Aldi electric cable hoist
Stephen
I see that Aldi are selling an electric cable hoist for £50
http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/offers_week05thursday09.htm
Has anyone bought one and how good are they?
This might sound daft but here goes anyway: could you mount one above
you loft trap door and use it to raise or lower heavy boxes?
The description says that it can lift 250kg but surely it has to be
bolted to something substantial to do that? Obviously I won't be
lifting 250kg into my loft but what size timber would I have to bolt
it to, to be able to lift boxes safely?
What do you mechanics bolt it to when lifting gearboxes and engines?
Thanks,
pcb1962
>
> Has anyone bought one and how good are they?
>
> This might sound daft but here goes anyway: could you mount one above
> you loft trap door and use it to raise or lower heavy boxes?
>
> The description says that it can lift 250kg but surely it has to be
> bolted to something substantial to do that? Obviously I won't be
> lifting 250kg into my loft but what size timber would I have to bolt
> it to, to be able to lift boxes safely?
>
> What do you mechanics bolt it to when lifting gearboxes and engines?
>
> Thanks,
I would think if you need to hoist stuff into the loft it would be
mush easier and cheaper to fit something like this. Screw a piece of
3x2 horizontally across maybe 4 rafters above the opening then one
carriage bolt or a big hook to secure the upper pulley...
http://www.avenue35.co.uk/shopping/shopexd.asp?id=54557
robgraham
While the Avenue35 pulley system is cheap and easier to install, the
electric winch has much more pizzazz !! Has definitely much more of
the 'big-boy toy' buzz to it. Rather than "come and see my etchings",
it would be "come and see my attic winch" - definitely one up on the
Jones's.
On a more practical note, I've got several multi bush pulley systems -
a couple of bike hangers and a hanger for the MX5 hardtop, and I find
them a PIA and wouldn't like to have to use them frequently. There is
a large amount of cord required for the mechanical advantage, which
gets everywhere and tangles, and there is a tendency for it to come
off one or another of the pulleys.
Just my pennyworth
Rob
Cicero
=========================================
I think this would be a bit of overkill for your purpose. The weight of
the hoist itself would probably put a bit of a strain on your roofing and
/ or ceiling timbers. Garages use either a dedicated floor-standing engine
hoist or a hoist attached to a heavy overhead steel girder.
The item suggested by another poster (pcb1962), which looks very much
like an old 'Haltrac' engine hoist, would be more than adequate for
lifting but you would need to ensure that there is sufficient headroom for
the hoist and the boxes and this means hanging the hoist of roofing
rafters which are not really intended to take this kind of loading.
Cic.
--
==========================================
Using Ubuntu Linux
Windows shown the door
==========================================
Andy Dingley
> Aldi hoist
I don't have one, but by lunchtime I ought to. Similar kit is £90 at
Machine Mart etc.
No idea what I want it for though - thought I did have a real use for
it, but then realised it's 240V only, not 110V.
> The description says that it can lift 250kg
125kg in a straight lift. 250kg is if the cable is doubled back
through the (supplied) pulley on the hook. Be warned that these simple
hoists get a lot fussier about their cable lay onto the reel if you do
this, so I'd advise against it unless essential.
> surely it has to be
> bolted to something substantial to do that?
Obviously. However you don't need 250kg of capacity if you're only
using it as a convenience for things weighing under 50kg. Your roof
structure (if it's an old house) is likely to handle this quite easily
if you can arrange some form of shackle over a bolt through a rafter.
If it's a more modern truss made of lolly-sticks and nail plates, then
you'll need to arrange some sort of spreader to span the load across a
number of them. Any solution relying on woodscrews is unlikely to be a
good trustworthy one! It may even be better to use webbing straps
over the structure, rather than fastening rigidly.
Remember that this _is_ lifting gear you're building here. You'll kill
people if you drop it on your head, even just the hoist itself. It's
not a product I'd have wanted to sell myself - how many Aldi shoppers
really need such a thing, or have the wit to use it without injury?
Remember that we're in a country that has killed something like four
small children in the last couple of months through "TV related
accidents" and a toppling fireplace or two.
On the whole there are few heavy things I'd want to put into a loft,
certainly for "storage" rather than building work. Loft floors aren't
usually intended for heavy storage. The only time I've bothered to do
this myself I've just set up a simple gin pulley - the weight I was
happy to put up there in one piece was no more than I could lift
myself with a straight pull.
D.M. Procida
> On a more practical note, I've got several multi bush pulley systems -
> a couple of bike hangers and a hanger for the MX5 hardtop, and I find
> them a PIA and wouldn't like to have to use them frequently. There is
> a large amount of cord required for the mechanical advantage, which
> gets everywhere and tangles, and there is a tendency for it to come
> off one or another of the pulleys.
I discovered that bike hangars are a real pain in the arse, for exactly
the reasons you describe.
Daniele
Frank Erskine
"Halfway up I met the barrel coming down..."
:-)
--
Frank Erskine
pcb1962
It's ok, you'll be going down 6 times faster than the barrel is coming
up so at least you'll be quite close to the ground when it hits you.
