and why it didn’t work out.
Our followers know that I have been working on an idea to modify an electric stair lift to add a platform for Rocko to make it easy for him to get up and down the stairs. This was going to be the life-changing gift to him for his 17th birthday.
After a considerable (for me) investment in money and time, now I know why no one else has been able to do this.
When I found the lift mechanism, the lady who was selling it had taken it out of her mother’s home but the chair part was stolen out of their garage. All that was left was the rail and motor. I had planned to install it, build a box and attach it to the lift motor.
The track was 3’ too long but the price was right – 1/10th of what a used lift sells for. And it was heavy, my guess would be the motor weighed 75 pounds if not more. Even moving the light end was serious work. To make sure I had all the correct measurements for the box we set it in the stairwell, then Grandpa and I built the box (he has all the good tools). This was going to be temporary until Rocko was comfortable with the lift, then we would build something lighter and prettier.
My neighbor / handyman Matthew did the serious work, cutting off the track, reassembling the inner workings and connecting the electricity. He finally got to a point where he needed some parts and since it was Thanksgiving we decided to put off finishing until after the weekend. That gave me a couple days to really assess the situation.
By Monday I had decided to pull the whole thing out. It was a hard decision to give up on this dream, but you’ll see why.
When you see these lifts on tv, they don’t look nearly as big as they are when you get them home. I know there are some that hug the wall and only take up a few inches, but these are upwards of $10,000 new.
before the rail was centered and bolted in place
Because this is an old house the stairs are an afterthought, worked into what once was a closet. The total width is 28”. The center of the track sat right at 14” from the wall. I thought great, this is dead center and it will be easier to support the box and Rocko, but then I realized that I had seriously restricted my own ability to use the stairs. Forget about carrying anything down, that’s just asking for a fall trying to navigate with 14” to walk.
The box was going to have to sit on top of the motor. Had this been a complete stair lift, the chair would have been mounted so the footrest was at the bottom of the motor. This meant that there was going to be a pretty big gap between the bottom of the box and the floor. I had expected a little bit, but at the top it was two feet, at the bottom – with the turn at the end – I would have had to add a ramp or more stairs because the end point for the box was almost four feet off the floor.
By the time I did that I would have restricted my own movement even more. I had pictured a box close to the floor where I could put a brace underneath, then step on it and continue up the stairs myself.
If this was the only obstacle, I wouldn’t have given up, but there’s more.
The motor for the lift is chain operated, rated for 300 pounds and moves 18’ per minute. That’s a pretty powerful motor moving covering the length of the stairs in around 30 seconds. On a complete lift, there are all kinds of safety features including a sensor that will stop the motor if there is anything in the path of the chair and an emergency cutoff. All of these features are a part of the electronics of the missing chair assembly. Without the chair, I would have a switch mounted to the top and bottom walls. Get Rocko in the box, hit the switch and move up the stairs with him. Given the fact that I can trip over a piece of paper, this was carnage waiting to happen. If my foot got caught between a step and the box, that motor was going to continue to run. You get the picture.
The last consideration in ending this plan was Rocko’s three cats. We have racing cats pass us on the stairs all the time. Phoebe, the youngest, does it every single time I go up or down. There was a 10” gap between the wall and the track on the side where the brackets were mounted. On that side of the track is the moving and exposed chain pulling the motor. I can’t even think about the bad things that could happen. Even without the cats, suppose somehow part of my clothing got caught in it. Again, I get dragged into the motor.
Common sense ruled out and in the end, the dangers of using the stair lift without the appropriate safety features far outweighed our potential benefit.
I thought it could be done. I tried. It just didn’t work out. Frankly, Rocko is glad to see it out of here. I tried to tell him it was going to be great, to him it was just in the way.
We’ll keep looking for a way to make things easier in the life of a senior dog – and after that gloomy post here’s a picture to make you smile . . .
