Residential elevators
By John den Haan
If you you are disabled, you experience major difficulties moving up and down the stairs of your home. For a significant portion of these individuals, a situation like this might ultimately lead to the installation of a stair lift. However, in case you have a curved or narrow stair case, have obesity problems or are unable to leave your wheelchair, having a stairlift installed might just not be suitable for your particlar situation. In this case, you might be better served by the installation of a residential elevator. Having a lift at home may sound exhorbitantly over-the-top, but as a large group of satisfied owners can testify, it may be a bare necessity to the elderly or disabled. So, if it happens to be the case that your home employs a narrow or curved stairway, think about making a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of a residential elevator with those of a stair lift.
A great advantage of a residential lift, is that having one has the potential to signficantly increase the value of your property. A regularly maintained lift will keep its value almost for a lifetime. In fact, home lifts are one of the most common amenities installed to raise the value of newly built property. Given the current state of technology and due to recent drops in retail prices, a residential lift has now become a viable solution to persons wanting to increase the quality of their daily lives. The old advice of 'just' moving to a bungalow once the stairs become an obstacle, simply is no longer valid. People that are still handing out this advice really forget to take into account the emotional effects associated with being forced to move one's place of residence.
If you are interested in purchasing a residential elevator, the most appropriate moment to have one installed, is during the building of the home. Unfortunately, during construction time, most home owners don't take into account that they could one day be in dire need of mechanical help in climbing the stairs. Since lifts require a shaft, a foundation, an engine and several (usually two) entry points, not all houses can accomodate an elevator 'out of the box'. Chances are therefore, that significant adaptations are needed before being able to install a residential elevator. Several of these adaptations might have large aesthetic or financial consequences. In order to be brought up to speed on your home's ability to support an elevator, you would do well to contact a local retailer before purchasing the elevator. He or she will send an engineer to check on your home for any possible problems. The report issued to you after the inspection may include a price quote for having the work done by the installation firm themselves. If you want to compile an objective view of the situation, be sure to have it evaluated by several companies.
If your home has been found suitable for lift installation, it is time to start worrying about the smaller details of the device in question. The primary factors that will decide the price of your residential elevator are travel height, amount of stops and the lift's carriage capacity (weight). In general, the lower these values, the less expensive your investment will be. Another factor that could have great influence on your choice of elevator, is the kind of drive. There are several types of drives, including the cable hydraulic drive, chain hydraulic drive and the vacuum type drive. Every system has its own (dis-)advantages in noise, speed, durability, capacity and cost. Make sure you are well-informed by your local installer, inorder to be able to make a well-educated decision. Finally, you probably want to make sure the interior of the lift carriage has all the features you need. Things you could think about are a telephone jack, an emergency button and gate type. An accordeon-type gate is generally recommended, since a scissor-type gate could potentially close on your fingers when closed incorrectly.
About the author
If you have a desire to learn more about the home elevator, make sure to visit our website, which has guides and tips on home elevators from http://www.FreeArticlesAndContent.com
|
|
Copy This Article
For FREE!!!
You can use this article and copy it on your own website
for free! All you have to do is make sure the article
is copied with no changes and includes the "About
The Author" text. Also please ensure that all url's
are hyperlinked according. Thank you. |
Link To This Article - And We'll
Link Back To Your Website!
You are more then welcome to link to this article! All
you have to do is copy this webpage address from the
address bar and create a link on your website. Please
use the title of this article for your link text. Please
get in contact once you have linked to this article
and we'll link back to you! Thank you. |
|
|
|
Other great articles from this category...
|
Related Sites
|
|
