Better known as Der Patriotspitze Innenraum Zahnradbahn or, PIZ
Upon the advice of multiple physical therapists, who can not foresee my gudwif being able to mount our 40-degree stairway any time soon, and the second story has the bedrooms, laundry and ALL the bathing facilities, I just had Acorn Stairlifts install this fine equipment to give her back the half of her house she has been missing since the end of March, and didn't have good access to even then.
With Acorn equipment, the homeowner can make it as plain or fancy as required or desired. Mine is fancy. This one starts in the living room so as not to clutter the bottom of the winding staircase:
It then turns the 180-degree corner onto the stairway and climbs the first flight:
then it turns ninety degrees to climb the second flight,
then it attains the Summit of Mt. Patriot, whereupon it makes another 180-degree turn to turn around the upstairs hallway balustrade and land in the hallway because I felt that landing right at the top of the stairs was a small safety hazard which could be avoided with the additional expenditure of specifying the top-180 landing (the carriage seat swivels to allow dismount of the passenger at the top of the stairs, so that fall-hazard is small, but now it is not there at all now):
Quite the project. Acorn sent their most experienced installer (no extra charge for that, and it took him 7 hours to put it in, program it, test it and then give us an hour's worth of instruction. This friendly technician put in 407 of the 480 or so stairlifts sold in Oregon and Washington last year. The entire system cost me $10,518, of which well over $300 is the insane State fee for an ELEVATOR permit and Inspection! Note that this is NOT an elevator. I have a beef in on this to my State Senator.
In the first photo, you will note the small transformer-rectifier attached to the baseboard behind the chair. Just out of the photo is the standard 15-amp wall-outlet it plugs into, drawing only 1.2 amps max. The DC-driven carriage contains the power source, a NiMH battery. The battery is good for 6-10 trips up or down with no power source. In the event of a prolonged outage and the failure of my Honda EU-2000i generator, I would put a small 80-watt inverter on a 12-volt auto battery to keep the carriage battery topped up. Note also that the cog-track and Guide-way is totally enclosed and modular, and screwed with HEAVY lag-screws into the floor and stair-risers, NOT the wall.
The carriage has more safety devices on it than a thermo-nuclear bomb (well, almost as many). There are "squat-switches" in the seat, foot-rest and arm-rests, there is a "deadman switch" that must be held closed continuously during the two-minute ride, but either hand may be used, and the foot-rest has obstacle-detection so the carriage stops if it encounters ANYTHING laying on the stairs.
Additionally, the carriage recharges it's battery while docked at either the top or the bottom landings. If the passenger finds the lift on the wrong floor, it is summoned to the correct floor by means of a remote control, which will ONLY operate it empty, not laden. There are two remotes, and THEY have dead-man switches which must stay depressed to make a full descent or ascent.
For the curious, the operational weight limit is 266#.
Quite the equipment, yes.
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