An important aspect of the tower project is to maintain a certain feel of industrial roughness. I will do this in many ways (especially the raw, exposed beams in the ceiling and on the half-way floor platform) but also, naturally, in the interior detail.
A chain lift would be one of those details. But it has to be the right one. It needs to look old, it needs to work (one idea is that you could for instance hoist your MTB up the shaft at night so it doesn’t get wet or stolen) and it must play into the overall interior design scheme. Enter the Demag PK1. It’s a German, high quality 250/500 KG chain lift that does the job and looks the part. A friend of mine found one on a classified site and I purchased it on the spot. This is the shit!
The maneuver control was toast and replaced with a newer, horribly looking replacement. A friend of mine had an old electrical control box laying around, so I used that, managed to find a spring loaded on/off/on control switch for 400V at a local electrical supply warehouse.
My electrical engineer friend made it all happen from a functional point of view, and after cleaning all parts and putting it together I headed back to the tower to mount it all. Now, it hangs happily in a 2 metric tonnes test hook and works like a charm.
