Cheaper & Faster Lift Upgrading For HDB Residents

Source : TODAY,Wednesday,July 25,2007

RESIDENTS may soon pay 20 per cent less for their lift upgrading — thanks to an innovation by the Housing and Development Board (HDB) that could save the Government about $230 million.

Its new system will mean that lifts take six instead of nearly eight months to construct and will cost less than the traditional method.

Machine-room-less lifts (MRLs) are powered by smaller machines, eliminating the need for special rooms at the top of blocks to house the conventional chunky machines.

The new lift shafts are built using steel structures clad with lighter materials such as ferro-cement and metal. The overall structure is about one-tenth the weight of concrete shafts — and hence, prefabrication can be done off site, cutting down on residents’ exposure to noise and dust.

With the use of steel, the reliance on sand is also reduced — each shaft will utilise up to 90 per cent less concrete.

Said Minister of State for National Development Grace Fu: “We will continue to explore more innovative ways of bringing lifts to every household.”

The new system was announced in February last year, and was piloted in selected locks in Yishun, Marsiling and Jurong East.

Already, 56 blocks have been fitted with MRLs, benefiting some 6,000 HDB households.

About 2,000 housing blocks are in the queue for an upgrade, but Ms Fu gave the assurance that the Government’s target to complete its lift upgrading programme (LUP) by 2014 can be met.

“We are looking at some other type of lifts that are probably suitable for blocks where the volume of transportation is not as high,” she said.

These alternative technologies in the pipeline include home lifts — with a four-person capacity — for low-rise blocks and shaft-less lifts for high-rise blocks that previously exceeded the cost limit of $30,000 per household. The result is that some 700 more blocks will qualify for the LUP.