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Now Frank writes, Hi Steve, I love your blog, so informative. Thank you Frank. I'm writing to see
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if you can do an article on indoor residential elevators. I live in a split-level house in South
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Borough, Massachusetts. As a 77 year old I have been senior proofing my home for years. I have
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thought if I ever needed to live in a place with one floor it would be far less expensive to install
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an elevator than to sell my home. Heck, the cost of a Realtors Commission alone would more than pay
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for an elevator I think. Any thoughts? Well Frank's absolutely right and he's exceptionally wise too
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Very few people that I know want to move into a nursing home when they get older. Who would? Who
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wouldn't want to stay in their own home? But Frank is taking steps to make sure that he can stay in
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his own home as long as possible and maybe for the duration. So he's exceptionally wise to start that
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and I'd also agree with his take that an indoor elevator is the way to go. Products of this sort
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are exploding really as the population ages and people want to take care of themselves in their
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own home. Governments are even encouraging people to renovate their homes now encouraging them with
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with words and with money too because the regular nursing home approach is very expensive. When you
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take away all the subsidies that some places offer for this sort of thing you're looking at maybe a
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hundred thousand dollars a year just to stay in a nursing home. Now some people pay less but they're
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not actually paying the full cost. The full cost of society is about a hundred thousand dollars a
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year for a modern nursing home in the Western world and that's a lot of money. It really does
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add up especially considering that most people spend an average of five years in a nursing home
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So when it comes to interior elevators there are a couple of suggestions. First you want to explore
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the local commercial landscape and see who is in the business of doing this. There are lots of
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outfits that are in the business of dealing with residential elevators. One of the most common
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types is what's called a porch lift which is a great alternative to a wheelchair ramp when you
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don't have enough room. It probably costs less for an outdoor porch lift than it would cost to build
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say a proper ramp from wood. There's a lot of wood in a ramp. There's foundation work to do all kinds
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of things. So we've got the outdoor porch lifts which are kind of like an open elevator. There's a
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big door you roll in there you close the door you hit a button and it goes up the you know the two
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or three or five feet or whatever it needs to to get onto your porch or some sort of a landing so
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you can go in your house. Now what Frank is asking about is an indoor residential elevator which are
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similar. They're more expensive because they're more involved but they serve the same purpose and
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they basically make the whole house one level. There are specialist companies that offer that
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usually the same companies that offer the outdoor porch lifts. Now there is another option that Frank
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and other people might want to consider and that's a stair lift. These can be installed on
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most any kind of interior stair. It involves the installation of a rail quite a strong rail on the
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side of the stairwell opening and there's a seat on there and it's electrically operated so you hit
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a button and it kind of takes you up takes you down and that is much less expensive and intrusive
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to install than an indoor residential elevator just because there's so much less to do. With
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the elevator option you have to take up some floor space. You've got to completely redo the framing
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and then you have to have the equipment installed whereas with the stair lift it's just something
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that fastens to your stair and in fact if you know if the time comes at the house you don't
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need the house anymore or it's going to be bought by someone else then that lift can be taken off
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the stair lift. So two options to consider
