Wiring up the 4 post lifts

Up to this point I had setup the 4 post lifts to have the power units up front. I was temporally just using an 8 gauge piece of wire wire nutted to the original 4 post. Once I had the second lift that solution wouldn’t work even temporally.

Working as a Network Engineer I see a lot of data centers, and one day while working at one of them I really liked how they had the power whips dropping down from the ceiling. Granted these power whips were 208V 3 phase, but i knew I could do the same with a standard 240v 1 phase.

That is a 10 gauge power cord. Designed to be flexible and not become work hardened and brittle. I also made a long extension cord out of a longer and 8 gauge wire. With that I was able to easily hook up power to either lift when needed.

I put the power units up front because I didn’t think there would be room to get back to and operate them with them in the back against the back wall. That presented a logistics problem of having to either drop power all the way down from the ceiling or run a conduit across the front. Either way it would look messy and the power units up front made it difficult to walk past them.

It turned out there was plenty of room in back by the power units so I decided I would flip the lifts around so the power units were in the back out of sight. I then put two outlets 8′ up and my power whips were just the right length!

I kept the circuit breaker turned off unless I was using them but later added double pole disconnects (no, they are NOT light switches) to ensure they are never energized when I don’t want them to be and there is an easy shutoff should the lifts ever malfunction.