Keegan Rice weighed his options. If he slid out the elevator doors just fast enough, he figured he might make it. But if he stalled for one split second, he feared the elevator might “cut him in half.”
Rice, a junior in engineering, was stuck in limbo for 10 minutes, staring up into the sixth floor of Sullivan Residence Hall and down into the fifth, behind the half-open elevator doors.
Taking matters into his own hands, Rice successfully slid out of the doors and out of captivity.
“It was like a scene from Final Destination,” Rice said. “It was a little scary, when I was halfway through. I didn’t know if [the elevator] was going to fall and cut me in half.”
Rice’s situation is not unique. According to students, stuck elevators are common in buildings throughout campus. Despite constant maintenance, the problem continues to exist.
Malfunctioning elevators have been an inconvenience for students like Rice, as they force students to climb never-ending flights of stairs.
“It’s a little annoying,” Rice said, “I just take the stairs because I don’t want to risk getting stuck [in the elevator] when I have a test or something.”
Like Rice, Patrick Carlin, a freshman in civil engineering, has to climb the stairs when the elevators break down in Metcalf Residence Hall.
“I live on the eighth floor,” Carlin said of dodging the threat of being the elevators captive, “It’s a nuisance.”
According to Mark Lindle, a junior in nuclear engineering and three-year resident of Metcalf, elevator issues show no signs of improvement.
“I have seen no changes in the past three years that I have lived there,” Lindle said. “When one elevator is broken — it’s a hassle.”
Grace Wilberding, a sophomore in Spanish language and literature, once got stuck between Bowen’s first and second floors.
“We could see down into the first floor and up into the second” Wilberding said. “In Sullivan and Bowen they’re always breaking down.”
With elevators constantly acting up, students are left wondering what exactly causes them to fail.
“I don’t know if there’s some wiring problems or something but [maintenance] needs to look into it because if it’s the same thing over and over again, then they should be able to fix it.” Rice said.
According to Rice, when the elevators do break down it takes some time before they’re up and running again.
I don’t know if it’s really hard or if there’s just so much other stuff going on,” Rice said, “but it always takes forever for [the elevators] to be fixed.”
Jack Colby, assistant vice chancellor for Facilities Operations, said they are very aware of the problems that the elevators are causing and are doing everything they can to take care of them.
According to Colby, the University spends $450,000 a year to maintain all of the campus’ 210 elevators, which are inspected once a month by a professional technician.
100 calls are received every month regarding elevator issues that require intense maintenance, according to Colby, and some of these calls end up needing no action.
“Of these [repairs] over 15 percent result in responses where the elevator is ‘running on arrival’ and no problem is ever found,” Colby said.
According to the N.C. Department of Labor’s Elevator Safety Act, elevators must have periodic inspections and tests that measure up to American National Safety Code for Elevators and Escalators.
Colby said the University follows the DOL’s guidelines, as the elevators are inspected annually by the DOL themselves.
“Safety of elevator riders is our first priority,” Colby said.
N.C. State’s construction guidelines for elevator operations back this requirement claiming that “it is the University’s intent to provide elevator systems that are reliable and serve the campus community” and that the elevator design will “meet the program needs and all of the Department of Labor requirements for elevator systems.”
But the increasing age of buildings and elevators on campus may decrease the construction guidelines promised reliability.
The elevators range from being brand new to more than 60 years old, and according to Colby, age does play a major role in elevator malfunction since the typical lifetime of an elevator is about 30 years.
“Problems are especially in the high rises. They take a lot of use and abuse from students,” Colby said. “Vandalism is our biggest problem. It’s one of the biggest challenges and expenses that we have to deal with.”
Colby said that 34 of the 210 elevators on campus need a significant amount of funding for renovations over the next six years. But with the economic downturn, this maintenance has been put on hold.
According to Colby, these repairs and renovations will need over $1.5 million dollars in funding – a price that the University’s funding is not currently able to meet.
“We’re ready to take this on as soon as funding is available,” Colby said. “It’s a real challenge.”
Editor’s note: Technician would like to clarify that problems with elevators occur campus-wide and are not specific to residence halls alone. FULL DISCLOSURE: Katie Handerhan wrote an article about the same topic, using different sources, for a class assignment.
How do cable elevators work? The car is moved up and down by steel ropes that are attached to the car and to a pulley system run by an electric motor. The ropes are connected to weights that weigh about as much as the car itself when it’s filled to 40 percent capacity (average capacity). This creates balance and conserves energy because the motor only has to work a little bit to move either side as the counteracting weights do most of the work. The motor only has to overcome friction. Both the car and weight run on guide rails to keep it from swaying back and forth.
SOURCE: science.howstuffworks.com
Safety Despite Hollywood depicting elevators plummeting to the rider’s doom, in actuality, there is very little chance of this happening. The pulley system cables are made of tight wound steel that can hold up the weight of the car solely on one cable. The system is typically made up of seven to eight steel cables so if one were to snap, the rest will hold the weight of the car. Even if all the cables snapped, or were released, the car has a built-in break system (safeties) that hold on to the sides of the elevator walls when the car moves too fast.
SOURCE: science.howstuffworks.com
