’t work the next— chances are you have a faulty power supply.

The most common cause of this problem is a blown fuse, which can happen for several reasons, including an overloaded motor or power spikes caused by lightning strikes nearby.

Replacing the fuse involves shutting off all power to your elevator system and then removing the defective one from the control panel. Old fuse boxes that are damaged or missing fuses must be replaced as well.

5) Faulty Motor Controller Units (MCU) And Controllers

Motor controller units manage all operations along with working together with other components in your elevator’s drive system—they translate input from buttons into signals for acceleration and braking so that cars move at their designated speeds.

Failure of any individual component in the MCU will cause the whole unit to stop working; some of these parts, like fuses and resistors, can be replaced on their own without having to replace the entire unit.

When there’s a problem with your controller or motor controller units, you’ll see exactly that–a problem with either your controller (the cabinets outside of cars) or motor controllers (the electrical box inside each car). If they’re malfunctioning in any way, it will cause problems while using the system.

While no individual part is particularly expensive (MCUs cost about $1,000), labor costs are significantly higher when fixing this kind of issue because elevator technicians have to use special diagnostic tools to pinpoint specific faults in individual components. If your elevator gets stuck, faulty motor controller units are one of the most likely causes.

6) Door Sensor Malfunctions

It’s pretty obvious when doors don’t open and close properly–you press a button, and nothing happens, or you hear a loud beeping sound as soon as someone enters a car.

These malfunctions occur because sensors attached to elevator doors determine if they’re open or closed at any given moment.

When these sensors get damaged, they either become too sensitive, causing the door to think it always needs to be open (although this problem can also indicate faulty wiring), or not sensitive enough, causing the door to stay closed even when there’s already something blocking it.

Simple Elevator Repair Tips – Conclusion

While there is a device attached to every car with doors that monitor this, malfunctions also cause the control box just outside each door’s entrance to start beeping. You can solve some of these problems by recalibrating sensors as needed—for example, if the system thinks your door is closed all the time, you need to recalibrate it, so it knows when the door actually is open or closed.