1,160 mm Wide: What Decides If a Lift Fits the Doorway

The width is the number every buyer checks, and it is rarely the number that stops the electric scissor lift. In our experience the machine that "does not fit" has usually failed on door height, on the lift car, or on the last three metres of a ninety degree turn.

Here are the four dimensions that decide it, with the real figures from our range, and a measurement sheet you can fill in before the order rather than after the container arrives.

The machine lined up with an industrial doorway during a fit check.

The four numbers

Two notes on that table before you use it. The 1,160 mm width is the scissor lift, not the platform: the platform on the 1012 is 1,130 mm because the chassis and tyres add 30 mm. And the last row is the only model in the range whose width changes with the guardrail position, which is worth knowing before you measure a lift car.

The folded height trap

This is where most failed deliveries come from. A personnel door is 2,100 mm. An industrial roller shutter is often 2,000 to 2,500 mm, and the curtain hangs 100 to 150 mm below the lintel when it is up, so the clear opening is smaller than the frame you measured.

The 1012 folds to 1,940 mm. The 1214 folds to 2,060 mm. Against a nominal 2,000 mm shutter, the first scissor lift passes with 60 mm to spare and the second does not pass at all. Add the hanging curtain and even the 1012 is marginal, which is why we ask for the clear opening rather than the door size.

Measure the clear opening with the door fully open, from the floor to the lowest obstruction, and note what that obstruction is. A roller shutter box, a fire door closer, a pipe run and a ventilation duct are the four things that turn a 2,400 mm frame into a 1,950 mm opening.

The lift car is usually the real limit

Goods lifts are the tightest constraint in most retrofit projects, and the numbers are rarely on the plate. What you need is the internal car height, the door opening width and height, and the car floor dimensions. A car rated for 2,000 kg will happily take a 2,550 kg machine's weight as a refusal, which is at least unambiguous. The height is what surprises people: a car with a 2,400 mm internal height and a 2,100 mm door will accept the 1214 on paper and refuse it at the sill because the machine has to be tipped to get the guardrail through.

Two ways out, both cheaper than a crane. Fold the guardrail, where the model allows it, or choose a narrow scissor lift. The compact GTJZ-0810-Z at 840 mm wide and 2,050 kg solves most lift-car problems that a 1,160 mm machine cannot, at the cost of 2 m of platform height.

Turning radius and the last three metres

An aisle wide enough for the scissor lift is not necessarily wide enough to get the machine into it. The outer turning radius on the 1012 is 2.5 m, which describes the path of the outside front corner when the machine turns on full lock. If your route turns ninety degrees through a doorway, the machine needs the doorway width plus the swept path, not just the doorway width.

The practical version: measure the narrowest point on the route, and then measure the corridor on both sides of it. A 1,200 mm doorway at the end of a 1,500 mm corridor is a 1,200 mm doorway. A 1,200 mm doorway at the end of a 3,000 mm corridor can be entered on a diagonal, which is a different problem and usually a solvable one.

The sheet to fill in

Five measurements, taken with a tape rather than read off a drawing:

1. Narrowest clear width on the route, and where it is.
2. Lowest clear height on the route, with the obstruction named.
3. Lift car: internal height, door width, door height, floor dimensions.
4. Widest turn on the route, with the corridor width at that point.
5. Floor surface and any threshold or ramp, with the height difference in millimetres.

Send us those five and we will tell you which models work, which work with the guardrail folded, and which need a different route. It takes ten minutes on site and it prevents the most expensive kind of mistake, which is a machine that arrives, works perfectly, and cannot get into the building.

Send the five measurements and we will come back with the model rather than the catalogue.