Elevator Replacement and Costs

[pedro47]

Have anyone stayed at a timeshare resort that the resort needed to replace their elevators .

What are the costs and what does replacing an elevator entail?

My son and his spouse, my granddaughter and my grandson just returned from an all inclusive resort in the Caribbean and this topic can up.

 

[Ken555]

How many floors? In my experience, that's the first question to determine the type of elevator and relative cost.

 

[DrQ]

Don't know specifically, but one of the death knells of our timeshare in Galveston, Inverness by the Sea, was the two elevators. They were hydraulic ram type of four stories high. The repair costs were stated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and that was 5-6 years ago. It probably did not need to be replaced, but refurbished:

• Replace pump
• Replace electronic control system
• Replace seals on the ram
• Replace hoses

There are two type of elevator designs:

1. Cable pulley / Counterweight
2. Hydraulic/Pneumatic

In the case of cable/pulley, the walls of the elevator shaft are reinforced to take the load of the system and passengers. With the hydraulic, the ram bears the load, but is limited in height. The cable system also requires a safety break to prevent a free fall accident, whereas a hydraulic, probably does not.

 

[pedro47]

To DrQ, thanks you for answering my thread. I appreciate your opinions and answers.

I now must do some research.

 

[DrQ]

I was able to locate the letter sent out. The elevator repair cost in 2019 was stated as $40,000. That was probably for a "get it up to code" and functional repair.
Link to document

 

[Passepartout]

Not timeshare, but at our second home condo, 5 floors, 70some units, our elevator is failing, and the dreaded Special Assessment is almost $3,000 per apartment to replace them. They are Krupp brand, and there is no such thing as an 'off-the-shelf' elevator. Each one is custom made for the shaft it rides in. So far it's working, but each time it quits, technicians have to machine the parts required to get it running again. We live in fear that one time they won't be able to get it working and our 3rd floor condo will be a 'walk-up'. Doubling the trouble is that there are a significant number of residents that are handicapped and/or wheelchair dependent. Those folks will have to get different living arrangements when the elevators are being replaced.

The property management company says that they can't even order the replacements until well over half of the SA is paid. The buildings were built in 2006/08 with a 'design life' of 20 years.

 

[DrQ]

They are Krupp brand, and there is no such thing as an 'off-the-shelf' elevator. Each one is custom made for the shaft it rides in.

That's true to a certain extent. They take their control systems, sensors and other components, which are "off the shelf" and then put them together as a design for a custom installation. The problem arises, that as these systems age, the components become obsolete and the replacement parts may not fit exactly as the old component. They may require custom brackets to hold something which is functionally equivalent, but physically different. In the case of control boards, some chips which made the original motherboard are probably not available and have to be replaced with programmable chips like UART's and PLC's to replicate the function. This is not a straightforward process as the new programming must sometime incorporate the "quirks" of the old system for safety and stability.

I was working for a company that designed an ordinance in the 1970's and for the ramp up for the Gulf war, we had to produce them 30 years later. Electronics, servos, motors, etc had to be updated because the original components were no longer available. Additionally, we had to keep the performance of the system EXACTLY the same as it had been certified back in the 1970's during flight tests. That is why, even though we designed and built the Saturn V rocket to get us to the moon, we probably could not build one today, at least not without a major retrofit program that would be comparable to the original effort.

 

[jp10558]

The buildings were built in 2006/08 with a 'design life' of 20 years.

That has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Who builds housing with a 'design life' of 20 years? Did you all know this before buying the condo?

 

[DrQ]

That has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Who builds housing with a 'design life' of 20 years? Did you all know this before buying the condo?

Look at your HOA financial statements. Any one worth their salt will assign a life for major components:

• Roof
• Parking lot (paving)
• HVAC
• Water heater/plumbing
• Mechanical systems (including elevators)

They should be assessing fees based on these expected costs to create reserves.

If a roof has an expected life of 15 years, they should be collecting 1/15th a year (+inflation) for that expected cost and mitigate an unexpected event with insurance

 

[pedro47]

That has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Who builds housing with a 'design life' of 20 years? Did you all know this before buying the condo?

one of the most used item at a hotel, a resort, a high rise condo, an office building and a timeshare resort is an elevator. It goes up and down 365 days a year. How many items in a new constructed home will last for forever, not the roof, not the a/c and heating systems, not the appliances, not the water heater, etc.

