Aging at home is a popular option for many individuals and families. Faced with the variety of options that are available outside of the home for their loved ones, many adult children and grandchildren are realizing that they can just as affordably provide a way to get this care at home. Some of the transitions that need to be made when preparing to help someone age at home is adding ramps to allow easier access from the front driveway into the home and replacing loose rugs and carpets with wood, tile, or vinyl flooring. In a multi story home, of course, there are other adjustments that need to be made. Fortunately, as more families are looking at this retirement option, residential elevator installation company products continue to expand. Finding a way to install residential lifts in a home requires specific kinds of engineering as these residential elevator installation company products require additional room below and above the unit.
Unfortunately, there are too many times when property owners wait too long to make the adjustments that they need. Installing an elevator in the last six months of a loved one’s life is not financially wise. Taking the time to talk with your parents and grandparents about what their ultimate goals are can help you determine if it is important to talk to a residential elevator installation company sooner rather than later. We often think of commercial elevators in large multi story apartments, office buildings, and parking garages, but the aging of America means that there are also many times when an elevator company can provide products and services to a residence as well.
Elevators and Residential Elevator Installation Company Products Continue to Expand
Elevators used to require a two-man dispatcher or operator team to function. The advent of navigational buttons, of course, have rendered those jobs obsolete. And while there are still some elevator operators in some very high priced apartments, all elevators are easy to operate by the user. In addition to no longer needing a physical operator, of course, there are also many other ways that today’s elevators have changed. For instance, available in a wide range of sizes, these products can be used at large concert venues to move expensive sound equipment in and out of an arena. On the other end of the spectrum, there are also much smaller models that can be installed in a front door closet that will allow a resident to age in place, or for a child with limited mobility to be able to be more independent.
Consider some of these facts and figures about the elevator industry and the increasingly wide range of products that they offer:
- Each serving an average of 20,000 people per year, there are an estimated 900,000 elevators in the U.S.
- U.S. elevators collectively make 18 billion passenger trips every year.
- As evident by the fact that there are twenty times more elevators than escalators, but only 33% more accidents, elevators are twenty times safer than escalators. Additionally, although escalators can carry more people, they also require significantly more space to operate.
- Amazingly enough, elevators carry the equivalent of the world’s population every nine days, according to research by United Technologies.
- Passenger, freight, Limited Use/Limited Application (LULA), home, and personnel are the five primary types of elevators that can vary in size and capacity. The LULA hybrid is a combination of a commercial elevator and a wheelchair lift.
- Passenger elevators can be hydraulically-driven, for a maximum travel height of 50 feet, or traction-driven, for medium architecture and high-rise architecture that is more than 50 feet.
The latest research indicates that more than 10,000 residential elevators are being installed every year. And while there are some of these systems that are being installed for convenience in new homes, there are many that are also being added to homes so that older family member are able to age in place. In a time when the technologies that are available for elevators can help you make any space more accessible, it should come as no surprise that there are more and more property owners considering adding this features to their homes for a variety of reasons.
