The Lift Install Checklist We Use on Every Iowa Job

A good lift install checklist is the difference between a lift that goes up in one morning and a lift that sits in crates in the corner of your shop for three weeks while you chase down an electrician, a concrete guy, and a set of anchors nobody ordered. We install and service lifts all over Iowa out of Ames, and after enough jobs you learn that almost every delay traces back to something small that could have been confirmed with a phone call a week earlier. So we built a working checklist — the same one our crew runs through before the truck leaves the shop — and we share it with customers freely, because a prepared site makes our day easier too. Here is what is on it and why each line matters.

Start With Concrete, Not With the Lift Model

Every lift install checklist we run starts underground. Concrete thickness, strength, and age decide whether the lift you want is even legal to anchor, and no amount of enthusiasm about a particular model changes that. A typical two-post asymmetric lift in the 10,000 to 12,000 lb class wants roughly four inches of 3,000 PSI concrete minimum, cured at least 28 days, and manufacturers publish their own numbers that we follow to the letter. Heavier equipment — 15,000 lb and up, or anything with a wide base plate — commonly asks for six inches or more. Older Iowa shops surprise us regularly. We have drilled into what looked like a solid floor and found three and a half inches over gravel, or an expansion joint running right where a column needed to land.

The fix is not complicated, but it has to happen before install day. We core a small test hole or use a rebar and thickness scanner to confirm what is actually down there. If the slab is thin, cracked, or sitting on soft fill, the usual answer is a poured pad — a rectangular section cut out, dug down, reinforced, and repoured to the manufacturer’s spec, then given a full cure. That is a couple of weeks on the calendar, which is exactly why concrete sits at the top of the list instead of the bottom. Skipping this step is how anchors pull, and a pulled anchor on a loaded lift is not a warranty conversation, it is a safety incident.

Ceiling Height, Obstructions, and the Vehicles You Actually Lift

The second line item is overhead space, and it catches more shops than concrete does. An overhead two-post with a top beam typically needs somewhere around 12 feet of clear ceiling to run a full-size truck to full height. Clear means clear — not to the bottom of a light fixture, not to the bottom of a heat tube, not to the sagging bottom of an old air line. We measure to the lowest obstruction in the swing path, then we measure again with the tallest vehicle you regularly service in mind. A shop that lifts dually pickups and box vans needs different numbers than one doing sedans and crossovers.

When the ceiling will not cooperate, there are real options and we walk through them. A floor-plate two-post moves the hydraulic and equalization lines into a ramp at floor level and frees up the overhead entirely, at the cost of a small bump you drive over. A four-post gets you height-friendly service and storage without anchoring drama in many cases. A mid-rise scissor lift fits under low ceilings and works well for tire, brake, and body shop duty. We also flag door tracks, overhead door openers, mezzanines, and roof trusses that look fine on the floor plan and become a problem at full rise. Getting this measured properly is a big part of our lift install site checklist, and it is a five-minute job with a tape measure and a ladder.

Power: Voltage, Phase, and Who Runs the Conduit

Electrical is the single most common reason a scheduled install turns into a return trip. Most single-post and two-post power units are available in 208-230V single phase or three phase, and some heavy-duty and inground units are three phase only. If your building has 240V single phase and the unit that arrived is three phase, nobody is lifting anything that day. We confirm voltage, phase, available amperage, and breaker size in writing before we order, and we confirm the disconnect location relative to where the power unit will actually sit.

We are lift installers, not licensed electricians, so the wiring from the panel to the disconnect is on your electrician. What we can do is tell them exactly what we need, where we need it, and when — including whether you want a dedicated circuit, how much cord length the power unit has, and whether the unit’s mounting height changes the conduit run. On air-release lifts, add shop air to the same conversation: many two-post and four-post models need a small air supply for the lock release, and a nearby air drop saves running hose across the bay. Our lift install quote checklist includes a power section for exactly this reason, because an accurate quote depends on knowing whether an electrician is part of the job.