 

[Ken555]

That has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Who builds housing with a 'design life' of 20 years? Did you all know this before buying the condo?

Every item at a condo should be listed on the reserve study, which includes the elevators. Replacing/remodeling the cab is common, as is replacing the equipment. It’s just another budgetable item, and not a surprise. How long it lasts in practical terms is often different than the expected lifespan.

 

[Ken555]

I was able to locate the letter sent out. The elevator repair cost in 2019 was stated as $40,000. That was probably for a "get it up to code" and functional repair.
Link to document

For comparison, we paid about $215,000 for two elevators ~10 years ago for a comprehensive update. I would expect it to cost a lot more now.

 

[sue1947]

My HOA is also dealing with this now. Our's are 35 years +_. You don't replace the elevator; you upgrade the lift and mechanicals by taking the parts out, re-machining them, and then putting it back together. At the same time, there are electrical and fire code upgrades that have to be done. If you are lucky, the process can be done in 4-6 weeks. Not so lucky; it took our last one 3 months with handicapped folks unable to get down the stairs for that entire time. We are trying to do this proactively with advance notice so residents can make other living arrangements (take a vacation, stay with family etc), but the elevator company (probably the best known one) has been awful to work with. They own the parts, but we have now switched companies.
Cost in 2016 was $135000 with 2/3 of that the actual elevator and the rest the upgrades required. In 2022, additional fire code changes have added to the cost. The one finally finished in Jan (down payment made in spring of 2023), cost $150,000 for the elevator + $100,000 for the fire code upgrade changes needed. With the elevator, there is a fire panel that runs the fire alarms etc. When that is changed, all the other changes also have to happen. We don't have a bid for the next one yet, but it will likely be more. We've had to go back in and fix some of the work done on the fire code upgrades; there was a reason that company was $150,000 lower...
With any large scale project, the standard is a 50% down payment which allows the company to buy the parts and get things moving. That's when you get on the schedule. If the HOA doesn't have that money to front while the special assessments are coming in, you might want to take a closer look at the amount of reserves.

 

[jp10558]

Every item at a condo should be listed on the reserve study, which includes the elevators. Replacing/remodeling the cab is common, as is replacing the equipment. It’s just another budgetable item, and not a surprise. How long it lasts in practical terms is often different than the expected lifespan.

I think I misunderstood what the first part said. They said the condo had an expected lifespan of 20 years. I read that as like a car has an expected lifespan of 15 years - not that it's not possible to stretch it, but where it's expected you'd replace the entire thing because it wouldn't be economical / would move from maintenance into like historic restoration territory to keep the thing going. I fully understand that various parts of a house / building would have expected maintenance or replacement time-frames of around 25 years (traditional shingle roofs, residential boilers / furnaces, residential AC units etc), but you'd hope the structure was designed to last longer I would think.

I have no idea what a lifespan for an Elevator is commonly, but I could see that part being 20 years - the phrasing just read to me like the developer was like "whelp, we expect to bulldoze this building in 20 years", which I would personally take a pass on buying into, and I figured almost no one would want to buy a living area with that as the stated lifespan. If I was really thinking (and 20 years ago I probably wouldn't have been, so no shade on those people) I'd also want to know - do we have redundant elevators and a plan to stagger replacement? Before buying into there. Because otherwise you get the issue in the post - you end up with walk ups for a few years (and problems whenever there's a breakdown) as the single elevator is serviced.

 

[dioxide45]

The condo we live in is having to do a modernization project on the elevators. Almost all of our timeshares have done the same at some point. They really only have about a 20 year lifespan. Our condo association thought they could limp these things along until 2035, which would have been almost 30 years. They had to have an emergency vote of the owners to approve moving money from one fund to another and well as to get approval to borrow a bunch of money to cover modernization. It will certainly cost several million dollars for the eight elevators in the complex. I think they stated something like $300,000 per elevator.

For older elevators, parts are not easy to find and it can take a week to bring an elevator back up if it goes down. The elevators in our building have had their circuit boards blown out twice in the last couple years by lightning strikes.