Stairlift for curved 13 step stairs advice needed please.

dadsarmy1

Looking at the various curved stairlifts for internal use on 13 steps and need to learn more before seeing sales people. 1; Electrical charging supply to the batteries in the chair would this be supplied to the batteries if chair is docked at the preferred position at bottom of the stairs if the fused spur/socket is at the top of stairs? 2; Can the stairlift be fitted on carpet covered chipboard stairs? 3; Terrace house is about 10 years old and ring main where electrical supply comes from is protected by an RCD. Do stairlifts still need earth bonding and if so can this be to an adjacent copper pipe radiator circuit or would the earth cable need to be connected direct to the consumer unit? 4; Would a flexible mains electric supply cable from a wall socket 5 metres away be acceptable? Any stairlift tips and hints much appreciated, thank you.

cranford

We have a recon curved stairlift from a company in Eastbourne who are very very helpful but you would need to be within about 30 mile. Its a Stannah but I decided to find a company that was as local as possible rather than use a national chain who do not publish their prices but give you "special terms" if you sign up on the day.
Quite a few stairlift companies have web sites with prices on but for me they were too far as they were in the north.
My stair lift has a 180 degree turn with a landing and 14 steps and is screwed directly on top of the carpet into the stairs rather than the wall and I think this is quite common for curved stairlifts. It does mean if you need a new carpet you have to get the lift people in to unscrew the lift, get the new carper fitted and then stairlift refitted. My stairlift took 90 mins to install. A transformer is connected to a standard 13 amp power point and the actual stair lift is connected to the transformer through a wall and about 2 metres away. There is a docking point top of stairs and bottom and a wire goes through the lift tube to the top docking station. The power supply can be top or bottom but just a single supply. I have seen stairlift that require two supplies . The battery in the chair is on charge all the time and my electricity consumption has risen by about 50p a week!
The chair we have comes with 2 remotes so it can be "called" down if two people are using the same lift or you need to send it up starirs to park it out out the way although the arms, seat and footrest all fold down.
The one we have also has an electric swivel chair so when it get to the top the seat swivels to face the landing otherwise you have to turn the seat yourself.
When I was looking earlier this year 90 degree curved lifts were available for £3500-£4000 and 180 degree lifts £500 more. The electric swivel seats adds about £350.
Some of the companies use ebay to sell lifts.
As I said we have a recon one which was £4000 against nearly £5000 for a new one but I reasoned that we would need a 24/7 maintenance plan so a recon one was ok. The maintenance plan can cost a few hundreds though.
One last thing is that my lift takes 60 seconds from top to bottom.
Feel to ask some more and i will do my best.

cranford

Just remembered I had links to a couple of installation manuals that may be of help
http://schodolez.info/PINUM/Installation%20Pinum.pdf

https://www.stannahstairlifts.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Siena-curved.pdf
http://stairliftshome.com/wp-content/uploads/PDFs/Acorn-Stairlifts-Installation.pdf

dadsarmy1

Thank you Cranford for your brilliant reply. Lots of information there for me to mull over and the manual will I am sure be extremely useful too. One question I have is can you see a earth bonding cable attached to your stairlift? It will be green and yellow and at least 4mm in diameter. If you have earth bonding is it attached to the main consumer unit or a pipe? Yes interested in Stannah myself. Thanks again for your reply.

cranford

Hi, there is only the cable from the transformer going to the stair lift, no earth bonding cable from the cu or a pipe.
If you have technical questions you could post them on the startlift forum where a few lift engineers participate.
http://stairlift-forum.co.uk/forum/main-category/main-forum