Hoists (Again)

[cgallery]

I can't find it now, but there is a user named "Alan in Little Washington" at ncwoodworker.net. He designed a system that allows him to open the doors on his second floor shop, and extend a hoist outside. When he is done w/ the hoist, it folds back inside. It is quite brilliant and has appeared in at least one woodworking magazine.

Edit: Found pic. If you go to woodcentral.com, and click on "Top Shops," then go to #897 Alan Schaffter you'll be able to see his shop. I'm including a pic from that site. He (Alan) is very helpful, I'm sure he'd be very helpful if you contacted him.

[jackellis]

I have a little different arrangement as you can see in the photo. Middle floor contains the garage, which would typically be the unloading point. Shop is on the ground floor and would typically be where items are stored, except for firewood, which would be stored adjacent to the house on the left side of the photo.



On the far left of this photo, you can see where the "widow's walk" comes up to a point where a hoist platform could be brought alongside to unload firewood.


I also figured out that there's really no good place to mount the hoist on a column or the ground. A hoist attached to the ridge beam would be partially protected because it will be attached underneath the roof overhang, and I could build a cover to further protect the hoist from the elements.

The ridge beam is a 24x6 or 24x8 (I forget) gluelam that has to support 50 tons of snow load in an earthquake. It's attached to a steel frame at the other end that is itself attached to posts that are bolted to the stem walls. Even a few thousand pounds would not be problematic, but I'm not about to go there.

These are photos of the interior:

The "Studio", also known as Dorie's junk room. This side faces the street. The steel beams were wrapped with vertical grain fir and turned into a catwalk for the cats.


Stairs leading from the ground floor to the top floor.



Kitchen. Floor guys are not finished yet. Floor is engineered oak because there's in-floor heating below.



Great room. Wood burning stove not shown.



Front door.



Craftsmen who know what they're doing performed all of the work. LOML designed most of the floor plan and exterior, I worried about specing mechanical stuff and then we wrote a lot of checks.

The shop currently has several half-completed cabinets and dust collector parts sitting on the floor. I'll post photos when it looks like a shop.

[JR]

Ok, I finally get it. Picture, thousand words, etc.

The part I can't get out of my mind is how to get a heavy object out of the garage and into space. If the hoist is hanging from the roof beam you'll have to sort of shove the load out the back door. When a ~500 lb. table saw starts swinging in the wind you could have your hands full.

JR

[LarryG]

I'm not clear how the "widow's walk" enters into the problem. The hoist has to lower things from the garage floor down to the shop level, correct? Does it also have to raise/lower stuff to/from a level higher than the garage floor?

[gjat]

What I would do is set up or make a portable engine hoist in the garage so you can pick up what needs to be downloaded and roll it out the garage doors. You may have to modify ita bit with a counterweight to have the boom over-reach the wheels so you can extend it over the edge. Using a chain hoist would allow you to easily control the ascent and descent of heavy objects.

My second option would be a permanent frame with a swinging boom such as what you see on the back of service trucks for semi's.
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=37555

[pelligrini]

They're not exactly cheap, but have you considered a forklift?

[JR]

I think I'm getting it now.

You need a dumbwaiter.

A platform with a cage, hooked by cable to the hoist. The cage would ride up and down on the wall. You might have wheels on the wall side of the cage, riding on a clean surface (vertically-oriented planks running up and down the wall?).

edit: There needs to be a way to roll a tool out the garage door onto the platform of the cage. Pellegrini's idea of a fork lift would do it. Alternatively, the cage needs to be fixed to wall in some way during loading operations so you could roll the object onto the cage platform. A pallet jack might do it.

Bringing us (I guess it's just my pea brain that wasn't getting it!) back to the problem of covering the hoist against the weather. Since the hoist will not be moving you could just build a box around it. There would be a hole in the bottom of the box for the cable.

JR

[os1kne]

They're not exactly cheap, but have you considered a forklift?

I don't think that any suitable option will be cheap, but after looking at the pictures my first thought was a forklift seems like the perfect solution. I don't know if it's possible to get a forktruck to that level. (I don't know what the grade, etc. is like on the outside of the house.)

If it is possible, renting one for the day(s) to get the shop together shouldn't be too expensive and would eliminate the problem of storing an idle machine for extended periods of time. Then, a less-substantial hoist could be used for plywood, firewood, etc. (loads up to ~ 250 lbs. or so.)

The house looks great!

Good luck!

[stocktr8er]

Could you do an elevator setup either externally or internally like one of these:

http://www.residentialelevators.com/types.htm

http://www.daytonaelevator.com/

http://www.daytonaelevator.com/Verti...lChairPAge.htm

[cgallery]

With moving day approaching fast, I might also just tell the movers what conditions they can expect if they attempt to move tools around the outside of the house (they absolutely cannot bring them through the house!) and suggest they might want to rent a suitable portable hoist system that can lower tools from the back door of the garage.

Now that I've seen the pictures, my advice is: Leave it up to the movers. The terrain might not be the greatest, and you can suggest that they come prepared. But in all likelihood, they'll just lift it up and walk it right in.

[jackellis]

I'll confess that if I had to design stuff like this for a living I'd probably starve to death.

After staring at the back of the house, I realized I could enclose the hoist in a box to protect it. I just need to find one that is robust enough to survive outside without breaking the bank. A dumbwaiter arrangement or a sling will allow materials to be moved to and from the shop, and firewood to be moved from the ground level to the top level so we won't freeze when I'm too old to run up and down stairs all day with heavy bundles of firewood in each hand. I'm thinking about fabricating the cage/platform/whatever myself using wood to keep it lighter so I can move it out of the way. I probably don't even need a torsion box floor. 2x4 and plywood should be good for a couple hundred pounds and that's all it needs to carry.

Movers will handle the heavy tools, but they will not be allowed to move them through the house. I'm going to recommend they rent something like an automotive hoist to lower the heavy stuff but if they decide to take their changes walking the stuff around, they're insured and whatever or whoever they break, the insurance company buys.