A simple question: the house design already has an elevator, does it also need stairs?

This can be for the whole length of the house (from ground to top floor) or maybe only for a specific floor. One client wanted the roof to be accessible only with the lift.

So the question: should you do it?

The short answer is, no, you never should.

While all our lifts come equipped with battery emergency lowering in case of power cuts, there are many more things that can go wrong! For example:

– Extended power-cut: Past the 2 hour mark, this could lock you out of specific floors, something you don’t want to happen.

– Part Breakage: our clients have their lift for 20-25 years. While Cibes’ superior quality and control center ensure that breakages rarely occur – they will occur eventually. If a belt breaks, you may be stuck without being able to use the lift until a technician comes over.

– Natural Disasters: in this era of global warming, earthquakes and pandemics, your lift might be put out of commission without a technician being able to come over. You do not want to be locked out of your lift in these cases.

This is why, even though you could technically design a stairless house with a lift, we strongly advise against it. The stairs are the ultimate back-up.

A regular follow-up question we get is:

“I have three stops, but I only want to go from floor 1 to floor 3 with no stop at 2. Can you do it?”

Easily! In fact, we do it quite regularly.

But there is a small caveat: we recommend still placing a door on the 2nd stop, but we will lock it in the system. In essence, you can never stop on the 2nd floor, but the door is still there.

Why?

– Clients might change their mind: maybe they suddenly want to sell the house, and the missing stop decreases the value of the house. Or maybe they revamp the layout of the house, and now opening on the second stop makes sense. Whatever the case, having the second door means we can simply send a technician over to unlock it.

– Emergency Access: this is a one in a million scenario, but we still would rather have it just in case. In case there is ever a need to rescue someone from the lift, and they are stuck in between floors, it is a lot easier to do with the 2nd door. Just emergency open the 2nd door and the person can step out!

This one is easy-peasy: yes, you absolutely can!

We can set up all sorts of locks for you, including but not limited to:

– Locking a single floor. For example, one client had his office on that floor and wanted no one to access it but them. Another had the lift opening in the master bedroom and wanted that stop accessible only to his wife and him.

– Locking multiple floors for multiple people. Using Access Control RFID tags, we can easily lock different floors for different people. Lifts with different families on different floors, mixed use commercial/residential or even simply limited access to maids etc… all can be done with the Cibes locking systems.