How does a pneumatic vacuum elevator work?
A pneumatic vacuum elevator moves its car by changing the air pressure above it inside a sealed tube, so it needs no cables, no counterweight, no machine room and no pit. At Leslie House it stands in the open as a glass cylinder, full height, with circular penetrations cut through each floor for it.
Why it has no machine room
A traction elevator hangs its car from cables over a sheave driven by a motor, and that motor has to live somewhere — usually a room at the top of the shaft. A hydraulic one pushes from below and needs a pit and a power unit. A pneumatic elevator does neither. The tube is sealed, turbines at the top lower the air pressure above the car, and the higher pressure underneath lifts it. Cut the pressure difference and it descends on controlled bleed.
What that meant for the structure
The tube arrived as a self-supporting cylinder, so the work on this side was the hole rather than the housing: a circular penetration cut and framed through each floor, plumb across the full height. The photographs on this page were taken from the landing and the hallway, and the tube is standing free in both — there is no shaft wall around it because there does not need to be one.
Why it is in the middle of the house
An elevator that needs no shaft, no pit and no machine room stops being a service item to hide and becomes something you can put where the plan actually wants it. Here it stands in the open, in glass, beside the landing and at the end of the hallway, with the LED baseboard running past its base and the marble floor cut around it.
Specification
- Type
- Pneumatic vacuum elevator — air pressure, no cables or counterweight
- Enclosure
- Sealed glass tube, self-supporting
- Travel
- Full height of the house
- Structure
- Circular penetration cut and framed through each floor
- Machine room
- None required
- Pit
- None required
Type and configuration are attested by the builder and visible in the photographs on this page. No model number or equipment capacity is published.
The elevator
A glass cylinder standing in the open.
No shaft to hide it in, so it was never hidden. The tube stands in the hallway at full height, the floor cut in a circle around its base, and the car reads through the glass from either side.
Installed
Standing in the open.
