A vacuum elevator in your own home

Why would you need an elevator in your home?

There are many reasons people might have for having an elevator installed in their residence.

1. You might have a handicap that requires you to be in a wheelchair
2. You might need assistance going up the stairs due to knee or foot problems
3. You might be so overweight that the stairs just aren't an option anymore
4. Your house might be too small to accommodate a staircase whereas an elevator would take up less space
5. You might want the extra comfort of being able to take the elevator when you're tired
6. You may just want to show off as it's cool to have your own elevator.
7. You might need to shuttle stuff up and down in your house, like if the kitchen is downstairs

Surely this list isn't exhaustive and whatever your reason for installing an elevator in your house is valid as well. The reality is that more and more people are choosing to install a residential elevator.

How does a vacuum elevator work

The vacuum elevator is very different from the classic, counterweighted pull up mechanism that we all know as elevators. Instead it uses vacuum suction to transport you up and down the shaft. It's limited in that it can only lift you a maximum of 35 feet, but this is not a problem for most homes. You get into a type of cylinder that encloses you. The cylinder is inside a tube and in order to hoist you up, the air is sucked out of the tube above you creating a vacuum and you're pulled upward by the vacuum. Getting down is the same process but in reverse, air is gradually let back in the upper part of the tube and you're lowered down to ground level.

The system is extremely safe, with mechanical handbrakes installed just in case anything should go wrong and I think it's just simply beautiful too.

My experience with the vacuum elevator

A friend of mine is in a wheelchair. Has been pretty much all her life and she's not one to take such a thing lying down. She was born completely spastic and the doctors told her parents that she'd never amount to anything. Well, that doctor couldn't have been more wrong. Her father took it as a challenge and she picked up that baton after she became adult. When she was 15 she was in a special care hospital where they would help her with anything and everything and she had to fight to keep doing things for herself so she wouldn't lose the muscle control she had spent half her life gaining.

At 16 she was organizing mixed parties at the institute (mixed in the sense that there were handicapped and non handicapped people attending, and boys and girls of course). She fell in love with a handsome, non-handicapped man and they got a home together. Then she got pregnant and needed a bigger home. She didn't have a lot of money but she had a big dream. To have her house be a model for handicapped housing everywhere and with her smartphone she contacted architects and contractors galore and with shrewd bussiness sense and a lot of determination she now owns a beautiful two story home which is fully wheelchair accessible.

When installing her vacuum elevator she had a bit of a discussion with the builder. He wanted to install it so that she could go from the ground floor to the second floor only. "No need to go into the basement" he said. She nearly threw a fit! She was livid as it was her intent that she have a fully accessible home. Of course she got what she wanted, she's that kind of woman.

Anyway, the elevator moves smoothly and her rather large electric wheelchair fits it without any problem. Her daughter uses the elevator as well and proudly shows it off to her friends.
"There are advantages to having a handicapped mom" she tells them.

Wheelchair safe and luxurious to behold

Aside from residential installations the vacuum elevator is also being installed in buildings like a cinema. It's limited capacity is more than offset by the limited space it occupies and it's beauty. The installation is quite simple and the folks at vacuum elevators are working closely together with architects to make sure that your installation is working properly and installed beautifully into your home.

There's a type of turbine at the top that provides the suction that lifts the cabin but other than that no unsightly machinery, no basement full of bulky equipment to make room for
.

The sustainability of the vacuum elevator

The idea is simple enough

Years ago, in my local bank, I've already seen an elevator of the vacuum type. It wasn't a freight or people elevator, but rather it was meant to send pieces of paper from one place in the bank to the next. The medium was air. It was a contraption with see through plastic tubing and ingenious little egg-shaped containers that had rubber around the sides. The teller would put the paper (usually cheques or money) inside the little container, open a little door in the tubing, shove the thing in and press a button. Air then streamed into the tubing and pushed the little nestegg along the tubing. Possibly a vacuum was created along the other side of the tubing as well, i'm not clear on that.

With the technological advancement in computing, money became more and more obsolete, at least in it's paper and coin shape. Nowadays payments at my local bank can be done from anywhere with my smartphone and/ or computer and there's no need for a tubing system at the bank as for the most part, there's no more paper being shuffled around. I was surprised therefore, to see that in the US this system is still largely in place in drive through teller banking. A lot more of money transactions in the US are appearantly still in cash.

Anyway, the idea of shuttling little eggshapes with content in them though vacuumpowered tubing is in a nutshell the idea behind residential vacuum elevators. The residential elevator manufacturers make an inhome elevator a possibility for anyone who needs it. No longer the bulky seats that are hoisted up a flight of stairs, instead an elegant vertical tubing system that hardly takes up any inhome space at all.

