How to Choose the Right Electric Hoist for Your Workshop

Most electric hoists are bought on one number — the capacity on the label — and that is exactly how the wrong hoist gets chosen. Capacity is not one number. On a typical electric hoist it is two, tied to two different lift heights and two different speeds, and picking the wrong one turns a sensible purchase into a 50% overload.

This guide works through the decisions in the order they actually get made: what the load really weighs, which configuration you will run, how much height you need, how hard the hoist will work, and how it is powered and mounted. It is written around the 220 V mini wire rope hoists we build, with real figures throughout, and it says plainly where our range ends and a different class of machine begins.

1. Start with the load — then find out what it really weighs

Weigh the heaviest single lift, not the average one. The average is what you lift every day; the outlier is what breaks a hoist, and it is almost always the lift nobody thought about when the hoist was ordered.

Two things get left out of that weight, and both count against the rating:

• The rigging. Slings, shackles, a spreader beam or a lifting frame all hang below the hook, so their weight is part of what the hoist is lifting. A 400 kg load with 40 kg of rigging is a 440 kg lift.
• Anything attached to the load. A fixture, a pallet, a still-attached fitting, a coating or contents that were not there when the part was weighed.

Then add a margin. Our own selection guidance is 1.2 × the actual load: if the lift weighs 500 kg, specify 600 kg of capacity. That margin is not there to let you overload the machine later — it is there because loads are dynamic. A load that is picked up with a jerk, or set down hard, briefly weighs more than it does at rest.

Note what that table is really saying: the capacity in the right-hand column is the dual-line figure. Which brings us to the next section, and the single most expensive misunderstanding in this product category.

2. Single-line or double-line? Settle this before anything else

An electric wire rope hoist does not have one capacity. It has two, and they are linked to two different lift heights and two different speeds. The link between them is the pulley block.

• Single-line — the hook hangs directly from the drum. You get the full lift height and the faster speed, at the lower capacity.
• Double-line — the rope passes through a pulley block and comes back up. The block halves the load on the rope, so the capacity doubles — and because twice as much rope is needed to move the hook a given distance, the lift height halves and the lifting speed halves with it.

Here are our PA-series figures side by side, which makes the trade-off concrete:

Now the mistake, stated plainly: a buyer who selects on the double-line capacity and then runs the hoist single-line has a 50% overload on their hands. A PA1000 run single-line lifts 500 kg, not 1,000 kg. Nothing on the machine will stop them — the rope, the drum and the frame are all being asked for twice what they were rated for.

Two rules follow. Read the nameplate figure for the configuration you will actually run, not the bigger of the two. And if the application might ever switch between configurations, specify to the single-line figure — that way the machine is safe in whichever mode it ends up in.

The full model table, including motor power and rope diameter for each size, is on our PA series electric hoist page.

3. Lift height: measure two points, not the ceiling

Lift height is not the height of your building. It is the distance the hook has to travel, and you get it by measuring two real points:

• The highest point the hook must reach — usually where the load has to be placed, or the top of the machine it has to clear.
• The lowest point the hook must reach — the bottom of the pick, with the rigging attached and hanging straight.

The difference between those two, measured from the mounting position, is the hook travel you need. Then add two allowances that buyers routinely forget: the height of the load itself, and the height taken up by the hook block and rigging at the top of the travel. A hook that reaches 12 m of rope but leaves no room for the block above the load has not given you 12 m of usable lift.

Our standard PA-series figures are 12 m single-line and 6 m double-line. Extended rope is available at 18 m, 24 m and 30 m, with capacity and speed unchanged.

One warning that saves a lot of returns: do not buy extra height "to be safe". A drum carrying more rope than the job needs spools through more layers, and the rope spends more of its life in the crossover zones where broken wires concentrate. Buy the height the job needs, plus a sensible allowance — not the height of the building.

4. Duty: how hard the hoist will actually work

This is where a workshop hoist and a production hoist part company, and it is the specification most often ignored until the hoist starts tripping.

Our PA-series hoists are rated S3 intermittent duty, typically S3 25% / 10 minutes — roughly 2.5 minutes of running in every 10-minute cycle, with a limited number of starts per hour. Our selection notes put a hard ceiling on it: a maximum of 10 minutes per lift, with cooling between cycles, and no continuous full-load running.

