How to add a lift to a two storey house
Most people who ring us about a home lift have already had the same argument with themselves a few times. The stairs are getting harder, or a knee replacement is coming up, or the laundry is downstairs and the bedrooms aren’t. Moving house solves it, but moving costs stamp duty, agent fees and the entire life you’ve built in that street.
Adding a lift to a two storey house is usually the cheaper answer, and in a standard Australian home it is more achievable than people expect. Here’s what the job actually involves.
Where the lift goes
This is the first question, and it decides most of the others.
In a two storey home you’re looking for a footprint of roughly one square metre that lines up on both levels, with something structurally sensible above and below it. The spots that come up most often are:
- Stacked wardrobes, where the upstairs robe sits directly above a downstairs robe or store
- The void beside or inside the stairwell
- A corner of the garage, coming up into a bedroom or hallway above
- Outside, bolted against an external wall with a small entry cut at each level
That last option is worth taking seriously if the inside of the house is tight. An external shaft costs a little more in weatherproofing and cladding, but it takes nothing off your living space and the builder’s work is often simpler because you aren’t cutting through the middle of the floor structure.
If you can’t find a stacked space, a through-floor lift can create one. These travel between two levels only, take up a small area of the room below when parked, and the upper floor closes over the opening when the car comes down. They suit older homes where there’s no clean vertical line anywhere in the plan.
Which type of lift suits a two storey home
For two stops, you have three realistic options in the Australian market.
Traction or screw-driven cabin lifts are the most common choice in new builds and larger retrofits. No machine room, quiet running, low power draw, and they take a proper enclosed shaft. Ride quality is the best of the three.
Hydraulic lifts are a proven, forgiving option, particularly where the structure is a bit irregular. The trade-off is the power pack, which needs somewhere to live within a reasonable distance of the shaft, usually a garage or an external cupboard.
Platform lifts move slower and have a simpler cabin, and they’re often the right call where the priority is getting a wheelchair between two levels rather than a polished cabin ride. They’re also usually the cheapest way to solve the problem.
If wheelchair access is part of the brief, say so at the very first conversation. A car that comfortably takes two standing adults is not the same as a car that takes a wheelchair plus a carer, and the difference in shaft size is significant enough that it’s expensive to discover late.
What the builder’s work involves
The lift is only part of the project. In a retrofit, the works around it usually include:
A pit at the bottom. Most modern home lifts need somewhere between 30mm and 200mm below the lowest floor level, and some run with essentially no pit at all using a small ramp. On a concrete slab, cutting a deep pit is the single most disruptive item in the whole job, so a shallow-pit or pitless model is worth asking about early.
Headroom at the top. You generally need somewhere around 2.4 metres of clear height above the upper landing floor. Standard 2.4 or 2.7 metre ceilings are usually fine. A raked ceiling or a roof truss sitting in the wrong place is the thing that most often forces a change of location.
An opening through the first floor, with trimming beams and, in some cases, an engineer’s certificate. Timber floors are straightforward. Concrete slabs between levels need more planning.
Power. Most home lifts run on single phase household supply with a dedicated circuit, though larger hydraulic units can need more. An older switchboard sometimes needs upgrading, which is worth checking before you finalise a budget.
Then there’s the finishing work that people forget to price: patching, painting, flooring at both landings, and architraves around the new doors.
Approvals and standards
Home lifts in Australia are installed to the AS 1735 series, and a domestic passenger lift is generally covered by AS 1735.18. Your Lift Company handles compliance with the standard, testing and commissioning.
The building side is separate. Cutting a hole through a floor is structural work, so a building permit is normally required, and in Victoria that means a registered building surveyor and usually a structural engineer’s input on the floor opening. If the lift goes outside, setbacks and siting rules come into play, and a heritage overlay or an owners corporation adds another layer. None of this is unusual, but it takes time, so start it early rather than after the lift is ordered.
What it costs
For a two stop home lift, the supplied and installed price in Australia currently sits somewhere between the low thirties and around $70,000, with most standard jobs landing in the middle of that. Platform lifts start lower. Glass cabins, custom finishes and larger cars push higher.
Retrofit builder’s works are the number that varies most. A stacked wardrobe with a timber floor and a shallow pit might add a few thousand dollars. A concrete slab, a deep pit, a switchboard upgrade and reinstatement across two rooms can add considerably more. Any quote worth comparing will separate the lift from the building works so you can see which is which.
Compare that against the cost of selling and buying again, and the maths tends to work out.
How long it takes
Allow a few weeks for site measure, drawings and permits. Manufacturing and delivery for most home lifts runs around eight to sixteen weeks depending on the model and finishes. Builder’s works take one to three weeks on site, and once the shaft is ready, installation takes 1–2 weeks for home lifts such as the Vector Pro, Zenith Ultra and Atlus, and about 2 days for Levare lifts.
Four to six months from first phone call to first ride is a fair expectation for a retrofit. New builds are easier, because the shaft goes in with the frame.
After it’s in
A home lift needs servicing, generally once or twice a year, and it needs a way to call for help from inside the car. That’s a phone connection or a GSM unit, and it matters more than people think during a power outage. Ask what happens when the power goes out. Most home lifts have a battery lowering function that brings the car to the nearest landing and opens the door.
Where to start
The useful first step is a site assessment. Someone measures your floor to ceiling heights, checks the floor structure, looks at where the switchboard is and tells you which locations in your house will actually work. That conversation usually narrows five imagined options down to one or two real ones.
Lift Ease installs and services home lifts. If you’re weighing up whether a lift fits your two storey home, get in touch and we’ll come and look at the space.