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0:00
In this video, I'm going to outline some of the points you need to think about when meeting the aging at home challenge
0:11
This is just an overview video. I'm going to be outlining some points, then going into some more details right here in the video
0:18
But the real detail comes in the course. Item number one, adopt a can-do attitude
0:26
2. Find a trustworthy contractor. 3. Determine if your house really is suitable
0:37
4. Create access from the outdoors. 5. Create access for indoor spaces
0:46
6. Consider the little but important things. And finally, consider helpful electronics
0:54
So now one at a time. Adopt a can-do attitude. You know, they say attitude is altitude
1:04
and that's certainly important when you're planning an aging well-at-home campaign. Your attitude, towards your family
1:13
towards caregivers that might come in, towards tradespeople, contractors that might help you
1:19
that's a make-or-break detail, and it's easy to forget that. But it is fundamental
1:24
It's kind of like the oil on the machinery. A good attitude makes everything work better
1:30
Find a trustworthy contractor. I speak with a lot of seniors about renovations for living at home
1:38
and many of them are kind of frightened with the contractor thing because they're afraid of getting taken advantage of
1:44
That's a legitimate concern. And as I explain in the course, finding a trustworthy contractor is mostly about doing legwork
1:52
asking for references and checking those references out. Once you have found a trustworthy contractor
1:59
then it's a matter of communications and documentation and I'll be going into all that later
2:06
Is your house really suitable for aging well at home? The house on the left is great
2:15
It's in good condition. It's all on one floor. There's hard surfaces leading, you know
2:22
pathway leading to the front of the house. There's a sidewalk along the edge of the property
2:27
a fully paved double driveway and a nice wide garage. Just at first glance, this would be a great house to start with
2:34
because it's got some things in place that you're going to need otherwise
2:39
Now, the house on the right, besides being kind of run down, doesn't have any hard surfaces around it
2:44
so it's going to be, you're going to have to establish those
2:48
because you can't be walking on grass and mud and things like that. Wheelchairs don't work very well on that
2:53
Walkers don't work very well on that. So really the question is whether it makes sense to move houses and renovate there or to
3:02
renovate what you've got. I've got a quiz in the course that will help you make that decision
3:08
And of course, I'm available to help you on a case-by-case basis too
3:12
So number four, create access from the outdoors. What you see on the right is pretty standard, wooden
3:21
access ramp. This is common, often used, but there are limitations. The biggest one being that a ramp
3:31
needs a fair amount of distance so that it's not too steep. A ramp for a wheelchair needs to be no
3:40
steeper than one inch of rise for every 12 inches of horizontal run Now that the steepest A better geometry is 1 inch of rise for 20 inches of overall run
3:55
So that's going to take up more space and many houses don't have that kind of room. So
4:03
in cases like that, that's where we have what's called a porch lift, which is what
4:08
you see on the left here. A porch lift is just a kind of a small
4:13
open outdoor elevator. You can roll your wheelchair on it or you can walk up with your
4:19
walker. You can either close the door or flip up a little ramp at the bottom. Hit a button and in
4:26
10, 15, 20 seconds, you're raised to the height of the veranda or porch that leads into your home. So
4:34
interestingly enough, too, these porch lifts, they're often not any more expensive
4:43
than building a wooden ramp. Wood is expensive. The labor for constructing one
4:49
constructing a ramp is also very expensive. So, ramps can actually, porch lifts can actually cost you less money
4:57
And on the topic of finances, many governments around the world have quite generous programs
5:04
financial programs to help with the cost of these things. I costed a porch lift recently
5:09
and nearly half the price would come back in rebates and tax credits from the government
5:16
So something to consider. It's also something that not too many seniors know about or have thought about
5:22
but it's certainly an up-and-coming thing and well worth looking at. Five, create access for indoor spaces
5:30
Now the photo on the left is a stair lift inaction. A stair lift works with a rail that is permanently fastened to the staircase
5:39
and on that rail runs a more. motorized chair. And it's electrically operated and you push a button and you go up
5:49
you push a button and go down. It's a great way of equalizing or leveling out, so to speak
5:55
a multi-story house so that you can have access to all floors. Now, even if your home doesn't
6:02
need a lift or even if you're going to put one in, there are other reasons, other challenges you have
6:08
to meet as far as differences in height goes. And the photo on the right shows what
6:13
I'm talking about. That's what I call a micro ramp. That was custom cut from wood to match a couple of
6:22
inches of height difference from one part of a house to another. The custom cut wooden ramps like
6:28
this are very useful and you can make them look nice. They can look just like the surrounding
6:33
floor if you want, like this one here. But you can also buy ready made metal micro ramps that are
6:40
adjustable and just to help you get over these little humps and bumps that might be in your house
6:47
Even if you don't have a wheelchair, these ramps do reduce the risk of tripping, which is always
6:54
a possibility and well worth avoiding too. Now, six, address the little but important things
7:03
The course has lots of things like this in it. Specific products are mentioned
7:08
So it takes the guesswork out of things for you. But just from beginning at the top left
7:14
grab rails are for more than just bathrooms. Therefore, wherever you find yourself wanting to grab onto something for stability or to get up
7:23
grab rails come in a lot of different shapes and lengths and sizes now
7:27
So there's something to suit every situation. Similar to that over in the middle top here there a flip handle that fastens to the outside of an exterior door And the idea there is if you coming in you want to steady yourself as you coming up over say a threshold of the door or something
7:45