Andy Dingley
> I think this would be a bit of overkill for your purpose. The weight of
> the hoist itself
It's about the same as two hamsters in a wheel. I did think twice
about this when I saw one in the shop - it's half the mass of the last
similar one I used (Machine Mart), even though it claims the same
capacity.
Nor will I be hanging 250kg off the attachment bracketry that comes as
standard!
> The item suggested by another poster (pcb1962), which looks very much
> like an old 'Haltrac' engine hoist,
Haltracs were nicely made and still worth grabbing if you spot a real
one on eBay. However they also had very little lifting height capacity
(with a finite amount of cordage), owing to the number of pulleys
used. OK for short lifts of engines, but not for moving loads between
floors.
The reason I never liked Haltracs for lifting engines was the
restoring torque of so many cords when you rotated the hook. My
hydraulic engine crane has a swivelling hook on the end of the jib and
it sits where you leave it. Fiddling an engine & gearbox around to get
it out with a Haltrac had a nasty tendency to swing right back and
trap fingers.
meow...@care2.com
> Hello,
>
> I see that Aldi are selling an electric cable hoist for �50
> http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/offers_week05thursday09.htm
>
> Has anyone bought one and how good are they?
Not familiar with that brand. Generally these things work fine but are
very noisy.
> This might sound daft but here goes anyway: could you mount one above
> you loft trap door and use it to raise or lower heavy boxes?
absolutely
> The description says that it can lift 250kg but surely it has to be
> bolted to something substantial to do that? Obviously I won't be
> lifting 250kg into my loft but what size timber would I have to bolt
> it to, to be able to lift boxes safely?
If you've no substantial timber in the right place, you can make a
trapezoid timber frame so the floor takes the weight over several
joists. Think about the eimber joints though, the wrong type of joint
could see it split, dropping something on someone;'s head, and
potentially ending their life.
If you store stuff up there, these things are a boon. A bit OTT
perhaps, but they do make a hard job easy.
Even more useful is a stair goods lift:
http://www.wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Overhead_rail_goods_lift
NT
Kevin Poole
Andy Dingley wrote:
<snip>
>
> Haltracs were nicely made and still worth grabbing if you spot a real
> one on eBay. However they also had very little lifting height capacity
> (with a finite amount of cordage), owing to the number of pulleys
> used. OK for short lifts of engines, but not for moving loads between
> floors.
>
Agreed - I've had one for 30-odd years, and still use it occasionally.
The worst part is extending one ready to use. There's so much friction
that you have to tug very hard on the hook at the same time as feeding
the rope round the sheaves and holding the self-locking thingy.
I tend to use mine now more as an auxiliary hoist to tilt an engine when
it's on the engine crane or for pulling horizontally - when the ropes
are even more likely to tangle.
--
Kevin Poole
****Use current date to reply (e.g. jan...@mainbeam.co.uk)****
Stephen
<din...@codesmiths.com> wrote:
>On the whole there are few heavy things I'd want to put into a loft,
>certainly for "storage" rather than building work. Loft floors aren't
>usually intended for heavy storage. The only time I've bothered to do
>this myself I've just set up a simple gin pulley - the weight I was
>happy to put up there in one piece was no more than I could lift
>myself with a straight pull.
Thank you for your reply. I haven't been to the shop to see one in
real life, so I hadn't appreciated that it would be so heavy. To
reassure people, I have no intention of lifting 250kg objects into my
loft. I would think that you could only comfortably carry
twenty-something kilos in a box and even then you would need a strong
box to make sure the bottom doesn't fall out.
The idea of the hoist wasn't because of the weight, it was more
because it can be tricky climbing a ladder and carrying a box at the
same time or leaning through the hatch as someone passes something up.
I guess I'll have to thinks some more. Even so, I think the price is
good, even Toolstation's silverline hoist is£75ish IIRC.
I thought I heard the figure of 25kg per square metre for loft
loading; possibly on this group? But I don't know what size joists
that is based on. I know the joists in my loft are certainly a
fraction (a third? a quarter?) of the size of the ones under my
floorboards.
That said, there is the water tank which I guess holds 200 litres,
though that's shared over three or four joists.
How would you reinforce joists? I imagine you would have to hire a
crane to lift thicker joists and remove bricks to slide them in across
the span of the house? Not something practical or affordable for most
people.
I was thinking of screwing some wood on top of the joists to increase
the depth, so that I could put more insulation down and then board
across the top. I appreciate that this won't increase capacity because
I won't be adding the wood all the way across but in terms of allowing
me to board over insulation, would this work?
Thanks.
Andy Dingley
> I haven't been to the shop to see one in real life,
I bought one.
If you need it, and you're trying to lift <=100kg with great
convenience, it looks like a good deal.
I'm not using it for 250kg! For one thing the attachments are only
four M6(?) in tension.
Controller is good. Stop switches for top-of-lift and cable scrambled
are fitted and seem to work well.
Power cable is only a couple of feet long, which saved someone a few
cents somewhere.