Often, people find that moving things up and down the stairs can be strenuous. If the individual is themselves mobility challenged, then this task will often become much harder. This is one of the chief reasons that a dumbwaiter is so often used in the home.



Finding an efficient way to move items between different areas of a home is nothing new. For centuries, humans have built dumbwaiters and freight elevators. With varied complexity, these devices can be traced back to 236 BC and possibly farther. These devices evolved from simple dumbwaiters, which only consisted of a rope and a platform, to the more complicated screw driven dumbwaiters of the seventeen-hundreds.

Sometimes, people would use an animal to raise or lower the dumbwaiter, but most often they were simply hoisted using human power. It is still possible to purchase a manual dumbwaiter today and there are a few companies that sell manual dumbwaiter kits. Most people today, however, opt to go with an electrical dumbwaiter. These are more reliable and support more weight than a manual dumbwaiter. Also since it is only necessary to push a button, these types of dumbwaiters are much more common.

There are a lot of people today that decide to install a dumbwaiter as their home is being built. This is also increasingly common among home builders, because these devices add value to a home, which in today's housing market is incredibly important.

It is also almost always possible to install these lifts into an existing home. They will, however, require a vertical space between floors. This space should be at least four square feet, but this figure can vary depending on the size of the dumbwaiter.

The installation process can be a little complicated, but there are several kits designed to make the process as simple as possible. These dumbwaiters come with the car and cable drive system already installed. This cuts out a big portion of the installation process, but most people still decide to have them professionally installed. The advantage of saving time can still be gained even if you do not actually do the installation yourself. A quicker and easier installation will result in a less expensive bill from the professional dumbwaiter installer.

The electric dumbwaiter comes with some extra features that are intended to make the device safer to use. Most include sensors on the car, which is the part of the dumbwaiter that moves between floors. These sensors can detect obstructions in the path of the dumbwaiter and will prevent it from moving if it detects a problem.

The shaft doors are also usually designed with safety in mind. The shaft is the space along which the dumbwaiter travels. Depending on the home, this could stretch more than twenty feet. A quality dumbwaiter will include automatically locking doors, which can not be opened unless the dumbwaiter is present at the opening. This reduces the exposure to the dumbwaiter shaft.