Residential Dumbwaiters

The first dumbwaiter can be traced back many thousands of years. Since then, these devices have been used consistently to make it easier to move supplies throughout a multi-story dwelling. In many ways these devices are very similar to elevators, but unlike an elevator, a dumbwaiter is not designed to carry people. During the eighteen-hundreds and early nineteen-hundreds, almost all homes had a residential dumbwaiter. While there were some electrical or steam powered dumbwaiters in use in the later part of the eighteen-hundreds, most homes used manual dumbwaiters.

A manual dumbwaiter was the most common type of dumbwaiter to be used in homes for many years. During the medieval time, they often used horses or other live stock to power the dumbwaiter, but by the beginning of the eighteen-hundreds people generally relied on simple rope dumbwaiters. These devices made use of a pulley system to help reduce the amount of effort it took to raise or lower the lift.

The manual dumbwaiter would continue to be extremely popular during the beginning of the twentieth century, with one being found in almost every apartment building. Throughout New York and other large cities, dumbwaiters were essential to allow people transport their groceries and other goods to their apartment. They allowed for taller buildings, which was essential in places like NY where space is at a premium, without requiring the tenants to hike their groceries up ten flights of stairs.

While these early apartment dumbwaiters did greatly improve the lives of the tenants living in the buildings, they did present some difficulties. One of the most common was the theft of groceries as the dumbwaiter moved through the building. To combat this, locking doors were implemented, which locked while the dumbwaiter car was in motion.

Today, most larger apartment buildings now use elevators, so dumbwaiters are not as commonly available for tenants, but many do still use them for their maintenance services. Often a service dumbwaiter is installed for use in removing trash or moving building materials throughout the building, but these are usually only available to the apartment buildings employees.

While the popularity of apartment building dumbwaiters has decreased, they are still very popular in homes. Often, as a home is being built, the builder will install an electric dumbwaiter to help entice potential home buyers. They are also often installed into existing homes to make housework much easier. Manual dumbwaiters are still used and there are several companies that offer these types of lifts, but the electric dumbwaiter is much more popular.

There are several popular electric dumbwaiter kits that are inexpensive and relatively easy to install. The AmeriGlide Express Dumbwaiter is one such kit, which is commonly used in the home, but can also be upgraded for commercial use.

AmeriGlide is a company that produces many types of lift aids. From stair lifts to wheelchair lifts, there are many products that are available from AmeriGlide that help increase safety around the home. Most of AmeriGlide’s products are designed to be easy to install and easy to use, this is especially true of the AmeriGlide Express Dumbwaiter.

The AmeriGlide Express dumbwaiter has consistently been one of the best selling residential dumbwaiters. It is able to support a hundred pounds and can be upgraded to support two hundred. The car is twenty inches by twenty inches, but this can also be upgraded if you need a little more space or if you want to install it commercially. It can be configured to open on different sides across different floors and comes with a five year warranty.

The AmeriGlide Express also comes standard with several safety features. It is designed to detect objects that might be lodged in the track and it will stop moving if it detects something. Another important safety feature is the way the doors work. The dumbwaiter will not move unless the doors are securely shut and the exterior doors on each floor remain shut, unless the car is present. This is great for small children, because it ensures they will not be able to open the doors that access the shaft.

While the features and options that are available for the AmeriGlide Express Dumbwaiter are very impressive, it is in large part the ease of installation that has made this lift so popular. This dumbwaiter uses a cable drive system, which in most other dumbwaiters is very hard to install. Usually the cable system must be mounted to the top of the track and getting the cable drive lined up right can be very difficult, after this, it is necessary to attach it to the dumbwaiter car and wire it properly. This makes installing a regular electric dumbwaiter very complicated and out of reach of most home owners.

AmeriGlide saw where other dumbwaiter kits were lacking and designed an efficient and easy to install dumbwaiter system. The AmeriGlide Express Dumbwaiter comes in large part pre-assembled. The dumbwaiter car, cable system, and electric drive is attached to a short piece of track. This means that there is no messy wiring or alignment problems. The short piece of track containing the car and drive system is attached at the top of the dumbwaiter shaft. Then easy to install track is secured to the length of the dumbwaiter shaft and finally the individual call buttons are wired at each place the car will stop.

Since most of the dumbwaiter is fully assembled, installation time is greatly reduced. Many homeowners find that they can do the installation on their own, but even if a professional is hired, it will cost less to install than other dumbwaiters, because it will take them less time. The ease of installation and quality of the AmeriGlide Express Dumbwaiter are two factors that have helped to contribute to its popularity.

