Lift Adventure Date: July 30
Lift Adventure Time: 6:30 PM EST
After almost a year of filming lifts in North Jersey, it was sure quite a fun idea to film lifts in Central Jersey for a change & outside of Freehold Raceway Mall. For this lift adventure, I visited three townships to film three lifts as follows:
Freehold Township
Manalapan Township
Millburn Township
Each of the 3 lifts had their own charm & flair to them despite being all hydraulic, which made the trip more interesting. I picked the three lifts at random meaning I did no prior research or planning before going out to film them.
Freehold Township
Where: Freehold Township
Time Filmed: Morning (July 8)
Grade: B-
Speed to Height Ratio: Unknown (Estimated: 3.7:1)
Landings Served: 4
For the first lift, I visited a medium-sized 4-level office building right off main street in downtown Freehold. It had a ThyssenKrupp aurora lift with a single slide door & a brass finish panel with a brown plain cab interior & warm halogen lighting. The fixtures lit up in red & it had an ADA compliant phone installed by ThyssenKrupp itself accessible via a button on the panel. The lift had rough starts & stops & seemed fast for the application given it was a general priority building. The speed to height ratio is unknown but the speed is estimated to be around 0.7 m/s.
The only outstanding characterful element was the hard starts & stops. Other than that, the shaft noises were minimal & the motor was not very loud. Upon analyzing the character of the lift & the efficiency analysis, I decided to assign a grade of "B-" to this lift.
Manalapan Township
Where: Manalapan Township
Time Filmed: Morning (July 8)
Grade: B
Speed to Height Ratio: 5:1
Landings Served: 2
For the second lift, I visited a random office building on Route 33 [Business] in Manalapan Township. This office building was a small, two-level building but the floors were very far apart, adding flair to it. I believe this office building could have doubled up as a warehouse. It had a very early 1980's OTIS Series 1 hydraulic lift on a 211-LRV relay controller. The fixtures had halogen lights in them & lit up in warm white. The phone was ADA compliant but behind a locked cabinet door. It had a jolty start but smooth stop going down & the motor was audible in both directions. Only the down trip was filmed. The speed to height ratio is 5:1 & the speed is estimated to be around 0.45 m/s.
Outstanding characterful elements included a rough start going down & a normal speed to height ratio. The motor was audible even going down. Upon analyzing the character of the lift & the efficiency analysis, I decided to assign a grade of "B" to this lift.
Millburn Township
Where: Millburn Township
Time Filmed: Morning (July 8)
Grade: B+
Speed to Height Ratio: 2.86:1
Landings Served: 4
For the third lift, I visited Bloomingdale's in Short Hills after hearing word that the lift got replaced with a brand new Schindler generic lift. This lift was unique from other Schindler installs of this kind mainly due to how it ran. Here's how I knew this was not a Schindler HXPress:
External & internal floor indicators behaved like ACME floor indicators on MCE-controlled lifts
Floor indicator did not rapidly change when lift started moving & the chime was delayed until the entire landing was passed
This was a very rare Schindler install. To top it all off, this lift had a different pitch of motor & a floor passing chime that is normally used on new lifts in Canada suggesting that this is a Canadian lift. The speed to height ratio is 2.86:1 & the speed is 0.65 m/s.
Outstanding characterful elements were the epic motor, the controller & the floor passing chime. Upon analyzing the character of the lift & the efficiency analysis, I decided to assign a grade of "B+" to this lift.
I look forward to seeing you on the premiere at 6:30 PM EST this afternoon.
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