Stair Lifts Information and More

People who are unable to safely walk up the stairs, might be at a disadvantage in many areas, but there is no reason you must be at a disadvantage in your own home. A stair lift is one way to remove this disadvantage and make certain that you will always be able to use the stairs. There is no reason to avoid an area of your home simply because you are unable to climb the stairs and this is often the case for people who don’t have a stair lift.

Using a stair lift is generally very simple. Most carry a person up and down the stairs in a chair that is attached to a track. The track remains stationary and is securely bolted onto the stairs. To operate the lift, a remote control is attached to the lift. Most lifts also come with several wireless remotes, which can be used as call buttons at the top and bottom of the stairs, or can be used by a caretaker to remotely operate the lift.

Many lifts today are battery powered, and while they still plug directly into an electrical outlet, they actually use the battery to move the lift and the electrical outlet is used to charge the battery. Lifts that use batteries have been around for many years, but older models had required that the lift be parked in a specific place along the track. If you forgot to park it in that specific place, the lift would not charge. Modern battery powered stair lifts do not require this any longer and are constantly charging, even as they are being used.

To promote safety and allow a person to freely move up and down the stairs, a stair lift is usually the best and most cost effective choice. The exception to this comes when you need to install a curved stair lift. Curved stair lifts are incredibly expensive and take several months to be built and installed. For this reason, if you would need to install a curved stair lift, it is usually better to install a personal elevator, which costs about the same and unlike a curved stair lift, will actually increase the value of your home. Curved stair lifts, on the other hand, have little resale value, because they will only fit staircases that are exactly the same as the one they were built for.