As a homeowner or an occupant in a building, it is important to understand the dangerous environmental conditions that may affect you and the surrounding structures. For example, if you live in an area which is prone to excessive rain, you should be concerned about the possibility of floods hitting your building.
Excess water may also be as a broken pipe or blocked drainage system. To successfully manage such a scenario and avoid damaging your elevators or escalators permanently, consider engaging the services of an escalator consultant to survey the area and provide clear solutions.
Gather the relevant information
Some elevators may have special mechanisms that sensor water levels and lift the vehicle to a safer position along the pit where water cannot reach. However, for those that do not have such sensor mechanisms, it is important to have an insurance policy to shield yourself from such risks and associated losses. Many of the elevator and escalator parts are easily affected by excess water, and may experience a lot of damage if immediate measures are not taken.
In the event that such a thing happens, your consultant should survey the area and gather as much information as possible in order to understand the causation factors. This information is crucial for the insurance company to determine their position in the matter, hence decide whether they will compensate you and cater for all the costs or not.
Inspect the equipment
Take time to check all the elevator parts and find out where most of the damage has occurred. The best action to take during this period is to shut down all the equipment and let the occupants use the stairs in the meantime. The reason for this is to ensure that further damage does not occur, and to prevent any health hazards such as electrical faults and shocks which are dangerous to the surrounding. Inspection should be done as soon as possible in order to save the parts which are worth saving, and replace the damaged parts in good time to ensure you do not incur more losses due to the dysfunctional nature of the elevator or escalator.
Parts that may experience damage
Depending on the extent of flooding, the bottom of the elevator pitch is most likely to experience the most damage. This means that most equipment at the bottom level including the control machines and switches, and the hoisting cables, and the lift vehicle itself are at a high risk of being damaged. Since the escalator cannot be moved to a higher ground, all the equipment located below the flooded height faces a huge risk of getting destroyed, especially the wires and switches that control the vertical movement. Therefore, it is important to switch off the machine to prevent water from getting into contact with electricity, which could be disastrous.
Drain away the water as soon as you can
Once all the inspection has been done and the damage assessed, take all the appropriate measures to prevent spreading of the water into drier parts of the elevator or escalator. Drain all the water away from the building and dry all affected parts using high powered equipment that will perform the task successfully. Hire the services of competent experts for better results, and employ restorative measures to salvage whatever is still functional.
Make sure that you deal with the main cause of the problem first; so if it is a burst pipe, repair or replace it and reinforce the piping system to ensure that such a scenario does not recur in the future. It is only after you have fixed the underlying problem that you can proceed to replace the elevator or escalator and make it functional again.
