Plan area
Roughly 4 ft by 4 ft 6 in for a typical installation. Because the guide track is wall mounted, you are not also finding room for a machine room or a plant cupboard.
How much space does a home lift need?
About 4 ft by 4 ft 6 in — roughly the footprint of a small store cupboard. That is the short answer. The longer one is that plan area is only one of four things that decide whether a lift fits, and the other three are what catch people out.
The four things that decide whether a lift fits
Plan area is the one everybody asks about. It is rarely the one that decides the answer.
A clean vertical run
The shaft position has to line up floor to floor with nothing crossing it — no beam, no duct, no stair winder cutting through the void. This is the one that most often moves a lift from where the owner imagined it.
Headroom at the top landing
There has to be enough height above the top stop for the cabin to arrive safely. A void that works perfectly on every floor can still fail at the top, and it is measured rather than estimated.
What the base sits on, and the power
The floor carrying the base, and the supply reaching the lift position: 220 V or 380 V at 50 Hz, driving a 2 HP or 3 HP motor. Both are checked on the survey.
Why no machine room changes the arithmetic
A conventional passenger lift expects a plant room — a dedicated space, usually on the roof or in a basement, for the machine and controller. In a Pakistani house that is often the reason a lift gets ruled out before anyone measures anything.
Vertico’s residential range runs on a wall-mounted C-channel guide track, so no machine room is required and you do not lose a rooftop or basement room to plant. It also means no deep pit, and in most cases no structural demolition. The practical effect is that the question stops being “where do we put the plant?” and becomes “where is there a clean vertical void?”
Where a lift goes in a house that is already built
Most of our installations are retrofits into completed homes, not new builds.
- The stairwell void. The space a staircase wraps around is the most common home for a retrofit lift, because the vertical run is already clear.
- A light well. Often already a clean vertical shaft, and often under-used.
- An outdoor wall. Where there is nothing suitable inside, the lift goes on the outside of the building and the landings open inward.
- An internal corner. Sometimes the only clean run in the house, and enough.
Where the existing structure cannot carry any load at all, EnclosureX is a self-supporting steel and glass tower that carries its own weight, so the building is not asked to. Where space is tight inside, AirRail uses a railing system that removes much of the civil work an enclosed shaft needs. Adding a lift to an existing house covers the retrofit sequence in more detail.
Two floors, three floors, four
The residential range is engineered for buildings up to ground plus three floors as standard, which covers the vast majority of houses and small apartment blocks in Pakistan. Load capacity runs from 150 to 300 kg depending on how the unit is configured — two to four people, or one wheelchair user with a companion — and travel speed is a deliberately gentle 0.15 to 0.25 metres per second.
A two-storey house and a four-storey house are not different products here. They are the same range, configured differently, and the figures above are common to every model in the range.
Questions about size and space
What is the smallest space a home lift needs?
Roughly 4 ft by 4 ft 6 in of plan area for a typical installation, which is about the footprint of a small store cupboard. There is no machine room to find room for, because the guide track is wall mounted rather than needing a plant room. Plan area is only part of it: a clean vertical run and adequate headroom at the top landing matter just as much.
Do you need to dig a pit or break walls?
Rarely. The system runs on a wall-mounted C-channel guide track and needs no machine room, so most of the heavy civil work a conventional lift demands simply does not apply. Where an existing structure cannot take any load at all, the EnclosureX tower carries its own weight so the building is not asked to.
Where can a lift go in a house that is already built?
Most of our installations are retrofits into completed homes. A lift can usually be added to a stairwell void, a light well, an outdoor wall or an internal corner without structural demolition. Which of those works for your house is what the free survey settles.
How many floors can it serve?
The residential range is engineered for buildings up to G+3 as standard, which covers the vast majority of houses and small apartment blocks in Pakistan. Taller requirements are quoted case by case after a survey.
How do I know for certain that one fits?
You do not, until someone measures it, and that is exactly why the site survey is free. We check the available void, the headroom at the top landing, the floor the base will sit on and the power supply, then tell you which of our four models will physically work. Occasionally the answer is that none of them will. We would rather tell you that at survey than after a deposit.
More answers on power, safety, timelines and maintenance are in our frequently asked questions, and what actually drives the price covers cost.
Not sure your house has the space?
Neither are we, until we measure it. The survey is free, and we will tell you honestly if none of our models fits.
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