Otis elevator hydraulic piston failures

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This firm has installed Otis hydraulic elevators in many of its 90 buildings (14 in one complex alone!) We recently have had two failures of pistons where a leak has developed requiring cylinder replacement (a huge effort!)- one was only five years old. Both of these cylinders were double walled with special outer jackets. In both cases Otis has refused responsibility for these pistons and we were forced to obtain expensive cylinder replacements from other contractors. Otis told us today they have never heard of a failure of a PVC protected Otis hydraulic cylinder. Anyone else have similar experiences?

-- bill johnson (design@cummings.com), June 07, 2002

Answers

Leaky pistons

I have seen this problem a number of times. Not only with Otis but with some of the other majors. One building owner had to replace both pistons on a duplex and had to do a waste cleanup since the cylinders were not in PVC (Their water well was 100 yards away)Cost was over 200,000.00.And the units were only 6 years old. Since you are installing so many elevators, I would suggest you switch to roped hydraulic units and get everything out of the ground. You may pay a little more on a three stop or a four stop unit but the pistons will last for life and won't need any special contracts. You also get safties which your in-ground units do not have.

-- Jerry Rexer (jjrexer@uplink.net), June 13, 2002.

Your last responce from Bill,dated June 16 would seem to have the most informative answer.One piece PVC lined jacks do not fail! Again the solutiion of roped-hydros, get ready for more maint. cost.It was never stated that these failures were Otis elevators ?

-- Amber Starr (Atomic girl 2000@ aol.com), January 14, 2004.

also, re sealing a 3 stage jack is very costly and it the instalation is not done rite first time you can get all sorts of problems like vibrations in up travel, instant leaks, and damaged sections or seal heads..not including like they said in an eirlier post, high maintenence cost's.

-- graham (paxgraham@hotmail.com), June 21, 2004.

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