Gulf Construction Online - Hydraulic lifts boast cost, space advantages

Hotels & Palaces

Hydraulic lifts boast cost, space advantages

01 November 2007

With a count of more than 1,500 lifts to its credit all over the UAE, Gulf Elevators Company is keenly eyeing the luxury villa and mid-rise buildings sector with its range of hydraulic elevators that boast advantages over their traction counterparts.

“We are installing lifts in villas and in buildings up to seven storeys high,” says S F Elavia, director of Gulf Elevators Company. “Our firm has highly-skilled engineers and technicians for erecting and maintaining elevators for traction lifts and hydraulic lifts. We have separate technicians on each maintenance route for our elevators in Dubai, Sharjah and Ajman.”
The company, which was established in 1976 in Sharjah by Sheikh Faisal bin Khalid Mohammed Al Qassimi, is the sole agent for GMV of Italy, a world leader in hydraulic lift production. Established in 1958, GMV has supplied technological know-how to General Electric Company US. It produces more than 30,000 hydraulic units per year and has some 650,000 installations worldwide equipped with its hydraulic components.
Its hydraulic elevator product line includes:
• Standard hydraulic elevator: with two-panel telescopic or centre-opening automatic doors, having one or two entrances, in a wide variety of finishes. The machine room, which is required for fixing the pump unit and controller, can be located up to 4 m from the lift shaft, on any floor (approximate dimensions of the machine room is five by five ft);
• Machine-roomless hydraulic elevator: the pump unit and controller are fixed inside the lift pit, hence no machine room is required. The minimum pit depth is 1.5 m; and
• Panoramic hydraulic elevators: available in a wide range of shapes with glass doors and an attractive finish.
“GMV hydraulic elevators have many advantages such as: reduced energy costs due to 40 per cent less power consumption in comparison to electric traction elevators, extremely smooth ride quality with VVVF-like (variable voltage variable frequency) performance, reduced overall shaft dimensions as GMV hydraulic elevators require only one load-bearing wall in the lift shaft.”
Other advantages cited for the elevators include: no vertical load on the building structure, reduced installation time and maintenance cost, safer than traction elevators in the event of an earthquake as there are no counterweight blocks, shorter delivery time, no vibration or noise during operation of the lift, flexibility in positioning the machine room with reduced pit and headroom dimensions. Also, they are of highest quality (100 per cent Italian) at affordable prices and fully compliant with European lift directives (EN 81), he says.
In addition, GMV hydraulic MRL (machine roomless) elevators are approximately 30 per cent cheaper than traction MRL elevators, Elavia adds.
Besides, hydraulic elevators Gulf Elevators Company also provides the following:
• Traction elevators;
• Escalators and moving walks;
• Goods lifts;
• Dumbwaiters; and
• Maintenance and modernisation of all brands of elevators.