Uniformat D1020

Escalator

Confidence C
Version 0.4.0 (permanent link)
Reviewed 2026-10-22

This is version 0.4.0. The latest is 0.5.0.

Service life

35 yearsmedian of the stated lives · sources say 20–50 years

Years in service. The band runs from the shortest to the longest life the sources state, so it shows how much they disagree, not how long 80% of units last. The line is the median of the stated lives.

Basis

50 years · CNA e-Tool Estimated Useful Life Table, p14 · HUD CNA 3.5.1.10 “Escalators” — U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (planning life)
Same life for family and elderly properties. US multifamily housing.
20 years · General depreciation rates (IR265), July 2021, p43 · BDFO “Escalators” — Inland Revenue (Te Tari Taake), New Zealand (accounting life)
Printed page 43. BDFO Building fit-out (when in books separately from building cost). Printed DV 10%, SL 7%. Tax depreciation lives set by the Commissioner of Inland Revenue for New Zealand income tax, not engineering or asset-management lives; they are banded and often short (e.g. reticulation piping 25 years). The July 2021 edition was the newest PDF reachable; the online Depreciation Rate Finder may hold later determinations.

How sources are chosen and recorded: sourcing policy.

Municipal lives for conveying (D10)

9 municipalities in Ontario and British Columbia state a life for conveying as a whole, in 9 distinct tables: 20–35 years, median 20. These come from capital asset policies: accounting lives, used for amortization. They describe the system rather than this component, and none is a measured life.

Years. Each dot is one stated life and each bar a stated range; equal values stack. The dashed line is the median. Policies that copy the same table count once.

All 9 stated lives

Municipality	As written	Years	Kind	Source
Grey Highlands	Elevator	20	accounting	p11 · 2026
Kenora	Buildings - Elevator	20	accounting	p15 · 2026
Prince Edward	Buildings - Elevators	20	accounting	p34 · 2022
Sarnia	Elevators	20	accounting	p1
Severn	Building Components - Elevators	20	accounting	p400 · 2019
Welland	Elevator	20	accounting	p8 · 2021
Parksville	Elevators	25	accounting	p9 · 2023
Greater Madawaska	Services Conveying	25–30	accounting	p17 · 2025
Brockton	Elevator - Mechanical Elevator	35	accounting	p2 · 2009

Every row was matched to its page automatically (the label and number appear in the page text). Follow the page link before relying on an automatically matched row. About the policies · All approved rows as JSON

Preventive maintenance

1 tasks in 1 work order.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12Annual

Months from the schedule start. Download the tasks as CSV for a CMMS, or ask the MCP tool get_pm_schedule for dated visits.

Annual · 1 task

Source: NAVFAC MO-118 Inspection of Vertical Transportation Equipment, 7.3 Periodic Inspection and Tests (escalators)

Task	Page
Perform escalator periodic inspections and tests	p185

Frequencies are ISO 8601 durations in the data (P3M = every 3 months).

Open questions

Only one source so far, HUD's 50 years for escalators. HUD's single row does not separate the truss, which can last that long, from drives, steps, handrails and controls, which usually need major work much sooner. A second openly licensed source is needed before relying on 50 years.
Every source here is a published planning, design or accounting life. None is observed replacement data.
Elevator tasks come from NAVFAC MO-118 (1988), which restates the elevator code tests of its time; check them against the current ASME A17.1 and local requirements.

Know the answer? Send it with a source to [email protected].

Cite this

Citation

unfinished.one (2026). Escalator, v0.4.0. https://unfinished.one/c/escalator/v/0.4.0

BibTeX

@misc{unfinished_escalator_0_4_0,
  title = {Escalator},
  author = {{unfinished.one}},
  year = {2026},
  version = {0.4.0},
  url = {https://unfinished.one/c/escalator/v/0.4.0},
  note = {CC BY 4.0}
}

Licence CC BY 4.0 · How to cite · JSON · Versions: 0.5.0, 0.4.0, 0.3.0, 0.2.0, 0.1.0