Today, elevators are more popular than ever. They are used in commercial buildings all over the world and are also found in many homes.

The first passenger elevator was unveiled at the Crystal Palace in 1854. The Crystal Palace is a building located in New York, which was a meeting place for inventors from around the world. This early passenger elevator was designed by Elisha Otis, who is considered to be the father of the elevator. It incorporated a special safety mechanism that prevented the elevator from falling in the event of a cable failure.

For commercial settings, there are three basic drive types that are used to lift an elevator.

Traction elevators

There are two types of traction elevators: Geared and gearless. However, both of these types of elevators utilize electric motors.

Geared traction elevators make use of a special type of gear called a worm gear, which is a special lifting system, which features a gear whose teeth make contact with a screw. As the screw turns, the gear is turned by the threads on the screw. The advantage of a worm gear is that it greatly reduces the amount of work that is required to move something.

The turning gear is responsible for operating the elevators cabling system and can move the elevator at speeds up to 500 feet per minute.

A gearless traction elevator uses a system similar to a geared one, but the electric engine is attached directly to the hoist cable. These elevators can move much quicker than a geared system and utilize a drum brake system, which is similar to the type found on most cars.

Both of these elevators utilize a cable drive system and use a counterweight to reduce the amount of effort it takes to move the elevator. The counterweight is attached to the end of the cable and moves up and down the elevator shaft on its own rail.

The Hydraulic elevators

One of the first hydraulic elevators was developed by the sons of Elisha Otis in 1870. Their elevator used city water and a very innovative way of building up water pressure. However, today most Hydraulic elevators use a special type of oil and share a designed that is based off of an elevator created by Dover Elevator Company.

While many of today’s hydraulic elevators are very similar to the one developed by Dover, there are also a number of other types of hydraulic elevators.

For example, Roped Hydraulic Elevators utilize a cable in combination with hydraulics and twin post hydraulic elevators are able to move higher than a traditional hydraulic elevator.

Another type of elevator is the Holeless Hydraulic elevators. Holeless elevators are unique, because the hydraulic system is located on the elevator. In most other hydraulic episodes, the hydraulics are located on the ground floor.

The Climbing Elevator

These elevators are powered by an electric or a combustion engine, which is contained on the elevator. It climbs a guide rail and are often used on ships and construction sites. On a ship, a climbing elevator is often found on its mast.

Elisha Otis was born close to Halifax Vermont in 1811. His mother and father ran a very successful farm and had deep roots in the New England area. At the age of 19 he left home and would eventually end up in Troy, New York. Otis spent five years living in Troy as a wagon driver and carpenter. In 1834 he wed a women named Susan Houghton. Shortly after the birth of his first son, Otis contracted a very serious case of pneumonia, which nearly killed him.

During the early years of his first marriage, Otis ran a freight hauling business that traveled between Troy and Brattleboro, Vermont. Despite falling seriously ill, Otis’s freight business was successful enough that he was able to purchase some land in an area called Green River, which was located near Brattleboro. His first wife, Susan Houghton, died in 1842, and left him two sons.

While at his Green River home, Otis had set up a gristmill and later a sawmill, but neither of these business ventures proved to be successful and in 1845, he moved back to New York. Otis would remain in Albany, New York for several years and married a women named Elizabeth Boyd.

Otis had always enjoyed tinkering with things and took a job as a mechanic at a factory that built heavy duty wooden matters frames. He opened up a small mechanics shop that he powered using a small creek near his home. Otis would invent one of his most important inventions, the turbine water wheel, at this shop. In 1851, the government in Albany decided to take control over the stream that Otis used to power his machine shop. He decided to take a mechanic job in New Jersey, which was offered to him by a contact he had made at the bed frame factory.

Shortly after Otis moved to New Jersey, his employer decided to build a new business in Yonkers, New York and sent Otis to oversee the construction of the factory. While in Yonkers, one of the biggest obstacles faced by Otis was the movement of building supplies between floors. He built several different types of rope hoists, which had been used for thousands of years and are basically dumbwaiters. One of the problem with a rope hoist is that if the rope breaks, whatever was being hoisted would come crashing to the ground.

Otis set out to solve this problem and developed several different designs that incorporated a safety catch, which in the event of a rope failure, would stop the car from falling. He eventually created a safety system which used used a very large spring and a set of sharp metal bars. If the rope broke, the spring would be released and the sharp metal bars would be propelled into the walls of the elevator shaft, bringing it quickly to a halt. Otis quickly moved onto other tasks as he was heavily involved in the construction of the new factory.

