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BASE Lift Services
Dumbwaiter · Service lift · Heavy-duty goods · BS EN 81-31 / 81-3

Heavy-duty goods lifts and service lifts. Specified to the load, not the price list.

BASE is an independent UK specialist that sizes, supplies, installs and maintains goods lifts, service lifts and dumbwaiters — from 50 kg restaurant trolley dumbwaiters to 2000 kg-plus warehouse goods lifts. Every spec is built to the actual load, cycle rate and building constraints, inside the BS EN 81-31 or BS EN 81-3 compliance envelope.

Book a goods-lift survey Call 020 3435 6838
50 kg → 2000 kg+
Dumbwaiter to heavy goods
BS EN 81-31 / 81-3
Statutory standards covered
12 / 6 mo.
LOLER goods / attendant cycle
The load path

What are the five critical points on a goods lift?

A goods lift moves a pallet, trolley or cage from one floor to another. The diagram on the right is a generic cross-section — hydraulic drive in this drawing, but the load path is the same for traction and trolley-drive service lifts. Five points decide whether the lift works at the duty cycle the building actually demands, or whether it spends its life on the wrong side of a maintenance call.

Specifying each point against the load you actually move — pallet weight, trolley size, sill height, cycle rate, environment — is the difference between a lift that lasts twenty years and one that fights you for ten. The same five points then drive the maintenance contract: every visit checks the load-bearing components against the duty profile, not a generic checklist.

A professional restaurant kitchen pass-through with a compact stainless-steel dumbwaiter service-lift door set into the back wall and plated dishes waiting on the pass under warm spotlights.
  1. 01

    Upper floor (UL) — landing & doors

    Vertically-sliding bi-parting doors are the goods-lift standard — strong, robust, and tolerant of trolleys and pallets being dragged across the sill. Interlocked to BS EN 81-31.

  2. 02

    Drive — hydraulic ram or traction sheave

    Hydraulic for short travels with minimal pit and headroom (the dominant choice on retrofits); traction MRL for higher cycle rates or longer travel. Both spec to BS EN 81-31.

  3. 03

    Cab / platform — load surface & guides

    Steel or chequer-plate floor sized to the pallet or trolley. Guide rails take the eccentric load when a trolley is loaded off-centre. Sized to the actual goods, not a generic catalogue spec.

  4. 04

    Lower floor (LL) — loading bay

    Sill height matched to the trolley or pallet truck. Door interlock + photocell array protects the loading aperture during transfer.

  5. 05

    Pit — buffer & ram base

    Hydraulic-ram base or rope-buffer assembly. Pit-stop switch and drain provision in food-production or wet-environment goods lifts.

Cross-section of a hydraulic goods lift showing the load path from upper floor through drive to lower floor and pit UL LL PIT 01 02 03 04 05 FIG. G-01 GOODS LIFT · HYDRAULIC DRIVE · LOAD PATH BS EN 81-31
Two categories, one engineering team

A kitchen dumbwaiter and a warehouse pallet lift run to different rules.
The spec discipline is the same.

The goods-and-service-lift category covers everything from a 50 kg trolley dumbwaiter slotted between two restaurant floors to a 2000 kg pallet lift connecting three warehouse levels — and the standards split the territory cleanly. We cover the whole range on independent contracts, alongside the rest of our platform-lift and passenger-lift work, with the same LOLER inspection standard, maintenance contract shape and modernisation route as the rest of the installed base.

A hotel back-of-house service corridor with two-panel centre-opening brushed-stainless goods-lift doors midway along the wall and linen trolleys parked neatly against the polished concrete floor.
Service lifts & dumbwaiters

BS EN 81-3 / 81-31 service lifts and dumbwaiters

Small, goods-only, no occupant ever — 50 to 300 kg, single or two-floor travel, compact shaft. Restaurants, kitchens, retail back-of-house, hospitality, libraries and archives. Trolley-drive on the smallest dumbwaiters; electric traction on the 100–300 kg service-lift band. Quick to retrofit into an existing building — pit and headroom requirements are modest. Maintenance is light but disciplined; the kitchen-to-pass dumbwaiter that fails on a Friday night service is an operational emergency for the venue.