For a workshop, a garage, a warehouse bay or an installation job, that is generous. It is not enough for production cycling, where the hoist lifts on a fixed cycle all day and never really cools. If that describes your process, the honest answer is that you need a higher duty class — the three-phase hoist family — and not a PA-series hoist pushed harder than it is rated for. The full guidance is on the PA series product page, including what to tell us so we can confirm the class.

Because duty ratings for this product family vary between manufacturers, quoting the nameplate is the only reliable way to compare two suppliers. A listing that does not state a duty figure at all should be treated with caution.

5. Power supply: 220 V single phase, and what that rules out

Our electric hoists are 220–240 V single-phase 50 Hz, with a capacitor-run asynchronous motor (Class B insulation) and a starting capacitor of 16–35 µF depending on model. That is the configuration for a workshop or garage where three-phase power is not available, and it is the reason this class of hoist is as popular as it is.

Two consequences worth knowing before you order:

• A 120 V / 60 Hz machine is a different build, not an adapter. If your supply is North American, tell us the voltage and frequency at the enquiry stage and we will quote the right version. A 220 V unit will not run correctly on 120 V, and a transformer is not a fix.
• Single phase sets a ceiling on capacity. The largest hoist in our range is 1,000 kg in double-line configuration. Above that, and for continuous industrial duty, you are into three-phase territory — a different class of machine, not a bigger version of this one.

6. Speed: what you actually get, and whether it matters

Our PA-series hoists lift at 10 m/min in single-line configuration on the five smaller models and 8 m/min on the two largest, halving to 5 and 4 m/min respectively in double-line. The reduction at the top of the range is not an arbitrary cut: a heavier load on a heavier rope is lifted more slowly for the same motor.

Put that in context. Over a 6 m lift, 10 m/min is 36 seconds of travel — the hoist is not the slow part of the job; walking over to the load, rigging it and placing it is.

The double-line speed penalty is worth understanding rather than resenting. When you double the capacity you are trading speed and height for lifting force, and you are also buying finer control: at half the speed, the hook moves half as far for the same time on the pendant button, which makes precise placement easier. For delicate positioning work, that is often the configuration people actually want — and the capacity comes along with it.

If your process genuinely needs two speeds — fast travel when empty, slow and controlled when loaded — that is a feature of a higher class of hoist. Our PA series is single-speed, and it is better to know that at the specification stage than to discover it in the workshop.

7. Mounting: hook, lug or trolley

The three mounting arrangements do different jobs:

• Hook-mounted — the hoist hangs from its own top hook, so it can be moved between lifting points. The most flexible, and the right choice when the hoist has to serve several locations.
• Lug-mounted — bolted to a fixed bracket or beam. Less headroom is lost than with a hook mount, and the hoist stays where it is put.
• Trolley-mounted — the hoist rides a trolley along an I-beam, giving coverage across a work area rather than a single point. Our PA series is compatible with I-beam track for lateral movement.

If you are going the trolley route, one engineering point decides whether the installation is safe, and it is not in the hoist catalogue: the beam and the trolley must be rated for the load plus the hoist's own weight. A PA-series hoist weighs between 22 and 40 kg depending on model, so that is 22–40 kg of dead weight travelling on the beam before a single kilogram of load is added. A beam rated only for the payload is under-specified. Beam trolleys and their ratings are covered on our beam trolley page, and the beam itself should be checked by someone competent to do it.

8. The safety features that must be on the machine

Every PA-series hoist ships with the following, and they are the minimum you should insist on from any supplier:

• Automatic power-off electromagnetic brake. The brake releases electrically and applies when the power is cut, so a power failure leaves the load held rather than falling. This is the single most important feature on the machine.
• Upper and lower travel limit switches. They stop the hook before it runs into the drum or pays out past the last safe wrap.
• A safety latch on the hook. It stops the rigging walking out of the throat under a slack rope.
• Proof load testing at 1.25 × rated capacity before shipment, with the certificate to go with it.

Two things buyers assume are standard and which are worth checking explicitly:

Control voltage. A low-voltage pendant, typically 24 V, is a genuine safety advantage because the operator is not holding mains potential. It is also not universal at this class of hoist — the pendant on a PA-series unit is 220 V direct (a wireless remote is available as an option). That is entirely normal for this product family, but it means two things follow: the pendant cable and enclosure have to be kept sound, and a damaged or repaired-with-tape pendant cable is a stop-work condition rather than a maintenance note. Ask any supplier which control voltage you are getting instead of assuming.

