Reviewed by Lukasz Zelezny for the Pollock range. A Machinery Directive home lift range, Pollock is installed in houses and flats across the UK. The faults below are the ones owners actually encounter, each divided into safe household checks and the engineer-only diagnoses they lead to. Everything is phrased for a non-technical owner, and written so that a Pollock call-out begins with facts rather than assumptions.
Quick Diagnosis
Answer up to three questions. We'll point you at the most likely Pollock fault on this page — full detail stays visible below either way.
Common Pollock Faults
The pollock lift problems reported most often to UK service desks — expanded in the order owners typically encounter them. Several are resolved by routine Pollock maintenance rather than a call-out, and the rest are far quicker to fix when you can describe the symptom precisely to whoever handles your Pollock repair.
Pollock home lift won't move when called
Owner-safe checkThe car lights up but nothing happens when a floor is selected on your Pollock home lift.
Most people arriving at Pollock troubleshooting pages describe the problem in roughly these words. When a Pollock home lift refuses to move on call the safety circuit is almost always the reason.
Every UK home lift, Pollock included. Will not accept a call until every door and gate is fully closed. No emergency stop button is pressed on the car or the landings.
The key switch is in the running position.
Owners can safely walk each landing door and confirm it is latched, twist any pressed red stop buttons gently clockwise until they release, and turn the key isolator through off and back on.
If the Pollock lift still refuses to move after those checks, the fault is inside the controller or the drive and the correct next step is to log the warning shown, describe the symptom, and refer to a lift engineer for reset.
Keep the Pollock maintenance paperwork with the lift. Whoever attends the Pollock repair will want to see when the last service was done.
Pollock home lift stuck between floors
Engineer onlyThe Pollock home lift has stopped mid-travel and is not responding to calls or in-car controls.
Before you phone anyone about a Pollock repair, work through the description below.
A Pollock home lift stopped between floors is almost always the safety chain having opened during travel — an interlock lifted, a door sensor triggered, or an overload switch activated.
The single most important rule is do not force any door open. If someone is inside the Pollock car, use the alarm bell or the intercom, call the service line printed inside the car.
If anyone in the car has a medical need call 999.
The manual hand-lowering procedure on some Pollock lifts is a controlled release documented in the owner pack but is intended to be walked through by the manufacturer's helpline, not tried from memory.
Waiting for an engineer is always safe; forcing anything is not.
Faults in this family are largely prevented by keeping to the Pollock servicing schedule, so check the date of your last Pollock maintenance visit while the paperwork is out.
Pollock home lift door or sensor fault
Owner-safe checkYour Pollock lift is showing a door open warning when the doors look closed.
This symptom accounts for a steady share of the Pollock repair enquiries we see each month.
Home lift doors are safety-critical: any door that the Pollock controller does not read as closed will lock the whole lift out.
The commonest causes are a magnetic reed sensor knocked slightly out of alignment on a landing door, a light-curtain lens on the car opening obscured by dust or a sticker, and a mechanical latch that has slowly drifted out of adjustment.
Owners of a Pollock home lift can safely wipe the sensor face and the door threshold, remove any obstruction, and cycle the door slowly to see if the fault clears.
If the display names a specific door, note which floor and which side — that saves a service engineer at least half a hour of on-site diagnosis when they arrive.
Add it to the log. Planned Pollock maintenance is always cheaper than reactive Pollock repair. The log is what turns a vague complaint into a booked servicing job.
Pollock home lift shows a warning light
Owner-safe checkA warning indicator on your Pollock home lift is lit or flashing.
This is one of the most common reasons UK owners look up Pollock troubleshooting in the first place.
Every UK home lift brand uses a different indicator scheme for faults and Pollock is no exception. The important owner discipline is the same regardless of brand: note the light colour and pattern.
The time, whether the lift was in use or parked. — if you have one — write it in your lift owner log before doing anything else.
A single controlled reset is usually appropriate on a Pollock home lift and is described in the owner pack. Repeated resets of the same warning are not.
If the same warning returns within days of a reset it points to a component drifting toward failure, and the Pollock service engineer needs the sequence of dates to diagnose the underlying cause rather than the surface symptom.
