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This calculator vs. a flat pneumatic special
"$18,995 pneumatic installed" is not a price for a job — it is a price for a through-floor tube with no shaft, quietly reused for every house that also asks for a home elevator.
What a flat pneumatic special is
A flat pneumatic special is the fastest way to quote a home elevator over the phone: quote the published tube number, skip the walkthrough. Homeowners shop it because a search result or a showroom flyer already gave them a figure, and it is the figure they will ask you to match — even for a job the tube was never priced on.
The number behind it was set for one kind of job — a two-stop through-floor cut with no shaft, no pit, and the lightest acrylic cab — and then reused for every house afterward, whether or not the next one needs a new hoistway, a pit, a 240 V feeder, or a heavier cab.
What this calculator is
This page keeps no account and sends nothing to a server. You enter the stops, the travel feet, the capacity, the drive (pneumatic, winding drum, hydraulic, or traction MRL), the hoistway (through-floor, existing shaft, new wood, new masonry, or glass), the cab, and whether the job needs a pit, a machine closet, auto doors, battery lowering, a 240 V feeder, or a permit, plus your own wage, payroll burden, overhead, and target margin. It returns the bid price, the effective hourly rate, and the walk-away price below which the job loses money — for this drive and this hoistway, not a flat number for every house.
| What a flat pneumatic special does | What this calculator does instead |
|---|---|
| Charges the same figure for a through-floor tube and a new-hoistway shaft job — even though framing a shaft alone can add days of labor and thousands in lumber and finish. | Prices the hoistway per travel foot and per stop, separately for through-floor, existing-shaft reuse, new wood, new masonry, and glass. |
| Has no line for a pit, a machine closet, a 240 V feeder, auto doors, or battery lowering, regardless of whether the drive the customer wants actually needs them. | Prices each of those as its own labor and material line, applied only when the job calls for it. |
| Quotes the same cab for an acrylic tube and a glass showpiece cab, with no separate line for finish. | Prices acrylic, standard, wood-panel, and glass cabs as their own labor and material lines. |
| Has no separate line for a state elevator inspection, which a new-shaft job usually requires and a through-floor tube often does not. | Prices the permit and inspection line separately, applied only when the job calls for it. |
| Gives the estimator a number to quote, not a number to check a quote against. | Reports the walk-away price and the dollar gap against what a flat pneumatic special would have quoted the same job, so a shopped price can be scored against real cost before you commit to it. |
Two houses, one flat special
Using this calculator's own shipped presets, at a $52 hourly wage, 32% payroll burden, 15% overhead, and a 20% target margin:
The cheap-special preset — a two-stop pneumatic vacuum tube, through-floor cut, acrylic cab, 12 feet of travel, no shaft, no pit, no feeder — prices at $27,504.34, on a job that costs $22,003.47 to run.
Take the same house to a three-stop hydraulic in a new wood hoistway instead — wood-panel cab, 28 feet of travel, with a pit, a machine closet, auto doors, battery lowering, a 240 V feeder, and a permit — and the job costs $69,062.21 to run before a dollar of profit, and this calculator bids it at $86,327.77. Quoting the shaft job at the cheap special's own $27,504.34 price prices it $41,557.87 below its own break-even cost — before counting the $58,823.42 it falls short of this calculator's own bid price at the same 20% target margin. Same acrylic-tube special, one house that pays and one that loses money the moment the shaft is framed.
Common questions
Why does a flat pneumatic special get a home elevator install wrong?
Because the cost driver is the shaft and the extras, not the cab. A two-stop pneumatic vacuum tube cut through two floors needs no shaft, no pit, and no machine closet. A three-stop hydraulic in a new wood hoistway needs a framed shaft, a pit, a machine closet, a 240 V feeder, auto doors, battery lowering, and a state inspection, on top of a larger unit and more travel. A flat special charges both the same because it was priced on the cheapest drive and hoistway combination, not the job in front of the estimator.
What does a flat pneumatic special usually leave out entirely?
The shaft, the pit, the machine closet, the feeder, the auto doors, the battery lowering, and the permit. A published pneumatic number is set on a through-floor cut with an acrylic tube and no shaft -- it has no line for framing a new wood or masonry hoistway, no line for a pit or a machine closet a hydraulic or traction unit needs, no line for a 240 V feeder, and no line for the inspection a shaft job requires.
How big is the pricing gap in practice?
On this calculator's own shipped presets, at a $52 hourly wage, 32% payroll burden, 15% overhead, and a 20% target margin: the cheap-special preset -- a two-stop pneumatic tube, through-floor, acrylic cab, 12 feet of travel -- bids at $27,504.34 on a $22,003.47 break-even cost. The losing-job preset -- a three-stop hydraulic in a new wood hoistway, wood-panel cab, 28 feet of travel, with a pit, a feeder, and a permit -- costs $69,062.21 to run before a dollar of profit. Quoting the shaft job at the cheap special's own $27,504.34 bid price prices it $41,557.87 below its own break-even cost, before counting the $58,823.42 it falls short of this calculator's own bid price at the same 20% target margin.
Is a flat pneumatic special ever the right way to quote?
For a narrow band of similar jobs -- a low-rise through-floor cut with no shaft, no pit, and a light acrylic or standard cab -- a flat special can land close, because that is probably the job the special was set on. The risk is quoting a new-shaft hydraulic or traction job the same way sight unseen, because the special does not know the drive, the hoistway, the cab, or which extras apply until someone walks the house, and by then the flat number has often already been quoted.
Does this calculator know my local labor rates or material costs?
No. It has no data on your local labor market, your unit supplier's invoice pricing, or your permit fees. It takes the stops, the travel feet, the drive, the hoistway, the cab, and which extras apply, plus your own wage, burden, overhead, and target margin, and turns that into a price for this job -- the arithmetic a flat pneumatic special skips, not a market survey.
Open the Home Elevator Bid Calculator to price your own job, or read how much you should charge to install a home elevator.