(888) 346-3651Mon to Fri, 7:30 to 5:30
Professional Lift Solutions

01 Charleston, SC

Home Elevators & Accessibility Lifts in Charleston, South Carolina

The Lowcountry asks two different things of an elevator. On Kiawah, Sullivan's Island, and the Isle of Palms it has to live with pilings, surge, and salt. South of Broad it has to fit inside a house that predates the elevator by a century and a half. Our North Charleston office handles both, and the crews that install are the crews that come back for service.

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02 Office

Professional Lift Solutions — Charleston

Address
2652 Bonds Ave., Suite 101Charleston, SC 29405
Phone
(888) 346-3651
Hours
Monday to Friday 8:00 AM to 5:00 PMSaturday By appointmentSunday Closed

03 Coverage

Communities we serve.

Charleston & the peninsula

  • South of Broad
  • Harleston Village
  • Ansonborough
  • Cannonborough
  • Wagener Terrace
  • Daniel Island
  • James Island
  • Johns Island
  • West Ashley

Barrier islands

  • Kiawah Island
  • Seabrook Island
  • Sullivan's Island
  • Isle of Palms
  • Wild Dunes
  • Folly Beach
  • Dewees Island
  • Edisto Island

Lowcountry & coast

  • Mount Pleasant
  • Summerville
  • Moncks Corner
  • Beaufort
  • Bluffton
  • Hilton Head Island
  • Georgetown
  • Pawleys Island
  • Myrtle Beach

04 Local Conditions

Building in the Lowcountry.

Two very different construction problems share one coastline here. What follows is what we have learned building in both of them.

On pilings, the shaft carries its own load

A Kiawah or Isle of Palms house built on timber or concrete pilings has no slab to sit an elevator on. The hoistway becomes a structural element with its own foundation, and the engineer has to account for uplift and lateral load on a tall enclosed box. In practice this means the elevator location gets fixed at the structural drawing stage, not during interior design. We give the engineer rail reaction loads and pit requirements early, because moving the shaft after the piling layout is set is not a change order anyone wants to sign.

Charleston's freeboard rules push the lowest landing up

The city and Charleston County require finished floor elevations above base flood, and on the peninsula additional freeboard applies. The practical result is that the first real landing is often eight to fifteen feet off the ground. That lower run is enclosed, exposed to wind driven rain, and sometimes open to a garage that will flood by design. We treat it as an exterior condition: gasketed landing doors, marine grade hardware, drainage at the pit, and every control component located above the design flood elevation. A sump with a float is not optional at that lowest landing.

Historic Charleston limits demolition, not elevators

The Board of Architectural Review controls exterior appearance and the Historic Charleston fabric inside protected structures. Single house layouts, with rooms opening off a piazza, rarely offer stacked closets, so we usually find the shaft in a rear addition, a former service stair, or a piazza end bay. Cutting through heart pine floor framing in an antebellum house is careful work and it is worth paying an engineer to sister the joists properly. Where nothing at all can be cut, a shaftless or pneumatic unit set in an existing stairwell has saved several of these projects.

Salt, humidity, and long vacancies

Lowcountry humidity does to electronics what salt does to steel. Second homes on Seabrook and Dewees sit unused for months, and the failures we see are almost never mechanical. They are corroded contacts, seized door rollers, and hydraulic seals that dried out. Our island maintenance plans run on a shorter interval, include a dehumidification check in the machine space, and pair with a caretaker who exercises the car between visits. Owners who do this get fifteen to twenty years out of a unit. Owners who do not usually call us in year six.

05 What We Install

Every product line, installed in Charleston.

06 Owners

From clients around Charleston.

  • “Our house on Sullivan's Island sits on pilings and the shaft had to be engineered with the frame. They were at the structural meeting with numbers in hand, which no other bidder offered to do.”

    T. Ravenel Jr. · Sullivan's Island, new construction

  • “We could not cut a single original floor joist in our house on Church Street. They set a pneumatic unit in the old stair and it looks like it belongs there.”

    Caroline M. · South of Broad retrofit

  • “Kiawah is not an easy place to get a technician to. They show up on the schedule they promised, every quarter, and our elevator has never once stranded a guest.”

    Peter Langston · Kiawah Island, maintenance plan

07 Get Started

Talk to the Charleston team.

Send us your plans or a photo of the space. We will come back with the options that actually fit, and what each one costs.

Phone
(888) 346-3651
Email
sales@lifts.pro
Hours
Mon to Fri 8:00 AM to 5:30 PM
Showroom
6311 Porter Road, Suite 6, Sarasota
Attach plans or photos (optional)

Up to 5 files, 20 MB each. Photos, PDFs, or drawings.

Submissions come straight to sales@lifts.pro. We reply the same business day during office hours.

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