After the factory was constructed, Otis had been planning on heading to California to mine gold, but he began to receive many inquires about the lift he had built at the Yonkers factory. He quickly saw a market for his invention and created the E.G Otis Company. By 1854, Otis had developed the first passenger elevator, which he demonstrated at the Crystal Palace in New York. This elevator used a slightly different design which relied on a guided elevator system. A set of guide rails ran the length of the shaft the elevator was attached to the guide rails by a set of rollers. If the elevator began to fall too quickly, such as in the event of a cable failure, the rollers would engage and stop the elevator. The first Otis Safety elevator was installed in 1857 and was still in operation up until 1984.

In 1861, Otis was granted a patent for a special type of steam powered elevator. This patent was important because his elevator had its own steam engine. This allowed many businesses, many of which did not have their own power source, to install an elevator. Otis died later that year in 1861. His sons, Charles and Norton, took over their fathers business and continued to improve their fathers elevators. They developed a hydraulic elevator in the 1870’s, which was able to use city water. This hydraulic elevator could be installed in much larger building than the first Otis elevator, which was limited by the size of its cable system.

The legacy that Elisha Otis left for his sons can still be seen today. The Otis Elevator Company today employs over 65,000 people and is located in Connecticut. There are more than a million Otis elevators installed today and the company represents nearly a quarter of the elevator market.

Today, elevators are found in almost all office buildings and businesses that span multiple floors. They quickly and easily carry people throughout a building, often much quicker than if they were to use the stairs. Not only are elevators popular in places like hotels and hospitals, but they have also become increasingly popular in residential settings. The elevators that most people are familiar with today have a very deep and interesting history that spans many years.

The earliest recorded elevator was referenced in the writings of an Architect named Vitruvius, who was a Roman. This was around the year 200 BC. These early elevators were actually more of a dumbwaiter, that was used to transport goods between areas of different elevations.

Often these were simply hoists that relied on human power and a pulley system to raise or lower the car, but some also used water and animal power. The elevator would continue to be used during the medieval time and they are thought to have been installed in the Sinai Monestary in Egypt.

One of the first major innovations to the elevator took place towards the end of the seventeenth century. An inventor named Ivan Kulibin designed an elevator that used a screw lifting mechanism. His elevator was installed into Winter Palace, which is a castle built in Russia that was used by their tsars during the winter months. The Russians would continue to be leaders in the development of the elevator and in 1816, another elevator was installed into a small village near Moscow called Arkhangelskoye. By 1850, the elevator had spread through Europe and to America, where Henry Waterman created a rope controlled elevator.

Perhaps the largest breakthrough in elevator technology came in 1853. It was in this year that a man named Elisha Otis, who is today known as the father of the elevator, created the first safety elevator. Up until the Otis elevator, these elevators lacked basic safety features and a cable failure, resulted in the elevator falling.

The Otis elevator is similar in design to the elevators of today. It is designed so that if the cable broke, the elevator would lock in place. In addition to using a cable system, the Otis elevator was also secured to a set of guide rails that spanned the length of the elevator shaft.

The elevator car had a special type of roller that was attached to the guide rails. As the car moved up or down the guide rails, the rollers would turn freely, but in the event of a cable breakage, the rollers would lock securely onto the guide rails, holding the elevator in place. The rollers engaged when the elevator car descended too quickly.

In 1854, Otis demonstrated his new safety elevator at the Crystal Palace in New York, which was a building that was designed to be a place were inventors from all over the World could meet and share their inventions. By 1860, the first Otis Elevator had been installed and successfully used for several years in the E. V. Haughwout Building.

Interestingly, the first elevator shaft was actually constructed before a passenger elevator had even been built. Peter Cooper, confident that the passenger elevator would soon become available, had an elevator shaft built into his building the Coop Union.

Over the next twenty years, the elevator would quickly advance and grow. A safety door was designed in the middle of the 1870’s and in 1880, the first electrical elevator was built by Werner von Siemens, a German inventor.

Up until 1924, elevators had only been used in commercial buildings, but this changed when Clarence Crispen invented the first residential elevator. Crispen is also the inventor of the stair lift, which is a device that carries people up and down the stairs.

Today, the elevator is more popular than ever and is an incredibly safe way to transport people. The elevator of today has come a far way from the early dumbwaiters that were used in the medieval times and are an interesting part of history.