The idea is to allow the player to determine the length of a dive elevator, perhaps by an adjustable slider to allocate material to length when building it, as well as the option to add length after building.

There could just be an “extension pole” that you snap onto the top or bottom after you build the basic thing. That would probably click well with the existing basebuilding code, although I doubt the dive elevator is a bona-fide building right now when looked at from the code perspective.