Life Has Its Ups and Downs - installing an elevator in the home

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), May, 2001 by Robert S. Rothenberg

An in-house elevator can be the solution to inability to climb stairs.

HOME OWNERSHIP has long been considered a major component of the American Dream, with a house providing visible evidence that one has "made it" in the world. Those living in split-level, colonial, raised-ranch, or other multilevel houses, though, may suddenly find themselves in circumstances where old age, ill health, or physical handicaps make their homes a challenge their bodies find it hard or even impossible to cope with. Ascending the flight(s) of stairs that once were bounded up effortlessly becomes too painful to deal with or totally out of the question.

In the past, the alternatives were limited. Families could move out into a single-level ranch-style house or an apartment; make alterations to their lifestyle so that the affected individual would be limited to the ground floor, with kitchen, bedroom, full bathroom, etc. all accessible on that level; or, in extreme cases where other family members could not cope with the physically challenged person's problem, place him or her in a facility where he or she could be looked after by trained professionals.

There is, however, a solution that is growing in feasibility and popularity to meet such special needs. The trick is to accept the challenge and overcome it. If stairs become insurmountable, find a way to circumvent the steps. One way is with a stairlift--a seat that rides along a rail on one wall of the flight of stairs--allowing the rider to ascend or descend in a seated position. This is difficult in a number of conditions--it is clumsy, say, to transfer a wheelchair-bound person to the stairlift, get the wheelchair up- or downstairs, and make the transfer again --and is not much help in allowing the individual to do things like bringing groceries, packages, and/or laundry from floor to floor. The logical alternative is to adapt what apartment house dwellers have utilized for years to move people and things up and down--an elevator.

If you haven't had to confront a situation such as those outlined above, an elevator is perhaps the last thing you would have thought of in the realm of home improvement. When a severely arthritic knee--which ultimately led to total joint replacement--made it impossible for my wife to climb steps without excruciating pain, our raised ranch became almost an opponent, draining us of the pleasure it had afforded us as we raised our family in it for more than three decades. The idea of moving was considered and rejected--we had put too much time and effort into making our house a home and fitting it to meet our desires and comfort. Extensive research into solutions to our situation kept bringing us back to what we had originally regarded as a hairbrained idea. After all, with the exception of the fabulously wealthy, who had an elevator in a house?

Well, the answer turned out to be a lot more people than we could have imagined. Moreover, we found an entire industry out there devoted to exactly this product and with years of experience in installing it into a private home. After poring through countless brochures, accessing various websites, and cross-examining a number of professionals in the home improvement field, we narrowed our quest down to the Minivator Residential Elevator manufactured by Access Industries, Inc., Grandview, Mo. That company, in turn, put us in touch with a local distributor--in our case, Handilift Residential NY, New Rochelle--who we arranged to meet with us and our contractor to work out the logistics.

What we were looking at was how to accommodate a piece of machinery that measured roughly 75" high x 32" wide x 49" deep, a vertical track for it to ride on, and a motor housing at the top to raise and lower it. Ironically, figuring out where to put it proved a larger bone of contention than how to install it. Each suggestion met with an indoor version of NIMBY--not in my backyard. In this case, though, we were faced with which rooms would have to lose floor space to make room for the elevator. Moreover, heating ducts, electrical wiring, and major support beams that had been neatly tucked into walls and ceilings all these years suddenly became major players in the planning. Invariably, what seemed like a good idea to the people doing the labor seemed terrible to those who had to live with it--and vice versa. Ultimately, entente was reached, and all parties settled on running it from the back of the downstairs den to the corner of the upstairs guest bedroom.

Within a few days, our house was aswarm with workmen, cutting a rectangle in the floor/ceiling (it all depends on which story you're on), rerouting wires and ducts, reinforcing horizontal beams, carefully peeling off wallpaper so that it could be restored later, and generally turning our placid lifestyle into one of chaos. Miraculously, in our opinion, the chaos became order again after a few days; the Handilift people checked measurements and gave their approval; and everyone sat back to wait for the Minivator to arrive. That's when we found out it was sitting in a truck snowbound somewhere in the Midwest, knocking everybody's schedule out of kilter!