Bay Layout, Column Spacing, and Working Room

A lift that technically fits and a lift that is pleasant to work under are two different things. We lay out the bay with tape on the floor before a single hole gets drilled. Column-to-column spacing comes from the manufacturer’s drawing, but the space around the lift comes from how you work: room to open doors fully at height, room to roll a transmission jack in, room to swing a long bar, clearance from the next bay’s lift arms, and a walking path that does not force techs to squeeze between a column and a toolbox.

Drain placement matters too. Iowa shops with trench drains or center-of-bay floor drains sometimes have to shift a lift a foot or two off center, and that shift can move an anchor onto an expansion joint. We check for that up front. We also think about approach angle — where the vehicle enters, whether the bay is deep enough to fully clear the doors before lifting, and whether a low-clearance car can even get to the arms. On four-post installs we add runway orientation and ramp direction, because putting the ramps toward a wall makes a lift far less useful. Fifteen minutes of layout work here prevents a lift you resent for the next twenty years.

Freight, Unloading, and Getting the Crates Inside

A two-post lift arrives as several hundred pounds of columns, arms, and hardware on an LTL truck, and a heavy-duty or four-post shipment can push well past a ton. The carrier brings it to your dock or curb, and that is it — a standard freight delivery does not include carrying anything into your building. Our lift freight and install checklist covers who is unloading, with what, and where the crates will live until install day. If you have a forklift, great. If not, we plan a liftgate delivery or bring equipment.

We also ask customers to inspect and photograph the shipment before signing for it. Forklift punctures through a carton, a bent column, a crushed corner on a power unit box — all of that is far easier to resolve when it is noted on the delivery receipt than when it is discovered a week later during assembly. Count the pieces against the packing list, especially the hardware and anchor boxes, which are small and get separated in transit. Then store the crates inside, dry, and out of the traffic path. A power unit left outside overnight in an Iowa February is not a great start. This part of the lift install checklist costs nothing and saves entire days.

What the Lift Install Checklist Covers on Install Day

Install day itself has its own sequence, and we follow the same one every time so nothing gets skipped. Columns get positioned and squared to the layout marks, plumbed, and shimmed as needed. Anchors go in at the manufacturer’s specified bit size, embedment depth, and torque — the torque wrench is not optional, and every anchor gets checked. Overhead or floor-plate lines get routed, the power unit gets mounted and wired to the disconnect, hydraulics get connected and bled, and the equalization system gets adjusted so both carriages come up level.

Then we cycle the lift. Empty first, watching for leaks and listening to the locks engage on both sides at each notch. Then loaded, to full height and back down, confirming the safety locks hold under weight and the arms restrain properly. We check pad heights, arm swing, and that the lift lowers smoothly rather than dropping. Our lift install day checklist finishes with the parts most people rush: applying the safety and capacity labels, handing over the owner’s manual, and walking the shop’s techs through daily and monthly inspection points. ANSI/ALI guidance calls for annual inspection by a qualified inspector, and we schedule that before we leave so it does not get forgotten in year two.

Turning the Lift Install Checklist Into a Working Timeline

The last piece is sequencing. Each item above has a lead time, and the whole point of a lift install checklist is putting them in an order that does not create dead weeks. Concrete work comes first because of cure time. Electrical scheduling comes second, since good electricians book out. Freight ordering comes third, once you know the site will be ready — there is no advantage to having crates in the way for a month. Install scheduling comes last, when concrete is cured, power is at the disconnect, and the equipment is on site and verified complete.

For a straightforward two-post going into a modern slab with existing three-phase power, the realistic timeline is a couple weeks from order to lifting cars, and most of that is freight. For a shop that needs a new pad poured and a panel upgrade, plan on a month or more. We would rather tell you that up front than surprise you. Give us a call at 800-674-9302 and we will run this lift install checklist with you over the phone, in about fifteen minutes, and tell you honestly what your bay needs. If you are still comparing equipment, we will help you spec the right lift for the space you actually have rather than the space you wish you had.

Related: lift install site checklist · lift install quote checklist · lift install day checklist