DIY Elevator

hey folks how you doing hopefully you're all having a great day today in this video i want to show you the diy elevator that i just made to access the loft above me i have a 16 foot by 20 foot storage loft in my shop and it's kind of not easily accessible anymore when i first moved into this space there was a full set of stairs and i moved my office up to the top into the loft because that takes up less floor space here in the shop well that just became inconvenient to go up and down up and down up and down those stairs all the time to access all of my computer stuff for the office so i moved all that down here the stairs ended up being in the way for some other tools my cnc machine so the stairs went and i started using a ladder to go up and down which was fine for small stuff but it's kind of impossible to carry big boxes up a ladder to access the loft so that's why i went with this diy elevator that and my daughter started to figure out how to climb a ladder which was kind of scary so now i have this diy elevator now real quick diy means do it yourself anytime you do it yourself there's a lot of risks that you yourself are taking on so if if you're maybe inspired to make something this like this from this video just know that there's a lot of risks involved this is if you fall off of this it's kind of like falling out of a tree if you you know climb a tree for fun except instead of falling on soft grass and dirt there's a concrete floor which doesn't sound any fun at all so just know that there are some risks involved without further ado let's get started on the build to guide the elevator up i'm using four pieces of one and five-eighths of an inch super strut the loft floor is 10 feet off the ground and to allow the over travel into the upstairs space three of these will be used for the two vertical travel locations the fourth will be used to suspend the hoist the hoist is a generic hoist that i picked up online and you can find these electric hoists from various different vendors with various different load capacities they all look the same so my guess is that they are manufactured in the same place and branded for different vendors the one that i picked up has a 500 pound single line and 1 000 pound double line lifting capacity the hoist comes with two lifting straps and i'll be using the shorter strap as a means of attaching the platform to the hoist for added safety i picked up a fall arrester and unfortunately i ordered the wrong size this one is just under the 500 pound capacity for the lift so i need to either replace it for a larger one or add a second one of the same size a bag of half inch bolt hardware is needed to connect the trolley blocks to the platform and if any of you out there have access to a tractor supply store they always have the best prices on basic hardware four trolley blocks will be used inside the super strut to keep the lift tracking vertically and these are just steel plates with four bearings on one side made to fit inside of the super strut with the design done and the materials in-house i started the build by drilling a bunch of small holes for mounting screws and as you can see with a single hole the screw heads they interfere with the travel of the trolley blocks the solution is to cut a countersink for each of the holes and this will allow the screw head to sit a little bit lower to prevent going too deep with the larger drill bit that i used i used a washer and a block of wood as a depth stop this worked really well but i did have to come back after the fact and make a few of these holes a little bit deeper once everything was installed here's the view from upstairs these are the two posts 10 feet apart this one and this one this is originally a pole barn structure this is a 2 by 10 i think spanning the distance and that's what the mini split is mounted to i'm going to put the left most super strut up against this side that way we have as little of a gap as possible in between the platform and the elevator there will be a little bit more of a gap over here but i'm not too worried about it because that's not in the the readily accessible area anyway so the super strut will start here it will be mounted on the left side and it's going to start at this point and work its way down and i'll have to cut a short filler piece for the bottom side and i want to do it that way so that the longest piece the solid 10 foot piece is going to span both the wall below as well as the structure i have to build behind it over here rather than having the 10 foot piece touch the floor and stop at this platform level and then have a second piece up here that is simply only connected to the structure i built behind it so one piece two piece even distance all the way apart as they go down and then i will add some bracing behind both of those super struts and add some brackets on this post brackets on that post brackets on both sides of the structure behind the strut and that's where i'll i'll hang another strut across the top of it for the the hoist as well as the fall arrester and all that good stuff so i just wanted to give you a view up here before i get these pieces mounted step one is to add the left side super strut referencing off of the left side of the opening and an inch or so below the horizontal mini split board above a filler piece is needed to go below the full section on both sides and i can go ahead and cut two pieces to the same exact length the offcut piece was clamped to the side of both the top full section and the bottom short section to make sure they are perfectly inline when securing them to the wall i secured the right side in the opposite direction bottom to top first a spacer block of wood was used on the floor to locate the track at the exact spacing i needed and then the full length piece can be very carefully stacked on top and then clamped in line with the bottom piece with the offcut once again the spacer block was used to make sure the two tracks remain parallel before starting this build i worked out the entire design in sketchup and for those who are interested i already published a video covering my design process the design calls for four sheets of one-half of an inch cdx pine plywood nothing fancy for this this is purely a utilitarian project that just needs to get the job done i need it to function and not necessarily look a certain way i used the cnc machine to cut out all the pieces while i finished breaking them down and prepared everything for assembly for increased strength without a lot of weight i went with a torsion box style platform which is where the assembly starts then the sides and back panel can be added the platform connects to the sides with mortise and tenon joints and to the back panel with a wide face glue connection the sides connect to the back panel with a few finger joints next the assembly is flipped over on its back so that the platform interior webs can be added and i made sure to use way more glue than what was necessary as any extra glue would just act similar to caulking around all of the edges more glue and the bottom of the platform is installed the same way and i'm using nails to hold the pieces together but that's just until the glue dries the main holding power comes from all the glue after it dries the last piece of the platform assembly is a wide rectangle that goes across the lower back panel and this is to further strengthen the back panel right where the lifting strap will be and the last step for that day was to create the brackets for mounting the horizontal super strut upstairs four brackets with a total of two pieces of plywood each after that i let everything sit over the weekend for the glue to fully cure back in the shop on a monday the work starts by breaking down some solid wood boards wood pricing is pretty crazy at the time of making this lift it was actually less expensive to buy southern yellow pine two by six boards and it was to buy white pine two by four boards these pieces are for added support for mounting the trolley