  • BS EN 81-3 small electric / hydraulic service lifts
  • BS EN 81-31 category A — no permitted occupant
  • 50 kg dumbwaiter (trolley drive) → 300 kg service lift
  • Compact retrofit — 700 × 700 mm shaft achievable
  • Stannah Microlift, Stannah Maxilift base, Cibes goods options
Service-lift maintenance contracts
Heavy-duty goods lifts

BS EN 81-31 heavy-duty goods and pallet lifts

Warehouse, manufacturing, distribution, food production, cold-store and large retail. 500 kg through 2000 kg+ — pallet sizes, roll-cage trolleys, sterile-supply trolleys, laundry-bag trolleys, archive boxes. Hydraulic drive on shorter travels and high-load configurations; traction MRL on longer travels with higher cycle counts. May be configured to permit an attendant to travel with the load — which moves the LOLER cycle from 12 months to 6 months. Guide rails, drive assemblies and brake gear are the high-wear components.

  • BS EN 81-31 lifts for the transport of goods only
  • 500 kg → 2000 kg+ rated load, pallet & cage sized
  • Hydraulic and traction (MRL or MR) drive options
  • Attendant-permitted configurations — 6-mo LOLER cycle
  • Pollock goods range, Stannah Maxilift, OEM coverage
End-of-life goods-lift replacement

Related goods, service & supporting pages

Goods-lift replacement Services hub New lift installations PUWER inspections Stannah (Microlift / Maxilift) Pollock goods range Cibes goods options All brands
What buildings say

From kitchen dumbwaiters to warehouse pallet lifts. Same engineering standard.

“The dumbwaiter went down mid-service on the Saturday — kitchen on first floor, pass on ground. BASE's engineer was on site inside two hours, sourced the cog-drive part next morning, lift back live before Sunday brunch. The contract has paid for itself twice over already.”

Daniel C.

General Manager

West End Restaurant Group

“We had a 1500 kg goods lift on its last legs across three warehouse floors. BASE surveyed it, told us straight that a phased replacement made more sense than chasing parts, and project-managed the install around our shift pattern. Zero unplanned downtime.”

Sarah B.

Site Operations Manager

National Distribution Centre

“The hospital's sterile-supply lift had been on a national OEM contract for years and response was getting worse. BASE migrated us across, did a baseline LOLER survey, and now the cycle-counter is actually checked at every visit. Different standard of engineering altogether.”

Karen H.

Estates Lead

NHS Acute Trust

Goods lifts — common questions

Specification, standards, capacity, takeover.

