Installing a stair lift in your home is a great way to increase the number of years you can live at home, even if you or a loved one have health limitations that make it difficult to go up and down stairs.

I was out with an older woman last week showing her property (I am a real estate agent). She already had bad knees, and had to take the steps slowly. One of the things she was searching for was whether her new property would accommodate a master on the main level ( if it did not already have one ) and a step lift on the steps.

I believed she would just need to take a look at one-level houses, but each home she looked at had a staircase in it. One home had a sweet Y-shaped staircase featured in the sitting room that split off in 2 directions. One home had a precarious old staircase leading to the completed basement, and one home had a plain, old school 2-level staircase that went to the upstairs. My customer said to me that this wasn’t precisely what she was on the lookout for and claimed she would “know it when she saw it.” It had been hard for her to work out online whether the houses she had an interest in would accommodate a step lift because most realtors don’t feature the stairs in their website pictures.

This client gave me a bit of an education about what it takes to install a stair lift. Basically, she was looking for a long, straight run of stairs from the first to the second floor. We actually found it in one of the new construction homes we looked at, so they are certainly out there. Stairlifts can be installed on other types of staircases, of course, but as with everything, complication adds expense.

If you are building or purchasing a home that you need to grow old in, it’s a brilliant idea to consider ahead the way in which the home can be altered to fit your wishes when you’re older. Some things – like wide corridors that will accommodate wheelchairs – are nice features you may want to have anyhow.

Other things, like grab bars in the bath tub, are easy to add on later if they become necessary.

What’s not as easy to plan for is if you will need wheelchair access to upstairs rooms of the house. Even if you’re not in a wheelchair, going up and down the stairs can be a challenge for many seniors.

You might decide that putting a stair lift in is a great way to handle the situation.

A step lift runs on a track that’s installed on the side of the steps and plugged into the wall for power. Your steps must be against the wall or have a braced railing to accommodate the full weight of somebody on a seat, and the track along the wall. A step lift will help you bring groceries and washing up and down the steps, too. Just about anything you can carry, provided you do not surpass the safe weight limit for the chair lift.

Though they can be costly to install, many seniors are so cheerful about the idea of having the facility to remain in their own homes as they age, they are more than prepared to pay the price to have their home upgraded to accommodate their changing ability to get around.