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
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