Less materials, less dependence on fuels

The first way in which the vacuum elevators beat the classic staircase chair hoisting system as well as the traditional elevator for in home use is the use of lighter materials, less materials. Less bulk means less dependence upon materials that have to be produced and transported. This is of benefit for the environment but it also adds to the possibilities of putting an elevator in the home. The expensive alternatives are hard to install, difficult to realize and simply take up a lot of space, most notably the motor-house takes up a lot of space in the basement. (if you have a basement, if not, the installation of an elevator used to be nigh impossible.) But there's more: the actual shaft of the elevator, the counterweight mechanism, everything takes up space.

The alternative, a chair being hoisted alongside the staircase usually makes the staircase itself difficult to navigate for people actually taking the stairs. There's an unsightly aspect to it as well, a heavy chain pulling the chair upwards. And then there is the comfort, or rather the discomfort of the passenger to consider. If you're in a wheelchair, in order to go up the stairs you have to get yourself out of the wheelchair, into the seat, buckle up and frankly a ride in one of these is rather scary! Then upstairs you would need either another wheelchair or someone needs to bring you your wheelchair from down below. All in all a difficult and wearing process during which you lose you independence. Many people who live with the fact that they are in a wheelchair fiercely seek independence for as much as possible. Not to mention the cost of a nurse or other professional to get you from one floor to the next in your own home.

Much better than is the comfort of a vacuum elevator, which comes in different sizes, large enough to accomodate up to 4 people and certainly large enough to hold a wheelchair. It doesn't require any more space in the home than the actualy shape of the elevator (which is by nature round) and it's a see-through tubing that is both esthetically pleasing and space saving. In it you zoom up to the next floor (up to 4 floors) in comfort and style.

A vacuum elevator in your own home!

Why would you need an elevator in your home?

There are many reasons people might have for having an elevator installed in their residence.

1. You might have a handicap that requires you to be in a wheelchair
2. You might need assistance going up the stairs due to knee or foot problems
3. You might be so overweight that the stairs just aren't an option anymore
4. Your house might be too small to accommodate a staircase whereas an elevator would take up less space
5. You might want the extra comfort of being able to take the elevator when you're tired
6. You may just want to show off as it's cool to have your own elevator.
7. You might need to shuttle stuff up and down in your house, like if the kitchen is downstairs

Surely this list isn't exhaustive and whatever your reason for installing an elevator in your house is valid as well. The reality is that more and more people are choosing to install a residential elevator.

How does a vacuum elevator work

The vacuum elevator is very different from the classic, counterweighted pull up mechanism that we all know as elevators. Instead it uses vacuum suction to transport you up and down the shaft. It's limited in that it can only lift you a maximum of 35 feet, but this is not a problem for most homes. You get into a type of cylinder that encloses you. The cylinder is inside a tube and in order to hoist you up, the air is sucked out of the tube above you creating a vacuum and you're pulled upward by the vacuum. Getting down is the same process but in reverse, air is gradually let back in the upper part of the tube and you're lowered down to ground level.

The system is extremely safe, with mechanical handbrakes installed just in case anything should go wrong and I think it's just simply beautiful too.

My experience with the vacuum elevator

A friend of mine is in a wheelchair. Has been pretty much all her life and she's not one to take such a thing lying down. She was born completely spastic and the doctors told her parents that she'd never amount to anything. Well, that doctor couldn't have been more wrong. Her father took it as a challenge and she picked up that baton after she became adult. When she was 15 she was in a special care hospital where they would help her with anything and everything and she had to fight to keep doing things for herself so she wouldn't lose the muscle control she had spent half her life gaining.

At 16 she was organizing mixed parties at the institute (mixed in the sense that there were handicapped and non handicapped people attending, and boys and girls of course). She fell in love with a handsome, non-handicapped man and they got a home together. Then she got pregnant and needed a bigger home. She didn't have a lot of money but she had a big dream. To have her house be a model for handicapped housing everywhere and with her smartphone she contacted architects and contractors galore and with shrewd bussiness sense and a lot of determination she now owns a beautiful two story home which is fully wheelchair accessible.

When installing her vacuum elevator she had a bit of a discussion with the builder. He wanted to install it so that she could go from the ground floor to the second floor only. "No need to go into the basement" he said. She nearly threw a fit! She was livid as it was her intent that she have a fully accessible home. Of course she got what she wanted, she's that kind of woman.

Anyway, the elevator moves smoothly and her rather large electric wheelchair fits it without any problem. Her daughter uses the elevator as well and proudly shows it off to her friends.
"There are advantages to having a handicapped mom" she tells them.

Wheelchair safe and luxurious to behold

Aside from residential installations the vacuum elevator is also being installed in buildings like a cinema. It's limited capacity is more than offset by the limited space it occupies and it's beauty. The installation is quite simple and the folks at vacuum elevators are working closely together with architects to make sure that your installation is working properly and installed beautifully into your home.

There's a type of turbine at the top that provides the suction that lifts the cabin but other than that no unsightly machinery, no basement full of bulky equipment to make room for
.