What's the difference between a goods lift, a service lift and a dumbwaiter?
Capacity, occupancy and the standard the lift is built to. A dumbwaiter is the smallest — 50 to 100 kg, designed for plates, files or small trolleys, and built to BS EN 81-3 / BS EN 81-31 category A (no occupant allowed, ever). A service lift sits in the 100–300 kg band, still goods-only, common in restaurants, hotels and retail back-of-house. A goods lift starts at around 500 kg and extends to 2000 kg or more — built to BS EN 81-31, and in the heavy-duty configurations may permit an attendant to travel with the load. Picking the wrong category for the application is the single most common goods-lift specification mistake we see.
Which UK standards apply to goods and service lifts?
BS EN 81-31:2010 covers lifts for the transport of goods only — no passengers, no permitted occupants. BS EN 81-3:2000+A1:2008 covers small electric and hydraulic service lifts and dumbwaiters with a rated load up to 300 kg and a cabin floor area below 1.0 m². LOLER 1998 still applies — thorough examinations every 12 months on a typical goods-only lift, or every 6 months if it is configured to carry an attendant. PUWER 1998 applies to the lift as a piece of work equipment, covering daily fitness for use. The Machinery Directive (and UKCA equivalent) sits over the top for new installations.
What capacity and drive should I specify for my application?
It comes back to load profile, travel and cycle frequency. A restaurant kitchen-to-pass dumbwaiter is typically 50–100 kg, trolley or cog-drive, single-floor travel — quick, quiet, cheap to install in a small shaft. A retail back-of-house service lift is 250–500 kg, electric traction or hydraulic, two to three floors. A warehouse goods lift moving pallet loads is 1000–2000 kg, hydraulic if travel is short (good headroom utilisation, no machine room) or traction MRL if travel and cycle count are higher. Hospitals running sterile-supply trolleys or laundry pick the 500–1000 kg traction band for cycle-life reasons. We size every spec from the actual load you're moving, the cycle rate and the building constraints — never from a price list.
Can a goods lift be installed in an existing building with limited pit or headroom?
Yes. The hydraulic goods lift category is built around exactly this constraint — minimum pit (often 150–250 mm), minimum headroom (around 2400 mm above the top floor), no separate machine room. Service lifts and dumbwaiters compress further: a 50 kg dumbwaiter can be retrofitted into a service shaft of roughly 700 × 700 mm with 200 mm pit. We survey every retrofit on site — the legacy /goods-service-lifts/ page used to point at this and it remains true. Listed buildings, fit-outs and refurbishments are where the goods-lift category earns its keep.
Do you supply only new lifts, or can you take over an existing goods lift?
Both. New supply is one route — we work with architects, M&E consultants and main contractors on full design-supply-install packages for goods lifts, service lifts and dumbwaiters. The other route is taking over an existing installation: an out-of-warranty goods lift in a warehouse, a hotel service lift on a tired OEM contract, a hospital dumbwaiter the original installer no longer supports. We migrate the documentation, do a baseline survey, write a clean BS EN 81-31 / 81-3 maintenance plan, and pick the contract up. See our /services/maintenance/ overview for how that works.
When does it make more sense to replace a goods lift than repair it?
Repair-vs-replace on a goods lift is a survey decision, never a price-list decision. The factors that swing it: shaft and guide-rail condition, drive obsolescence (a 1990s thyristor controller with no parts available pushes a replacement case), changing load profile (the warehouse now moves pallet sizes the old lift was never sized for), and compliance trajectory (older lifts may need significant work to meet current BS EN 81-31 expectations). Our /services/goods-service/replacement/ page covers the end-of-life replacement path — what it looks like, what it costs, what compliance gates apply, and how to scope a phased replacement that keeps the building operational.
Which brands of goods lift do you service?
Most of them. Stannah supplies a well-known goods range — the Microlift dumbwaiter and the Maxilift goods-lift line — and we cover both. Pollock has a heavy-duty goods-lift line that we service on independent contracts. Beyond those, the platform-led brands (Cibes, Vimec, Aritco, Gartec, Kalea) have goods-handling configurations that fall inside our normal coverage. On the passenger side, Otis, Kone, Schindler and ThyssenKrupp all build goods lifts at the heavier end — we take over from OEM contracts regularly. If your make isn't on the list, call us — chances are we've serviced it.
How is a goods-lift maintenance contract different from a passenger-lift contract?
Cycle frequency and component wear shift the priority. A passenger lift in a residential block might run 500 cycles a day with low load per cycle — door operators are the dominant fault. A warehouse goods lift might run 60 cycles a day at 1500 kg — guide-rail wear, drive-belt or hydraulic-ram condition and brake assemblies dominate. So the contract scopes the inspection differently: every visit checks the load-bearing components and the cycle-counter against the duty profile. LOLER thorough examinations remain on a 12-month cycle for goods-only and 6-month for attendant-carrying — non-negotiable. The maintenance contract sits underneath and keeps the lift inside its compliance envelope between LOLER visits.
Sizing a goods lift?

Tell us the load, the cycle and the building. We'll spec the lift.

Whether it's a 50 kg restaurant dumbwaiter slotted into a tight kitchen retrofit, a 1500 kg warehouse pallet lift across three floors, or a takeover of an existing goods or service lift from an OEM contract — start with a site survey. A senior engineer reviews every enquiry, and the spec we recommend is sized to the duty, not lifted off a catalogue.

Book a survey Call 020 3435 6838 (24/7)

Or email enquiries@baselifts.co.uk