Where the checks do not settle it, describe the symptom in your own words when you ask for Pollock repair. A plain description helps far more than a guessed diagnosis.
Emergency stop engaged on the Pollock home lift
Owner-safe checkThe Pollock lift is completely dead and the red stop button is depressed.
Of every Pollock troubleshooting question sent to us. This symptom is among the most frequent.
If a Pollock home lift stops responding entirely, the two things to check before anything else are the emergency stop button and the key isolator. The red emergency stop is a twist-release button.
Usually mounted on the car and sometimes also on the top of the Pollock carriage — designed to be pressed if there is a passenger emergency.
To release, twist gently clockwise (or in the direction showed by the arrow on the button) until the button pops back out.
The key isolator is either on the car or a landing; turn to the "run" position. If clearing either restored the Pollock lift, log it.
Repeated accidental knocks on the stop button may mean it needs relocating out of the natural line of use.
A short entry in the Pollock maintenance log now avoids any later doubt about whether the fault was reported before the next Pollock servicing visit.
Pollock home lift travel is slow or juddery
Owner-safe checkYour Pollock lift moves but not as smoothly or quickly as it used to.
Read this through before booking any Pollock repair. The answer is often simpler than it looks.
Slow or juddery travel on a Pollock home lift points to a mechanical wear issue rather than a safety-circuit lockout. Can be planned rather than treated as an emergency.
On ball-screw Pollock models, insufficient lubrication of the screw column or a worn drive nut slowly reduces travel speed and adds a mechanical grind you can hear from outside the car.
On hydraulic Pollock home lifts, low oil, air trapped in the ram, or a partly-clogged flow-control valve produces a similar hesitation.
Continue to use the Pollock lift while a service visit is booked, but do book it. Extended running on a partially-failed drive puts unnecessary stress on the motor.
The brake and the safety gear and turns a service into a repair. Whatever the outcome, note the date and the symptom in your Pollock maintenance record.
A clear history makes the next Pollock servicing visit quicker.
Pollock repair
Most enquiries that reach us are described as a Pollock repair, but roughly a third turn out to be a reset, a battery on charge, or a door edge that is not quite closing. Work through the checks above first and write down exactly what the home lift does — the noise, the light, the floor it stops at. That note is what turns a vague call-out into a first-visit fix.
Anything behind a cover or panel, in the pit or shaft, or involving doors, gates and interlocks is engineer-only work. Your part of a Pollock repair is to check and report: mains power on, isolator on, emergency stop out, nothing in the door threshold, and a written note of the fault code.
What Noise Is Your Pollock Lift Making?
Lifts talk. Not eloquently — but a grind, a beep or an ominous silence each means something. Press play, compare, and pick the closest match.
Example sounds are synthesized approximations to help you compare — not recordings of Pollock equipment.
Grinding — likely causes on a Pollock lift
⚠️ Engineer only- Screw-drive nut or ball-screw at the end of its service life
- Guide-shoe wear against the rail
- Debris in the shaft that has worked its way onto a running surface
Grinding from a Pollock home lift means metal is meeting metal where it should not. Do not keep using it.
Bring the car to a landing, take the key switch out, and email your service company today with exactly where in the travel you can hear the noise.
Quiet at rest, loud on the way up, only near the top and so on. Screw-driven, hydraulic and traction Pollock lifts each fail this way for different reasons.
So the engineer will need that timing details to arrive with the right parts. Never look inside the shaft or under the car.
What Light Is Your Pollock Lift Showing?
Lifts also talk in light. Pick what you can see.
Steady red — on a Pollock lift
✅ Owner-safe check- Emergency-stop button pressed and not released on the car or a landing
- Landing door interlock reporting open — magnet reed bent or dirty
- A latched fault the controller is holding until manually cleared by service
On a Pollock home lift, a constant red light is a stop signal: something in the safety chain is open, or a fault has been recorded and latched.
The common causes here are the boring ones, which is good news.
Go round the lift once, calmly, and walk every landing door and the car gate, close each one until you hear the latch.
Make sure no emergency stop is still pressed (a quarter-turn clockwise releases them). Should the light go out and normal travel return, no further action is needed.
Should it stay on, the fault needs an engineer. Leave the power on and send your service company a note of the indicator state.
