Tutorials/Elevators

Here are some ideas for some Elevators.

What is an Elevator?
An elevator is a type of vertical transport system that carries people and goods to certain floors in a structure. They are sometimes known as lifts.

Water Tube Elevator
Note: Do NOT attempt to ride this in Survival Mode because you will die. You have been warned.

Bricks are suitable for making this. You can also use glass to make it really cool!
 * 1) Build a base 4 blocks wide and 6 blocks tall.
 * 2) Start to build up to your 2nd Floor.
 * 3) If you haven' t done so, build 3 blocks up from the 2nd Floor. Then seal the top up.
 * 4) Smash out a hole on the 1st Floor 3 blocks high and 2 blocks wide. Do the same on the 2nd Floor
 * 5) Smash out the ceiling and put water in all the corners.
 * 6) OPTIONAL - mining out blocks from one side of the elevator and replacing them with glass panes or fences allows a player to ride "half-in, half-out" of the water shaft, and allows a player in Survival to breathe.

Simple Minecart Elevator
Note: This elevator only works going up.

Like the name says, this elevator mostly depends on your ability to collect Iron Ingots and create Minecarts, as well as making Ladders.

To create the elevator, all you need is a 1x1 shaft, down (or up) to the place where you want to go. Once the shaft is finished, you will need to divide the number of blocks by either four if you are in Single Player, or five if you are in Multiplayer. This is to figure out how many Minecarts and Ladders you will need.

After you have all the needed blocks, continue onto the next set of instructions.


 * 1) Fill up the shaft all the way to the top by Towering. Make sure that there is room for you to get out of the elevator after the ride is over!
 * 2) Slowly go down, placing ladders on the wall, and placing Minecarts on top of those. IMPORTANT! Make sure the Minecarts are close enough so you can transfer to the one above you without moving!
 * 3) When you reach the bottom of your shaft, you're done!
 * 4) OPTIONAL: Create another shaft next to your elevator with Water at the bottom, so you can jump right in.

To operate, just stand underneath the first Minecart and hold the Right Mouse Button. If you did it right, you should go straight up to the top.

Piston Elevator
There are many different wiring designs for piston elevators. The principle of them is that you get pushed up into the air using pistons. They can be extremely fast, and you can both ascend and descend with some designs. There are many videos detailing how to build them, some of which you can view here: Youtube.

There are two popular kinds of piston elevators: block and zipper. The block kind has pistons that push pistons out to push you up. The zipper kind has stairs that push you up in a zipper fashion.

=Simple Command Block Elevators= NOTE: This only works with 12w32a, 1.4 and beyond. Beside from the minecart elevaor, command block elevators can be made with some special effects, and are the quickest of all the elevators. The principle is that you can hit a button wired up to a command block with the /tp @p x y z command. The most basic design is to have the command block behind the button. To get a little more complex, you will need a bit more room, or use repeaters. The basic objective is to have a command block with the /tell @p Going to [floor name] command, then a few moments later, having a command block with the previously mentioned /tp command to do the main part of going to a floor. Note that if you are using this with a high-rise building, you may need to create more than one elevator cab for serving more than a few floors, since this type of elevator may get a little big trying to serve 35 floors in one cab.