Vent: Leveling switch went haywire in a 20 story building yesterday

I was doing a routine call on an Otis at the Smith Tower in Seattle. The car was stopping like 6 inches off every floor, no pattern to it. Took me 3 hours to find the leveling switch was covered in grease and debris from a leaky hydraulic jack above it. Anyone else dealt with random issues from contamination in the hoistway?

2 comments

2 Comments

river35115d ago

That grease contamination sounds like a nightmare to track down...

ray_patel2714d ago

Man that is brutal. Three hours hunting a ghost basically. I had a similar thing happen in a parking garage elevator once where the selector tape got a thick film of tire dust and brake dust on it. Car would stop randomly between floors, sometimes level, sometimes not. Drove me nuts for two days before I figured it out. You just don't expect that kind of gunk to build up that fast in a clean looking hoistway. At least you found it though, even if it cost you most of the day.