phughes69

I want to put a hoist inside my parents boat house to lift their Formula 242 LS out of the water. The boat should weigh under 5000 lbs. They have a covered and enclosed boat house with a deck on the top of it. The well is 27 x 13 with a steel seawall and there are no pilings inside the well. . There is not a good structure on the inside to mount a hoist so the inside would have to be beefed up to handle a lift. I have looked at hydrohoist, but I want something that can get the boat as close as possible to the seawall so my mom can get on the boat (she has bad knees). So far I have received one quote for a 7000#, 2 motor hoist lifting the boat on a cradle. The next smallest hoist he carries is a 5000# hoist. The cost for the hoist was just over $9K and $4K to install vertical and horizontal lam beams to support the hoist. Is $9k reasonable for a 7000# hoist? The hoist is a 2 motor system, with remote and cable winders and cradle for the boat. Its deceiving when I can find a hoist on the internet for $2k, so I don't know if this is a reasonable cost for the hoist. I am ok with the $4K to build the internal structure for the hoist.

phughes69

I have also looked at a hydraulic hoist to sit on the bottom but I don't want to deal with having to pull it out of the water in the winter.

flight club

lifts usually run about a dollar per pound. Ex- 20k lift= $20,000. Just my experience

Kelly O

If you're on a hard bottom, pulling the hydraulic lift out of the water would be as easy as spanning your well with some poles, strapping the bunks to those poles, then lowering the lift - which actually would pick the lift's frame off the bottom and raise it up to the bunks. Then add another set of straps around the frame and poles to be sure it did not settle back down over the winter.

myturn

These are the best boat lifts that I have seen:

http://www.magnumlift.com/

phughes69

The problem with that is I would have to store the boat on the trailer for the winter, and that is one of the reason why I wanted to get the hoist, so i did not have to keep it outside for the winter.

Wildman_grafix

Look at these.
http://www.boatliftus.com/

Pismo10

Sounds like a piling lift is the way to go to avoid the cost of rebuilding the bot house to support the load from above. If you had a solid boathouse with beams above, you could get a 6000lb cradle life for under 3k.

phughes69

That is where my thinking was going. There are no pilings in the boat house right now. I THINK I could have a builder install some vertical lam beams that would attach to the seawall on the side where there is a concrete pad and two vertical lam beams on the opposite side on the outside wall of the boat house then span them with a horizontal beam. Then use the new structure to attach the hoist to. The biggest question is if the seawall will support the load. The sea wall is steel and in good shape. On the outside wall the structure for the boat house sits directly on the seawall. On the inside the center beam supporting the roof is tied into 2 vertical beams that sit on the sea wall also. The company that quoted me wants $9K for the hoist and $4K to build the structure. Like I said, the $4K I can understand, but $9K for a 7000 # hoist???

Here is a rough picture of what the boat house looks like, Keep in mind that the whole area ABOVE the well is a deck above.

speicher lane

Depending on the physical water depth of the boat house you may not need to remove the lift. A number of the clients in the Muskoka's (Ontario) with the submerged hydraulic lifts just lower the units for the winter as there is enough water where shifting/building ice will not harm them...Overly protective owners place a small bubbler in the Boat House, but often that is just to erode ice prior to ice-out - not all winter long bubbling.