A simple injury, getting older, or a disability can rob us of entire areas of our own home. The stairs you loved when you purchased the home are now an obstacle you cannot handle. By adding stairway chair lifts to your home, you can regain every portion of your home.

Stairway chair lifts can be used on almost any kind of staircase, whether it is a straight stairwell, or one with landings and turn. You can even get a chair lift which works wonderfully on a spiral staircase. Even narrow staircases can be fitted with a chair lift.

One of the first things you need to take into consideration is if you are wheelchair bound, then you will probably prefer wheelchair stairway char lifts. This way, you do not need to transfer out of your wheelchair, onto the lift, and then transfer onto another wheelchair on the next floor. You just roll your chair onto the lift, raise the gate to secure the chair and ride up or down the stairs. Once you arrive at your destination, the gate lowers and you simply roll off.

Wheelchair lifts do take more room on the staircase than simple stairway chair lifts. With a lift only requiring a standard seat, they only use a few inches of width on staircase. Depending on the lift, they will either be secured to the stairs, the wall, or both. The most common mounting point is on the stairs. The stairs are designed to be load bearing, and can handle the weight easily. Even at the top or bottom of the stairs, the lift can be very narrow. You can fold the seat up, to save even more room. This allows everyone else to use the stairs easily.

There are two basic methods of powering stairway chair lifts. The first way is with full time AC power. Your lift requires no batteries, since it has full time power from you household electricity. The second method is battery powered. You recharge the batteries by plugging in the charger to an AC outlet at the top or bottom of the stairs. Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages.

The battery powered unit will require new batteries every year or two. If you forget to plug in lift, you may discover the batteries are discharged right when you really need it. The big advantage is when the electricity goes off. You can still move between floors several times.

With AC powered stairway chair lifts, you have constant power from the electric company. No more worrying about recharging batteries, or replacing batteries. When the power goes off, so does the chair. You will still be able to travel back to the floor below you, on most systems. This requires using the manual release, which lets the chair slowly descend. This is fine, as long as you are not in the basement, needing to go up a floor. Then you are out of luck until the electricity comes back on.

No matter which way you go, you will regain access to your home. Instead of seeing the stairs as an obstacle, you will enjoy a simple, enjoyable ride up the stairway chair lifts.