What's in a trash compactor?

As most of you know by now, I'm stuck in a wheelchair thanks to a tree cutting accident, and have to deal with the challenges of making our house "accessible" - which it certainly was not designed to be when it was built...

One of the challenging areas is our back screen porch, which we currently get to via a sliding glass door, and about an 8" step down from the kitchen... We keep a lot of stuff on the back porch, including our freezer, and various other things it would be nice to reach. It is also one step closer to getting me access to the swimming pool :coolsmile:

Per the standard rules on such things, which call for no more than a 1:12 pitch on any ramps, I would need at least an 8' ramp to get from the kitchen to the porch, and there just plain isn't ROOM for that big of a ramp, so I've been trying to think of an approach to use less room, which implies some sort of lift. A lift would need to be able to lift a platform approx 36" square, and probably at least 500lbs to allow for a good margin. When lowered, the platform surface would need to be as close to the floor as possible, w/ a taper, no more than about an inch or so (More is possible but gets physically harder and more of a challenge from a "wheelchair skills" standpoint)

Looking for things that might be adapted to make such a lift, I noticed the trash compactor that has been in the house since Mary-Anne has owned it, but that we have never used... Seems like an item that might be adapted to do the job if one were to flip it upside down and attach it to the joists on the porch - there is a big square ram that presumably could have a plywood or similar platform attached to it. Presumably it would have plenty of lifting / pressing capacity. just wondering if anyone has tried doing anything like this, and if it worked...

I was going to ask if anyone knew what the mechanism inside one of these things was - hydraulics or something else, but while I was writing this, a neighbor came by and said he'd done work on his and it was a sort of scissors jack type system, which should be a nice stable platform that can be flipped w/o any problem...

Any thoughts on this, people that have tried doing anything with one of these units, or any other ideas as to how to make a lift that could do the job?

Gooserider

That E-bay lift is a bit of a hike (VA to MA) but it is the kind of thing I've been thinking of for several other areas in the house where we need a lot of lifting distance, i.e. going into the garage or the pool area, but it is overkill for this little 8" lift to the porch... Might consider it if it were closer and we had someone that could drive, etc... (Mary-Anne is having more trouble w/ her heart...)

As to the water-bladder idea, while it would give a lot of lift w/ little pressure, I suspect it would be a real problem to keep the upper platform level. OTOH a scissors jack or similar mechanism can be designed with a great deal of stability.

Gooserider

The location I'm looking at is our back porch, which is basically a wooden deck with part of the house built over it and screen walls. There is probably 3-4' of space between the deck top and the ground, so there would be no problem in cutting a hole in the decking and hanging something from the presumably 16" OC joists, which is essentially what I had in mind as a plan...

Essentially flip the trash compactor upside down and cut off the bottom so that it could be hung between the joists with the face of the ram even with the underside of the decking when retracted. Then bolt a slightly larger platform that can hold the wheelchair onto the face of the ram... Basic advantage being that it wouldn't require cutting any joists, and that it would be easily reversible by taking the unit out and replacing the cut deck boards if that were ever needed.

Done right I should be able to have something that ended up just about flush with the existing deck when down,

Gooserider

Dune said:

Goose, stupid question dept: Would it be viable to have half the ramp inside the house and the other half on the deck, so you only need four feet of ramp outside?

The other idea I have; Pad the floor of the deck up to level with the inside, or nearly so.

Click to expand...

Putting part of the ramp inside the house wouldn't work, as it would eliminate the threshold for the sliding door to the porch, not to mention requiring cutting into the joists for the main house floor... Similarly, padding up the entire deck to be even with the floor would be a major task, and isn't a viable approach.... It's a largish area, and it would take a great deal of material, and when done, would have screwed up the access out the back to the swimming pool area...

Gooserider

RANT ON> You know, I don't want to seem overly critical, but it would really be nice if people would read and respond to the original content of what I asked...

I posted asking about the possibility of using the trash compactor THAT I ALREADY OWN to make a lift for the approximately 8" step between my kitchen floor and the floor of the back porch (described as a wooden joist floor, with about 3-4' of free space underneath it)

The responses have consisted of two pages worth of suggestions on other approaches, good, bad and indifferent, many of which suggest that the original posts weren't read... Most required purchasing more stuff, and potentially more expense, and tended to be suited to far larger lift distances than the 8" I'm needing for this application...

Any chance of getting back to the original topic of recycling a trash compactor into a lift?

Gooserider
RANT OFF <<<