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How Much Space Do You Need To Fit A Lift?
Before you lock in your lift, your builder or architect needs a handful of lift well measurements: the pit, top of shaft, FFL-to-FFL travel, clear opening, and the internal width and depth of the well. Here’s what each one means — straight from the way we annotate our own engineering drawings — and why our shallow-pit, free-standing shaft design makes fitting a lift into an existing home so much easier.
How Much Space Do You Need To Fit A Lift In Your Home?
Every lift well comes down to a handful of measurements — the pit, top of shaft, FFL-to-FFL travel, clear opening, and the internal width and depth of the well. Get familiar with them here, then let our team confirm the exact numbers for your home.
- Lift Well
- Our term for the lift shaft — the enclosed space the lift travels in. Every dimension on the drawing is measured internally, wall to wall.
- Internal Minimum Height (Lift Well / Eaves)
- Pit floor to the underside of the roof or eaves — the total internal height your lift well needs, top to bottom.
- Top Of Shaft
- The lift well space above the highest finished floor level — room for the car, drive gear and safety clearances when the lift is at its top stop.
- FFL – FFL (Travel)
- Finished floor level to finished floor level — the vertical distance between stops. T1 is ground to first floor, T2 first to second, and so on.
- Clear Opening
- The unobstructed door opening — height on the elevation, width on the landing plan — so you can step or wheel straight in.
- Pit
- The recess below the lowest finished floor level that houses the base and levelling gear. Ours is shallow by design — on some models as little as 50mm.
- Internal Minimum Width & Depth
- The smallest slab-to-slab internal dimensions of the lift well, measured inside the walls at the top of shaft.
Built For Easy Retro-Fit
Most of our lifts sit inside a self-supporting, free-standing shaft structure — no load-bearing walls needed, and no guesswork for your builder. That’s what makes retro-fitting a lift into an existing home so straightforward, whether you’re renovating or planning ahead.
Our pit depths are shallow by design — on some models as little as 50mm — so an existing slab rarely needs major structural work, and the lift well itself can often be framed within existing floor levels. Every lift we build is BCA-compliant and manufactured to Australian Standards (AS1735), right here in our Brisbane factory.
Free Engineering Drawings, Fast
Our engineering drawing process is fully automated, so there’s no waiting days on manual drafting. Once we’ve confirmed your lift model, we can usually have a complete, free set of drawings back to you within 30 minutes — covering the lift well dimensions, pit and top-of-shaft requirements, clear openings and electrical specifications, ready to hand straight to your architect, builder or engineer.
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