Refuse Lifts for New York City Housing Authority
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When the New York City Housing Authority needed to replace manual chain hoists used to move refuse between floors in its buildings, the job was anything but straightforward. Each building's hoistway was slightly different, varying in dimensions, travel height, and overhead clearance, and no two installations were exactly alike. The shaftways were extremely compact, overhead was severely limited, and cutting into building slabs for pits was not permitted. Three distinct lift configurations were required: front opening, front and rear opening, and front and side opening. Beyond the physical constraints, NYCHA specifications were demanding. Solid swing car gates with three-point locking systems, interlocked landing doors, automatic lighting, all finished in brushed stainless steel, all under constant-pressure operation.
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Gillespie built and tested fully operational prototypes in its own test tower before a single unit shipped to New York, verifying performance at full 500-pound capacity and working out design details under real conditions. A custom compact drum machine was engineered around a SEW Eurodrive gearmotor to fit within the tight overhead constraints. Each configuration was designed individually: front and front-and-rear units as balanced arrangements on T-rails, front-and-side units as cantilever lifts. Landing door interlocks, notoriously difficult given the available space, were solved with custom roller arms and fixed cams. A purpose-built lifting system was also designed to simplify installation of the overhead equipment through core-drilled ceiling openings.
The result is a fleet of purpose-built refuse lifts designed to handle years of hard daily use in one of the world's most demanding urban environments, delivered on time and to spec for one of New York City's largest housing authorities.
Gillespie engineer John Linsley documented this project in a feature article published in Elevator World magazine. To read the full article, click here.
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