blocks my sketchup design called for a one-half of an inch spacing away from the wall so a spacer block was slid into place and the lift pushed up against it then the outside solid wood piece is attached with a lot of glue and a few wood screws from the inside then some half inch holes were drilled and the trolley blocks were attached with a few half inch bolts with the bolts in place i could measure and fit a board between the bolts on the inside of the lift and the purpose of these pieces is to add strength to the side to back connection i did not record anything up here because well there's a big hole right there and my number one goal is to not fall through it rather than move the camera around uh let me walk you through what we have this is a piece of super strut holding the engine hoist or i'm sorry electric hoist not an engine electric hoist and it is secured to the structure with four of these brackets that i installed these brackets each one of them is two layers of half inch plywood laminated together and the outermost are secured to the to the actual structure the 6x6 posts and the inner two are secured to some studs that i added to support the vertical super strut so these studs that i added are secured to the top plate down here on both sides but on this side it's also secured to the joists of the loft and then they are both secured to this beam that i already had not been bored that i already had up here for the mini split so a lot of secure attachment points um my biggest concern was this piece right here this board that i put flexing this way as the force is being applied because it is on this side of the attachment point so it's going to pull it this way i don't think it's going to be much at all especially considering that these vertical pieces of super strut are 10 feet long and i started the 10 foot right here so it's it's like four feet up here and then six feet on this wall below it so if in order for this to flex out that piece of super strut has to bend as well i just don't see that being an issue at all uh where did i what else did i not say this electrical outlet so one of my concerns here is this hoist is right below this mini split and a mini split it's got an air conditioner in the summertime so it's going to have some condensation now if you keep these things clean which is the whole goal of these filters if you keep the dust out of the inside then that drain should never clog in the event that it does clog which like i said these are doing a really really good job so i don't see it happening but in the event that it does clog i do not want it dripping onto an electrical device so i wired up a dedicated receptacle on a breaker in the main panel 100 for this this hoist that way at all times it's always turned off that way there's no electricity access just floating around in here for water to drip on it so if i need to use it well obviously if this starts leaking i can see down below that there's a water problem and i'm not going to turn it on i'll fix the problem but like i said in the event that it does start leaking i don't want this to be powered at all times so the main breaker will be turned off to that receptacle at all times except when i need to use this lift that also accomplishes one more thing as far as security i extended the remote i don't want to lean over too much i hate this hole to that to that location down there so it can be accessed down below but i'm going to loop it up and hang it up high so small short people kids can't easily access the remote in the event that they do get the remote uh the power is gonna be off anyway so it's kind of a little bit of a redundancy of safety not only that but nobody has access to my shop unsupervised no one's in here without me i think that's it for all the work up here i have not tested this yet so i'm gonna go down below and see if i can turn the breaker on and drop that down and then i can just connect all the dots downstairs to get this thing working very little work left to do this is when i realized i forgot to install the lifting strap before bolting the lift in place so i had to use a pry bar and a bunch of blocks to kind of get a mechanical advantage to lift it up off the floor enough to gain access to the bottom then i could fish the strap through and speaking of fish i used 50-pound fishing line to help feed the strap around the back of the platform down comes the cable and i can test the entire setup for the first time i had two immediate observations first there's a little bit of a spring to the lift when i bounce on the platform i initially thought that this was from the super strut bending under the weight but i now know it was more from the super strut twisting as the weight is applied to the lift this is because the mounting location of the hoist is not directly above the cable as it enters and exits the hoist instead the mounting location is just centered on the back of the housing of the lift so i ended up solving this a few days later by adding the pulley to the platform itself to double up the line and securing the end of the cable to the opposite side of the rotation on the super strut with the lift all the way up you can see the clearance that i have on the front side between the front side of the lift and the loft itself and this is the result of precise planning and then just simply following your own directions the second thing i noticed is a few of the screw heads in the super strut were way too high and and this caused a little bit of random interference with the trolley blocks drilling the countersink slightly deeper was an easy way to fix this this is the final result upstairs before i start cleaning up i do want to build a little bit of a handrail or something to prevent anything from going that way uh but i do like the fact that the majority of this open space is now covered up in the front my calculations were pretty good we've got like a 3 8 of an inch over here something very very tiny and over here we have about two two and a half inches so not bad there are a couple dangers to think about this thing falling and that is why i put this fall arrester on here so i had to use some uh chain to extend this down for the fall arrester uh that way it would travel all the way to the floor because with this fall arrester clipped up here to the super strut uh the length of the rester was was preventing this from touching the floor downstairs it was about a foot or so uh too short so i think this solved that issue have you had to test it but if not i can extend that a little more uh the super strut holding the motor is working just fine however there's a little bit of a flex to it this super strut is bending down and bouncing a little bit i don't think it would ever be a problem i don't think it would ever bend that's just it's just what metal is doing it's flexing just a little bit so i don't think that's going to be an issue but if it bothers me enough i can bolt the second piece of super strut to the top to stiffen it quite a bit [Music] that's basically it this is working just as intended and finally the lift can be used as it was intended to be used and this is definitely one of those projects that instantly deserves a spot atop the i should have done this sooner list this adds an incredible convenience to accessing the 16 foot by 20 foot storage loft in my shop and i finally have a place to store seasonal items like decorations and bicycles if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them and i'll make a follow-up video on my jbates2 channel which is my vlog and non-project related channel go to my website jacecustomcreations.com newsletter and sign up for my email newsletter so you don't miss anything that i publish take care and i'll talk to you in the next video

Channel: Jay Bates

Views: 292,713

Rating: 4.9467397 out of 5

Keywords: jayscustomcreations, jay bates, easy woodworking project, woodworking, woodshop, woodworking projects, make, build

Id: V8rGrDSq83c

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2021