Home Lift Installation in Ghana: The Step-by-Step Process

Deciding a home lift is the right choice for your house is usually the easier part. What follows — ordering, shipping, and getting it actually installed — is where most of the uncertainty sits for a first-time buyer, especially if you’ve never gone through an equivalent process before. This is a clear walkthrough of what genuinely happens at each stage, from the first site visit to the day you use the lift for the first time.

Stage 1: The free home survey

Nothing is ordered or quoted with certainty before a home survey happens. A team member visits your house — whether it’s an existing, finished home or a site still under construction — and checks the details that determine what’s possible and what it will cost:

• Floor-to-floor heights, to confirm total travel distance and where the cabin will land on each level.
• Available clear space, checked against the footprint of the models you’re considering — as little as 1 metre square for a standard cabin.
• Floor structure and levelness, since the cabin needs a stable base to stand on.
• Delivery access, confirming the components can reach the installation point through existing doorways and corridors.
• Your electrical supply, confirming your home’s single-phase circuit is suitable — no three-phase upgrade needed.

If you’re planning from abroad, this stage can run entirely without you needing to be physically present — a video consultation first, then a site visit by our team or a trusted person you nominate, with a full written report and photos sent back to you. The survey itself is free and comes with no obligation.

Stage 2: Ordering, manufacture, and shipping

Once you’ve chosen a model and the survey has confirmed the details, we issue a pro-forma invoice and your order enters manufacturing and shipping. This stage is the longest in the whole process — typically 8 to 14 weeks from confirmed order to arrival in Ghana, covering manufacture, sea freight to Tema, and customs clearance. It’s worth planning around this lead time from the outset, particularly if the lift is part of a larger renovation or new-build timeline with its own schedule to coordinate against.

Payments through this stage are staged rather than due in a single lump sum, settled by bank transfer — a process we handle routinely for diaspora clients paying from overseas as much as for clients based in Ghana.

Stage 3: Delivery to site

Once cleared through customs, the lift is transported inland to your property. Because the components arrive as manageable sections rather than one oversized unit, delivery access confirmed at the survey stage — doorways, corridors, gates — is what actually matters here, not a need for heavy-lift equipment or a crane.

Stage 4: Installation — 2 to 5 working days, no civil works

This is the stage that most reassures first-time buyers once they understand it, because it’s so different from what a conventional lift install involves. There’s no shaft to build, no pit to dig, and no machine room to construct — the cabin and cylinder are a self-supporting structure that stands directly on your existing floor slab. Installation typically completes in 2–5 working days, depending on the model, with no wet trades work and no lengthy curing time.

For an existing, finished home, this means a short, contained disruption rather than weeks of your household living around a construction site — see our fuller explanation of how retrofitting into an existing house works in practice. For a new-build, the same installation runs just as quickly once the relevant floor slabs are ready, and reserving the space at the architectural drawing stage — as covered in our guidance for architects, QSs, and developers — makes the eventual install even more straightforward.

Stage 5: Commissioning and handover

Once installed, the lift is commissioned — tested through its full range of movement, safety systems checked, and the backup battery verified — before handover to your household. This is also when you’re walked through everyday operation: calling the cabin, using the controls, and what to expect if there’s ever a power interruption, covered in detail in our guide to home lifts during dumsor.

What happens after handover

Installation day isn’t the end of the relationship. Every Nibav lift comes with a comprehensive manufacturer warranty. Beyond the warranty, ongoing servicing is handled by a local after-sales team, so spare parts and technician support stay close by rather than tied to a one-off import that’s difficult to service years later.

Retrofit or new-build — the process holds either way

Whether you’re adding a lift to a house your family has lived in for twenty years, or reserving space for one in a house that’s still on the drawing board, the five stages above stay the same. What changes is only the starting point: a retrofit begins with a survey of what already exists, while a new-build begins with a conversation between your architect and our team about where the lift zone sits in the plans.

Start with a survey, not a guess

The only way to move from a general timeline to an exact one for your specific house is a free home survey, which confirms floor heights, space, and site access before anything is ordered. For full pricing detail once your model is chosen, see our pricing page.

Book a free home survey and we’ll walk you through exactly what installation will look like in your house, stage by stage, with a realistic timeline from day one.