Thermal overload protection. An auto-shutdown on motor overheat is not fitted to every hoist at this class. Where it is absent, the protection against overheating is the duty rating itself — which is another reason section 4 matters. Ask the question directly.

9. Where our range ends — and what to buy instead

It is more useful to you to know the limits than to have them discovered after an order. Our electric hoist range covers:

Three limits deserve a sentence each, because each one is a way people get hurt.

Never pull a load sideways with a hoist. A hoist lifts vertically; that is the direction it was designed to be loaded in. Side pulling runs the rope across the drum flange instead of into the groove, damages the rope and the drum, and loads the frame in a direction it was never built for. If the load has to move horizontally as well as vertically, the answer is a trolley on a beam or a winch — not an angled hoist.

Never lift people. EN 14492-2, the European standard for power-driven hoists, excludes the lifting of persons without exception, and no configuration or accessory changes that. A person-lifting application needs a machine designed and certified for it.

Above 1,000 kg, or on a fixed production cycle, step up a class. Stretching a light hoist into industrial work is not a saving; it is a machine running outside its rating, with a duty cycle it cannot sustain and a warranty that no longer applies.

If a manual hoist is also on the table, the trade-offs between the two are set out in our comparison of electric hoists and manual hoists — and the HSZ chain block range runs from 1 to 20 tonnes, which is where a manual hoist goes well beyond what a single-phase electric unit can do.

10. What to have ready before you ask for a quote

Give a supplier these six answers and the model usually falls out of them. Give them a capacity alone and you will get a quotation that may or may not be for the right machine:

• The heaviest single lift, including the rigging.
• The two heights — lowest pick point and highest place point, measured from where the hoist will be mounted.
• Whether you will run single-line or double-line, or might switch.
• Lifts per hour and hours per day, so the duty class can be checked.
• Your supply voltage and frequency, and whether three-phase is available.
• The mounting — hook, lug or trolley — and, for a trolley, the beam it will run on.

Frequently Asked Questions

What size electric hoist do I need for a 500 kg load?

Applying the 1.2 × margin, you need 600 kg of capacity, and the heaviest lift is 500 kg. That rules out the PA1000 in single-line configuration, which is rated 500 kg — exactly the load, with no margin at all. The right machine is the PA1000 in double-line configuration, rated 1,000 kg, which leaves a comfortable margin. Be aware of what that costs you: in double-line the lift height is 6 m rather than 12 m, and the speed is 4 m/min rather than 8 m/min. If you need 500 kg at 12 m, that is above this range and a three-phase hoist is the answer.

Can an electric hoist be used outdoors?

The standard PA-series hoist is built for indoor use. Outdoors it needs a weatherproof enclosure, and the component that suffers first is the wire rope: moisture and interrupted lubrication lead to corrosion, and ISO 4309:2017 lists corrosion and diameter reduction as discard criteria for the rope. Outdoor use also shortens the inspection interval. If the hoist has to live outside, say so at the enquiry stage so the enclosure and the inspection schedule can be specified together.

What is the difference between an electric hoist and a chain block?

A chain block is a manual hoist: you pull a hand chain, and the lifting force comes from you. An electric hoist lifts under its own power, which is faster and far less tiring, and it needs a power supply and a duty rating. The trade runs the other way too — a manual chain block needs no electricity, works anywhere, and our HSZ range goes up to 20 tonnes, well beyond what a single-phase electric hoist can lift. For occasional lifts a chain block is often the better buy; for anything repetitive, the electric hoist pays for itself quickly.

How often does an electric hoist need inspection?

Under LOLER 1998 in the UK, an electric hoist is lifting equipment and needs a thorough examination by a competent person at least every 12 months. That is the legal minimum, not the whole schedule: frequent visual and operational inspection should be monthly in normal service, weekly in heavy service, and daily in severe service, and a periodic hands-on inspection annually or every 2,000 operating hours. A hoist that has been idle for more than a month needs a frequent inspection before it goes back into use.

Can I lift people with an electric hoist?

No. EN 14492-2 excludes the lifting of persons without exception, and there is no accessory, sling or configuration that changes that. Lifting a person requires a machine designed, rated and certified for that purpose, with the redundancy and the rescue arrangements that go with it. This is not a case where a margin of capacity makes it acceptable.