I want to buy a second-hand stair lift for someone. These things are about 4 metres long, and quite heavy. Has anyone experience of them, and whether or not they can be dismantled? What's a good way of transporting one of these, can that length be handled by arsel farce or someone? Could I stick it in an Estate car & drive with a length sticking out of the back with a red rag on it? Ideas?
Hire a van ?
Regards Jeff
The ones I have seen are made up in track lengths of about 4-8ft or so. They can be very difficult to take apart and use a mixture of Torx, Hex and cross head fittings.
The motor unit and seat can be VERY heavy.
John Rumm picked a Minivator up from me a few months ago. I had to take the chair off the transport carriage, which then had to be taken off at the top of the track. Decide how you will take it apart and where the carriage needs to be before you start to dismantle it. Moving mine with the hand wheel was very laborious when compared to using the electric motor, although I did have to unwind the last bit of chain from it that way.
Make sure that you take careful records of where all the wiring goes. There will be lots of safety interlocks and lots of wires to go with them. You should also find one that locks the chair to the track if the drive fails. I had to tie a spring-loaded jockey wheel back to be able to move the carriage. John put the track on top of an estate car and the bits inside. He can probably tell you more about the actual problems of transporting and installing it. You will only need a long load marker if it overhangs the rear by more than 1 metre, but then it should be a proper triangular symbol, rather than just a piece of rag.
Colin Bignell
They are a right cow to dismantle. ISTR the chair comes off the TOP. Some of the hex bolts I was trying to undo turned out to be rivets (Don't laugh, it was 'king dark) When you get the chair off you'll realize how heavy it is. The track too is damned heavy (nearly squashed my father when we finally got it to move) and it was nearly as long as the staircase. There was a folding bit at the bottom because of doorways, which was difficult to remove.
However, it did all go in a Transit.
See other posts re wiring, and it may be worth getting manufacturer in to install & test. High speed ejector seat anyone?
nightjar carriage. John put the track on top of an estate car and the bits inside. He
Transporting was actually pretty straight forward. The track was actually no longer than SWMBOs car (we let it overhang the back a little so as to get the supporting point a bit closer to the centre of the track)
It was held on with a couple of ratchet straps. Support was a couple of roof bars that were mounted on the permanent roof rails of the car. Total weight was well inside the limits for the car and rails. The whole lot was very firmly fixed (and seemed to have no objections to a 100+ mile romp at less than legal speeds ;-)
Sorting out power for the beastie took a few hours on arrival (as did lunch and stuff), we then spent about six hours in total fitting (this included a couple of unfitting operations to tweak things like track position (when we worked out the chair was in danger of stripping the wallpaper when sent up or down unloaded!)
In the case of the minivator the track was simple enough to fix, just by screwing the mounting brackets to the steps (I had anticipated removing the carpet under each bracket, but on seeing how it was installed on top originally I skipped that bit - handy since we moved them more than once). Getting the chair back on the track was not too difficult, although as Colin said, did require a fair bit of knob twiddling. Wiring up was easy enough once you worked out that the numbering in the circus diagram did not actually match that silk screened on the PCB (well at one end at least, since it was different at both!). A bit of buzzing out with a DMM sorted that. Shortly after a large test load (me) was dispatched for the maiden ascent.
Went back a few weeks later to fit some extra brackets to the track, because it was proving a little too flexible for its new (one presumes heavier) user. Full marks to minivator for still stocking (or more correctly making to order) spare brackets for a non current design. Deduct marks for wanting 25 quid a shot for them!
All in all one happy bunny of an end user!
These things come under the lift & crane regulations and have to be inspected by the crane inspector .......... you need to be aware of this if doing a DIY refit.
A 7.5 tonne tail lift box fan will carry one dead easy, you can probably drive it on your car licence, about 100 quid a day, hire, insurance and VAT.
Rick
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