Home Elevator Cost in Alaska

These are typical installed prices for each kind of lift. Your own quote may land a bit above or below, depending on your home.

The shaft is the enclosed column your elevator moves through. Adding one to an existing house costs $5,000 to $25,000. Every floor beyond two adds another $9,000 to $15,000.

To put that in context, HomeGuide puts a two-story home elevator at $30,000 to $60,000 nationwide.

Part of what you pay goes to wages. Alaska electricians make a median $43.00 an hour, compared with a $30.38 median across the US, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Carpenters, who build the shaft or cut a floor opening, make a median $35.51 an hour in Alaska.

Call now to discuss your home and request a written quote that accounts for the lift, electrical work and any shaft construction.

Alaska's elevator regulations adopt the national safety codes, but they skip the parts dealing with lifts for private homes, inclined units, platform models, and stair chairlifts. The program belongs to the Mechanical Inspection Section, part of Alaska's Department of Labor and Workforce Development, and home units fall outside it. The exclusions appear in Alaska's state elevator rules.

State law also allows a city or borough to adopt the state standards or write stricter ones. That is how local rules can reach where state rules do not.

If your city does not run its own elevator program, the state asks for no permit or inspection at home. Within Anchorage, though, a residential lift must pass plan review and an acceptance inspection when it first goes in. After the installation permit closes, periodic inspections no longer apply, as the Municipality of Anchorage notes. We could not find residential fee amounts.

Anchorage also released its own 2024 local amendments to the national codes. Ask your installer to check which amendments fit your project.

There is no state elevator mechanic certificate in Alaska. Certificates of fitness in the state cover trades like electricians, plumbers, and boiler operators, and elevator work has no category of its own, per the Mechanical Inspection Section. Any electrical work feeding the unit still requires certified electricians.

Alaska doesn't license elevator installers, so a clear written quote matters. Call us for a written quote that covers the shaft, the electrical work and any Anchorage review, all in one number you can plan around.

Costs may be easier to manage through these programs:

• Medicaid waiver home accessibility program: Alaskans on a Medicaid home and community based waiver can have modifications approved through the state's Senior and Disabilities Services office, with a cap of $40,000 for each three-year period. Medicaid-certified contractors perform the work. Learn more at the E-Mod program.
• Senior Access Program: Through the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, local nonprofits receive money to award grants up to $15,000 to seniors 55 and older for accessibility changes in homes they own or rent. You can find the details here.
• Assistive technology in the state: ATLA is Alaska's assistive technology program, found here.

The Governor's Council on Disabilities has called the state's older assistive technology loan program unsuccessful. A bill, HB 219, would repeal it and send that funding over to ATLA instead.

Call us and we'll walk through your home and put your real number in writing, based on the lift you want and the work your home needs.