Career Profile: Elevator and Escalator Installers and Repairers

Salary and Outlook

According to the US Department of Labor, there are 23,200 people employed as elevator and escalator installers and repairers in the United States. The median annual salary is $97,860. Entry level employees earn approximately $47,370 per year and senior employees earn approximately $130,940 per year.

Estimates do not include other potential benefits such as health insurance, overtime, or retirement benefits that may be offered by employers.

Job Duties

• Inspect wiring connections, control panel hookups, door installations, and alignments and clearances of cars and hoistways to ensure that equipment will operate properly.
• Disassemble defective units, and repair or replace parts such as locks, gears, cables, and electric wiring.
• Maintain log books that detail all repairs and checks performed.
• Participate in additional training to keep skills up to date.
• Assemble, install, repair, and maintain elevators, escalators, moving sidewalks, and dumbwaiters, using hand and power tools, and testing devices such as test lamps, ammeters, and voltmeters.
• Test newly installed equipment to ensure that it meets specifications, such as stopping at floors for set amounts of time.
• Locate malfunctions in brakes, motors, switches, and signal and control systems, using test equipment.
• Check that safety regulations and building codes are met, and complete service reports verifying conformance to standards.
• Connect electrical wiring to control panels and electric motors.
• Adjust safety controls, counterweights, door mechanisms, and components such as valves, ratchets, seals, and brake linings.
• Read and interpret blueprints to determine the layout of system components, frameworks, and foundations, and to select installation equipment.
• Install outer doors and door frames at elevator entrances on each floor of a structure.
• Install electrical wires and controls by attaching conduit along shaft walls from floor to floor and pulling plastic-covered wires through the conduit.
• Cut prefabricated sections of framework, rails, and other components to specified dimensions.
• Operate elevators to determine power demands, and test power consumption to detect overload factors.
• Assemble electrically powered stairs, steel frameworks, and tracks, and install associated motors and electrical wiring.
• Attach guide shoes and rollers to minimize the lateral motion of cars as they travel through shafts.
• Connect car frames to counterweights, using steel cables.
• Bolt or weld steel rails to the walls of shafts to guide elevators, working from scaffolding or platforms.
• Assemble elevator cars, installing each car's platform, walls, and doors.

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