Is It Safe to Keep Using It?
Three questions. Ten seconds. Answer honestly.
When to Call an Engineer
Once you hit these, the job is an engineer's. Call your Pollock service provider — or use the form below — if you notice:
- A fault that returns within minutes of a reset.
- Smoke, burning smell, or visible damage to cables or controls.
- Water in the pit, machine room or car.
- The car running outside its normal range or stopping off-level.
- Intermittent door, gate or interlock behaviour.
Pollock servicing
Regular Pollock servicing is the cheapest fault prevention available. A visit typically covers the drive and safety circuits, battery condition, charge points, limit and door detection, and a test of the alarm — the same items that generate most emergency calls when they drift out of tolerance.
Keep every service sheet. A dated history of Pollock servicing tells the next engineer which parts have already been changed, supports any warranty claim, and is the first thing a buyer's surveyor asks for when the property changes hands.
Pollock at a glance
Quick reference: how Pollock lifts are built, how they show faults, and where the official documentation lives.
- Segment
- Through-floor / step lift
- HQ / market
- UK
- Key products
- Through-floor lifts, steplifts
- How faults are shown
- Panel indicators
- Coverage on this page
- System-level
- Platform / ownership
- UK specialist
- Official code source
- Pollock service docs
About Pollock
Reviewed by Lukasz Zelezny for the Pollock range. A Machinery Directive home lift range, Pollock is installed in houses and flats across the UK. The faults below are the ones owners actually encounter, each divided into safe household checks and the engineer-only diagnoses they lead to. Everything is phrased for a non-technical owner, and written so that a Pollock call-out begins with facts rather than assumptions.
Lift Troubleshooting is an independent resource and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Pollock. See our full disclaimer.
Pollock maintenance
Treat Pollock maintenance as a short weekly routine: confirm the home lift responds normally from every landing, confirm the alarm is audible where somebody would hear it, and confirm the charge indicator behaves as it always has. Anything outside that pattern goes to your provider rather than into a toolbox.
Nothing in owner-level Pollock maintenance involves removing covers, entering the pit or shaft, or adjusting doors, gates or interlocks. If a check cannot be done from the landing with the equipment behaving normally, it belongs to a qualified engineer.
Frequently Asked Questions
What kind of equipment does Pollock make?
Pollock is a through-floor / step lift manufacturer active in UK. The ranges most often met in the UK are Through-floor lifts, steplifts.
The fault-finding below is written around the behaviour those Pollock ranges share rather than around one model number.
So start here and then confirm your exact model from the rating plate before you quote anything to an engineer. One thing worth knowing: the reference note for Pollock reads "UK specialist".
This can change whose manual actually applies to your machine.
What does the Pollock display or indicator tell me?
On Pollock equipment the sign is described as: Panel indicators. Codes are not standardised between makers, or even between board generations within Pollock, so photograph exactly what you see.
The characters, the lamp colour, the flash pattern — and report that with the model from the plate. Read the sign; do not open the Pollock controller or any panel to chase it.
What is the most common Pollock fault?
The fault this page opens with is "Pollock home lift won't move when called". The car lights up but nothing happens when a floor is selected on your Pollock home lift.
The next most reported Pollock symptom is "Pollock home lift stuck between floors". Work through the safe checks listed against each one, note what you observe, and pass that to a competent lift engineer.
All on this page stops at check-and-report: nothing here asks the householder to force a door, move a stalled car, remove a panel or enter a pit or shaft.
How do I get the Pollock documentation for my machine?
The authoritative reference for this brand is the Pollock service docs. Pollock publishes to its own channels and to registered trade accounts rather than openly.
So if you have no account, ask your maintenance contractor to supply the Pollock document that covers your fitting.
Our own coverage of Pollock is currently rated "System-level", so treat this page as an orientation and the manufacturer's document as the authority.
My Pollock home lift is showing a warning. Is it still usable?
Treat any Pollock warning that stops the lift accepting a call as a lockout, not a nuisance. Note what is displayed, keep the lift out of use, and report it.
Do not try to defeat an interlock, prop a door, or move the car. Those are the actions that turn a stopped Pollock lift into an injury.