What is a car stacker?
A car stacker is a mechanical system that improves conventional carparks by partially or wholly automating the parking of vehicles in parking garages. Over the past 30 years, these systems have been used frequently by developers and owners of buildings to increase parking availability in confined spaces. Adding parking to a building improves the utility of the building and ultimately increases the value of the building and its tenancies. Car stackers are sometimes combined with car hoists, car lifts and car turntables to further enhance car park utility.
Car stackers are widely used in the United States, Europe and Asia and there are many working car stackers in Australia today used in residential and commercial settings. However their function remains the same regardless of setting; raising or lowering vehicles on a platform into assigned parking spaces without the need for a driver to park the car themself, then retrieving the vehicle for the driver when it is recalled.
Car stackers can range in size from small 2-car stackers up to large, complex stackers storing hundreds of vehicles. Some are simple manually-operated systems, some are semi-automatic whilst others are fully-automatic, computer-controlled systems.
How does a stacker work?
A user will typically park their car as usual in a stacker entry bay, then they will lock and leave the vehicle. The user will then use a keypad to instruct the stacker to park the vehicle and the stacker will move the vehicle into an assigned parking space independent of the user where it will be safely stored. When the user next needs their vehicle, they will use a keypad to request the retrieval of their vehicle and the stacker will fetch the vehicle and bring it to a stacker exit bay. The user is then free to get into their vehicle and drive out of the carpark.
To achieve these aims, a car stacker consists of several components:
- Mechanical components – including hydraulics, hoists, motors and gearboxes;
- Electrical components – including sensors, variable speed drives, communications and power supplies; and
- Control components – including control panels for users, control computers and programmable logic controllers and the software that oversees the safe operation of the car stacker.
These components will be designed and installed to work together within pre-defined safe operating limits of the car stacker. To be assured of safe, continuous operations, stacker components should be maintained regularly as accumulated wear-and-tear and dirt can impede normal stacker functions.