When faced with mobility difficulties, the solution we choose to enable us to move around the home needs to be as efficient and easy as possible. Home lifts and stair lifts are the two main options to choose between, and at the point of selecting, speed and convenience of travel may not seem to be a huge factor. However, once in place and used several times a day for every journey between floors, speed can become absolutely vital.
Stiltz lifts travel at a smooth and efficient speed of 30 feet per minute, making them much faster than a stair lift. This means that in the average home a journey between floors in a Stiltz home lift can take as little as 20 seconds. Stair lifts take on average 30-60 seconds to do the same journey. For those relying on using their home elevator throughout the day the extra seconds on each individual journey soon add up.
Those having a residential elevator installed as part of future-proofing the home certainly want it to feel like a smooth, efficient ride, not the far slower mobility aid, associated with stair lifts. It is surprising just how frustrating traveling at very slow speeds can be, when the world moves at a fast pace with so much to fit into busy lives. Using a typical stair lift can feel genuinely slow.
Wheelchair users
A Stiltz home elevator is able to travel at the speed of 30 feet per minute, meaning no matter whether it is the small and neat Stiltz Duo Home Elevator, or the larger wheelchair compatible Stiltz Trio Home Elevator, customers can enjoy traveling between floors in as little as 20 seconds.
For wheelchair users there is also the huge benefit of not needing to manoeuvre from wheelchair to stair lift and back to chair after the journey. With a Stiltz residential elevator you can simply wheel in and out of the lift car, saving a huge amount of effort, energy and time.
Stairlift speeds
Why does a stair lift take so much longer than a home elevator? With the nature of a stair lift being an open chair travelling up a stairwell with a simple lap strap for safety, stair lift speeds must be limited to keep them safe. A domestic straight rail stair lift can travel as slowly as 13-25 feet per minute. However, it will perform this at an angle. A 10-feet floor to floor measurement requires a 15-feet rail. Therefore, a stair lift travels around 50 per cent further at a slower speed, and this works out to take around twice as long than in a Stiltz home lift.
It is worth carefully looking at options when considering home elevators and taking into account speed as a factor in the decision-making process. Over a year, choosing a slower type of lift could mean you spend as much as a full day traveling in it!
Skip to content