Service lift for Schloss Neuschwanstein
Producing over 2000 lifts per year and delivering them to more than 80 countries all over the world means that naturally every now and then one of our dumbwaiters ends up in famous landmarks and buildings. As we are only a supplier for the lifts industry though, we do rarely know where our products are installed.
Obviously we are thrilled each and every time we get to see one of our products in action – you might remember Markus’ famous trip to London where he dragged his ever-suffering partner along to see one of our lifts installed at Borough market (shared on our Instagram page). Well, this time she had the joy to see Neuschwanstein and Markus had the joy to see yet another lift. By the way, if any of you knows of one of our lift installed in the Caribbean, she would be so grateful!
However, coming back to Neuschwanstein – to give you an idea what made this project so special for us, other than the location: About 3 years ago the State Construction Office based in Kempten, represented by Mr. Andreas Brandner, got in touch asking us if we saw any chance of a small goods lift installed in the castle. There were several conditions which made this a really challenging project for us:
- Historic building with no changes or adjustments allowed to the structure of the building
- Installation in the stair well, fixings only possible at the platform site and the stair stringers
- Travel approx. 23.0m
- Adjacent entries
The biggest challenge for us was the required car dimensions. The intended use for the lift is the transport of historic fabrics which are stored and restored in the castle. The top floor of the castle is suited ideally for this purpose as the historic walls create a unique environment for storing fabrics due to temperature and humidity levels. Not only the historic fabrics from the castle itself are stored at this floor; but fabrics from listed buildings all over the area are sent to Neuschwanstein for this purpose.
The transport of these fabrics is not easy. They get specially folded and then delivered in boxes made-to-measure the dimensions of the folded fabric. Therefore, the doors of the lift have to be according to the dimensions of the boxes, meaning one side of the lift has to be at least 1.58 m. This increased the car size to 660mm x 1680 and this increased width of the landing doors on this site. Bi-parting doors would not have worked with these measurements, so we replaced them with car doors parting upwards only. A great solution, but not with a headroom of 2m only. After a lot of discussions with the technical departments, the engineers and the customer, we have found a solution: The doors now open downwards at the top landing.
The structure was an invention made by us for this building, self-supporting, and cladded by the client with perforated sheets of steel. Even with the lit only being used and seen by employees, there is still a full set of LED lights for the whole length of the shaft, giving this master piece the attention it deserves.
Sale, installation and put-in-service was taken over by the company ‘Schiefer Aufzugtechnik’, located in Paderborn. They did an excellent job and we would like to thank them once again for this great collaboration. Another thanks go to Mr. Andreas Brandner by the State Construction Office in Kempten, who gave us to opportunity to visit this lift.
Technical details of the small goods lift in Schloss Neuschwanstein:
- BKG Type 100.45/7FS
- 5 stops
- 5 landings
- adjacent entry
- Travel 22,956 mm
- headroom, incl. motor 2000 mm
- car dimensions: 660 x 1680 x 900 mm
- door width side A: 660 mm
- door width side C: 1580 mm
- motor: BKG H8-RG, 1.1 kW
- drive unit with traction sheave and counterweight
- nominal speed 0.45 m/s