Basements, Attics and Crawl Spaces - need a cheap dumb waiter

looking for something inexpensive that will allow me to easily lift stuff from my garage to a large attic. I want it to have at least 100 lb capacity and being motorized is not necessary. I have no problem if I could find a cheap pulley type system. Havent been able to find anything fairly inexpensive online.

any knowledge of where to buy soemthing or plans to build one??

thanks in advance for any helpful info :)

Boat trailer winch. You could probably find on on a wrecked boat trailer at a junk yard.

Few years back..a friend made something similar out of garage door track, rollers and a pulley system. Problem was it intruded into the garage space.

I have a spare boat trailer winch I could use but that isnt fast enough. those things are slow cranking

you say it intruded into the garage on your friends pulley system.....even when the "basket" was up top?? I would love to see what pulleys he used and how exactly he set that up.

I wouldnt think it would be that intrusive when up top. you could secure the cable to the ceiling up out of the way

??

He ran the track all the way to a wooden frame attached to the garage floor. Pretty big garage..who am I to criticize?

Consider a counter weight. You said you want it for up to 100lbs so make the counter weight 50lbs plus the weight of the cage. The counter weight will hold it out of the way and when you need it you should be able to pull down 50lbs. You would have a pulley at the top and bottom with a rope running in a loop between them. The counter weight will mean assuming you never use it for more then 100lbs that you only have to pull at most 50lbs up or down. You might want to devise a reversible ratchet for the pulleys.

I think my brother in law just solved my issue.

He told me to go buy a electric winch however strong I want to afford and strap it to the ceiling, secure it to the corners of a piece of the floor I cut out and you have a cheap mechanical dumb waiter/ghetto elevator. It will be far more powerful than I was originally thinking I needed

not quite sure how exactly I will secure it so it goes up straight without spinning(besides manually every load). But its not like I want to use it daily and stabilizing it on the way up is easier on this old back than lugging up the stairs

what do you think of that?? simply brilliant or do you foresee any problems with that....... and/or do you have any simple ideas of how to make it so it follows exactly the same path up and down??

ray was kind of on the same line of thinking maybe....but when he said boat trailer winch I was thinking of the manual kind like I have always had on boats instead of the electric kind that go on the front of a truck or atv