Home lift space requirements go beyond the floor area the shaft occupies, and for a home of two or more storeys, the figures you settle at the planning stage decide whether the lift drops cleanly into the structure or forces expensive changes once the frame is up. Get this right early and the rest follows. Leave it late and the house starts working against you.
Key lift space requirements at a glance
Here are the working figures for the KONE MonoSpace® Home:
- Load capacity: 320 kg, 400 kg, 450 kg or 630 kg
- Car heights: 2,100, 2,200, 2,300 or 2,400 mm
- Door heights: 2,000 or 2,100 mm
- Overhead clearance: car height plus 650 mm
- Maximum travel: 12 m across up to 6 stops
- Speed: 0.4 m/s
- Power supply: 415V, three-phase
- Pit depth: minimum 200mm
Shaft and pit dimensions are not fixed numbers. They follow from the car configuration you choose, and KONE's Lift Suite configurator confirms them once your car size is set. The sections below explain how each figure shapes your design decisions.
The shaft
A home lift travels through a dedicated shaft, the structural enclosure that everything else is measured against. Car size, door configuration, pit depth and headroom are all calculated in relation to it.
In a machine-room-less (MRL) lift like the KONE MonoSpace® Home, the entire drive sits inside the shaft. There is no separate machine room to find space for above or beside it, which saves floor area on every level and gives your architect real freedom with the plan.
The shaft footprint is set by the car size, and that relationship is fixed by engineering tolerances. A two-passenger car needs less room than one sized for five, and once the configuration is locked there is no shrinking the shaft. That is the reason to confirm it through Lift Suite before structural work begins, not after.
Pit depth and headroom
Most people picture the floor area the shaft takes up. The two dimensions that catch them off guard sit above and below it.
The pit is the recessed space beneath the lowest landing, and every lift needs one for safety clearance when the car reaches the bottom. The depth depends on your configuration and has to be built into the structural slab before the concrete is poured. Add it to an existing slab later and you are into extra cost and complexity, which is why this is a planning-stage decision rather than a site one.
Headroom works from the top down. The MonoSpace Home needs overhead clearance of the car height plus 650 mm. If the ceiling on your top floor is tight, confirm this before the shaft design is signed off. The calculation is simple once you know your car height, but it has to happen before the roofline is set.
Passenger load and car size
How many people the lift carries sets the car size, and the car size sets the shaft footprint. The MonoSpace Home comes in 320 kg, 400 kg, 450 kg and 630kg capacities, with car heights from 2,100 to 2,400 mm and door heights of 2,000 or 2,100 mm. Most homes are well served by the smaller configurations.
If your floorplan is tight, choosing the right capacity early keeps a small home lift compact without giving up function, and keeps your home lift dimensions as lean as the design allows. Where the lift needs to take a wheelchair or mobility equipment, factor that in from the start, because it changes the car size and the shaft footprint from the ground up. For the full range of car sizes and finishes, the compact home lift solution sets out the options.
Compliance: what the specifier needs to know
For architects and builders, the KONE MonoSpace Home is designed to meet the relevant parts of AS 1735, the New Zealand Standard for lifts, escalators and moving walks. Accessibility provisions for residential lifts sit specifically under AS 1735.12, and residential installations also work within the National Construction Code and the relevant state requirements.
Confirm the applicable parts and your certification path early. AS 1735 is the framework your documentation references, and settling it at the design stage avoids delays when the installation is certified.
New build, and a word on existing homes
For a new build or knockdown-rebuild, the shaft is drawn into the structure from the start. The architect designs it in, the builder frames it, and installation happens at the right stage of the build. This is the cleanest route, and it opens the full range of configuration options.
An existing multi-storey home is a different proposition. The shaft still has to be built, the pit accommodated, and the structural impact on each floor assessed. The right first step is a site assessment to see what the building allows, and the earlier that happens, the more options stay open.
Getting your specification right
Shaft size, pit depth, headroom, car size and capacity all interact, and a figure that is wrong at planning can mean structural changes that cost more than the lift itself. The place to start is KONE's Lift Suite configurator, where you can work through car sizes, configurations and finishes and build a specification that fits your home. Your architect or builder will want those numbers before any structural work begins.