loft ladder fitting troubles

[HarpingOn]

Hello

Album of pictures here, hope you can see them:

maybe:

Or a short link:

So I'm trying to fit the Abru 2 section aluminium loft ladder into an existing hatch.

Fitted the top and bottom stops, but it seems to me that the hatch door is too far away from the hatch frame, so that the top hinges of the ladder can't affix to the hatch frame because the door fouls the ladder.

I think the pictures make the problem clear.

The hatch and door were fitted by the house builder ~15 years ago, and I've only just gotten around to fitting a ladder and boarding the loft.

I'm pretty green (very green) at D.I.Y so I was disappointed to find this problem standing in the way of what I'd thought was going to be a simple job from watching the video at

So, what can I do? Is it new hatch door?

Thanks!

Gary

[Yendor]

Could you not just fit a 2"x2" to the dwang, to bring the height up to or above the chipboard flooring?

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

If you look at the first picture, the one showing a man on a ladder, the hinges are shown attached to the top of the frame at the level of the attic floor, nowhere near the hatch flap. Is that not what you are doing?

The pics don't show where you're having your ladder foul the hatch so it's hard to comment usefully.

Though... it looks to me as if the vertical distance between the attic floor and the inside of the closed hatch might be too small for the stowed ladder

- is that the problem? If so I guess you'll need to mount the ladder to something higher than the attic floor. (Don't fasten it to the frame around the hole unless that frame is strong enough - if it's just a cosmetic edge around the hole that won't be good enough. Even if it's rigid when the ladder is extended and also resting on the floor below, you don't want the whole assembly to be at risk of coming away from the attic/frame as you pull it down towards you.)

Maybe you've bought a model of ladder that doesn't suit the sizes of your hatch and frame. In my (limited) experience - in my case where the only possible place to fit a ladder had limited space above the hatch as well and roof supports that nearly got in the way of the ladder as it stowed - finding the right model isn't half so easy as you might expect.

[harryagain]

On my loft ladder the "hinge" is fitted to the upper part of the joist, ie level with the floor in the loft. This give clearance for the ladder. I think your hinge wants moving up as far as I can see from the pictures.

[HarpingOn]

Thanks for the responses.

What we ended up doing was screwing some 2x2 to the hatch hinge edge of of the loft hatch with some muckle screws to bring the attachment points for the loft ladder forwards, then we could attach the ladder (using the cheese metal screws provided).

I think mostly trouble because I wasn't using the hatch kit from the ladder, as we had a hatch already.

Problem: Solved. Big bit 'o wood.