you can flip the handle down and it provides a solid thing to grab onto
7:52
And then when you don't need it, you flip it up and keeps it out of the way that way
7:55
Now the carpenter working at the top right-hand image here, he's in the middle of widening a doorway
8:04
And widening doorways is kind of a thing, mostly because many interior doors are just a little bit too narrow for a wheelchair
8:14
especially full-featured wheelchairs like electric ones or things like that. They can get fairly wide
8:19
So widening doorways is a thing, and many homes need that to happen
8:25
But take a look at the photo of the hinge at the bottom left there
8:30
That's what's called an offset hinge, and it replaces regular hinges in doors
8:38
But the beauty of it is that when the door opens fully, the door is really moved right out of the way
8:44
So if you have a doorway that's only an inch or two to narrow
8:49
then you might be able to get the width you need or the functional width you need with one of these offset hinges
8:55
the offsetness kind of just moves the door over as it opens up. Now the senior lady in the middle at the bottom is using a grab arm
9:07
It's three or four feet long. It's got a handle, kind of a handle you pull on the user's end and a claw that opens and closes on the other end
9:18
And this small, inexpensive little thing can make a huge difference in helping you to pick things up when you'd
9:25
rather not get up out of your chair to get them or if something falls down, the grab arm can
9:31
help with that too. And over in the bottom right-hand corner, you see a collage of photos there
9:37
that illustrate various friction-enhancing aids that you can put on, in this case stairs
9:45
but you can also put it on regular floors too. Enhancing friction to improve footing
9:52
is a really big and useful part of renovating for aging well at home
9:57
And there are lots of options for this. There are plenty of other little things, and I'm going to be getting to those later in the course
10:03
But this is just to get you thinking about the possibilities. And finally, consider electronics
10:10
You may not have a lot of electronics in your life now, but the value and the functionality that is available to seniors now because of electronics
10:22
is really amazing and it's just growing and continuing to become more valuable
10:27
So this item top left here, this is a kind of a speaker that you can actually speak into
10:33
and it will respond to your commands. So if you want to play a certain kind of music or something, a speaker like this can do that
10:42
a device like this can do that. It can also, if your home is connected to this, you can control lights and blinds and drapes
10:51
and all kinds of things just with your voice. So pretty valuable little feature
10:57
And it all ties into the whole smart home thing, which is very up and coming right now
11:04
And no senior should be at home without some electronic alert device
11:10
And that's what you see in the top middle here. There are many different kinds
11:14
but they serve to automatically alert the authorities if you fall down and lose consciousness You can push a button for help too It really just takes a lot of the danger out of living on your own as you age indoors Now the thing to remember is all of these
11:35
services that provide this kind of functionality. They're subscription services because they have
11:39
to have people kind of manning the system responding to any calls you might send out and
11:45
dispatching the appropriate care. So they do cost money on. a monthly basis, but well worth it
11:51
And these devices, this alert system, fall system, call system, they all work with what you see
11:58
on the top right-hand corner here. This is a keypad, a key punch lock
12:04
You don't need a key, although you can see a key can be used
12:08
This is handier than having keys just for you living in the house or for other people living
12:14
along with you. But it's absolutely essential if you have some sort of an emergency alert
12:19
service because they're going to want to know your code because they have to be able to give the
12:23
code to whatever emergency responder is showing up at your place. Keys aren't going to work in a
12:29
case like that because they might need to get into your home without any help from you. And that's
12:36
where that key pad lock system comes in. The faucet on the bottom left is an automatic faucet
12:44
So you've probably seen these in public washrooms. They're quite common there. You put your
12:49
hand in front of the black sensor that you see here and water comes on, water comes off when
12:56
you take your hands away. It just makes it a lot easier to use than working knobs or levers on some sort of a regular faucet
13:05
The device in the middle is an automatic battery-powered vacuum, actually. It is kind of like a little pet in a way
13:15
It kind of roams around on your floor, it bumps into the walls
13:19
and turns around and randomly moves over your floors, but the randomness eventually ends up delivering full coverage
13:28
So it's just one last thing for you or someone else to do
13:32
It's not gonna dust the furniture or wipe down the counters. It's only gonna do the floor, but still
13:39
that amount of help is better than nothing. And finally, bottom right hand corner here
13:44
this is an LED light bulb. And the reason I included here is because
13:49
because many seniors want more light in their house. And it'd be great if you could get that without having to change the light fixtures
13:59
Now, the thing about light fixtures is that they're rated for a maximum output of light
14:05
And this maximum output is almost always related to the heat output that an incandescent bulb would put forth when it's working
14:17
So, for instance, a fixture rated for a 60 watt incandescent bulb will probably overheat if you put a 100 watt incandescent bulb in it
14:29
But the new LED lights put out a whole lot more light for a given amount of heat put out
14:37
So you can get an LED light that puts out the equivalent of 100 watt incandescent bulb
14:45
and you can put it in a fixture rated for less, rated for 40 watts, 60 watts
14:51
and it's okay because the LED puts out very, very little heat
14:56
So you can get more light with the given fixtures you have. Now this is just touching on some of the little things that will make a big difference for you
15:05
Lots more detail in the course, but I just wanted to get you thinking about how all this works
#Aging & Geriatrics
#Assisted Living & Long Term Care
#Home Improvement
#Seniors & Retirement
#Landscape Design