Model: 4-Person (750-pound capacity), non-cantilevered sideways mounted car
Track: 72' at 36°
Area: Lake Rosseau, Muskoka
Year: 2019
The owners of this property were readying their cottage for their retirement and needed the lift to get to their boathouse and back. We needed to come off the front of a balcony which required that the car be entered at both the top and bottom in the direction of the track, which in turn meant that we needed to mount a 2-door car sideways on top of the dolly. New territory for us.
The lift needed to run from this balcony
to this boathouse
We used our Gantry Crane to lift the first 20’ long, 385 lbs section of track 10’ off the ground, and used special jigs we devised and built, to locate the track to a high precision in 3 independent spatial and 3 independent angular dimensions. Then we built the support legs to hold it solidly in place. The track extends 5’ beyond the upper set of legs - this was the closest we could get our first set of legs to the top. Everything about this lift was tricky and everything went according to plan.
Because the car door had to open onto the deck, we put the car sideways to the track, something we’d seen but never done before, and on top of the dolly. Setting the track was tricky, we had to get it as close to perpendicular to the leading edge of the deck as possible and set it so that the car floor would be level with and an inch away from the deck as it comes to rest in the station. The fit was so tight we had to modify the dolly to attach it to the hoisting cable.
Looking through the railings and down the track. When the car is not in the top station the only parts of the lift that are visible to people sitting on the balcony are the gate and the buttons set into an extra tall gate post. The gate is interlocked with the lift, it will only open when the car is stopped in the upper station and the car will only leave the station if the gated is closed and locked.
When we set the track, we made sure that, with the car gates wide-open, the car would run exactly midway between the two trees near the waters edge.
All the machinery and the electrical panel that runs the lift is located inside in the cedar housing.. The PARK button moves the car from either station to this point. The beautifully tended rock garden is barely affected by the lift.
We needed to mount the car on top of the dolly so that people could get on and off along the line of the track in the upper station, which meant the car floor could not end level with the dock in the bottom station. We built 2 steps and a platform to access the car in the lower station. The owner built a cover which we had partially removed for this photo.
Turn down the volume please, the camera mike pick up and amplifies track noises. In person they are definitely background, in this recording they are loud.