Threshold for new concrete on existing concrete

[Bob Riefer]

My mother recently progressed to needing a ramp on concrete steps at their house and went with the aluminum approach and has been very happy with it. Very solid, doesn't rust, looks nice etc.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

+1 for aluminum, steel, or wood. Unless you have a good concrete guy or like to do concrete yourself.

[Charles Lent]

I have a handicapped adult son who weighs 300 lbs and his heavy duty electric wheelchair to contend with here. We have the aluminum ramps of different sizes for all of our transition problems. They have been working fine for him for about 5 years now. The largest transition height is 8" high, and he manages fine with a ramp that is about 30" long. Because of his and chair combined weights, this ramp has bent up sides 2" high to add strength to it. The ones for house to porch, etc are just flat aluminum with slight transition bends so the ends lay flat on the two floor levels. I anchored the big high transition ramp in place by drilling into the edge of the high floor and dropping toilet flange bolts through the ramp holes and into these holes. They aren't threaded in, just used as pins with large flat heads. This makes it easy to remove and replace the ramp when needed and it has stayed in place well. Before the aluminum ramps I had build wooden ramps, but they didn't work all that well. The aluminum ramps have proven to be a far better choice.

Charley

[Alan Lightstone]

I happened to look into this a few years ago when I bought a ramp to gain access to my raised access floor in my workshop to move in large machines (which we wound up doing by forklift, but that's another story).

I believe the ADA requirements are for no more than a 1:12 slope (about 5 degrees of incline) which is very shallow and therefore long. Now Charles' son successfully navigates on a much steeper slope, so this is obviously a very conservative slope. If you don't need to get any zoning approval, you could, of course, choose whatever works for the area. A 5' long slope, which would be called for for your 5" step, is quite long for many areas. Mine by code would have required 18', which would have been a total non-starter.

And I agree that aluminum or steel would be best for your situation.

[Dwayne Watt]

I suspect ADA slope requirements are based on manual wheelchairs and limited mobility walkers, not powered mobility devices.

[Bill Gebhardt]

Thanks all, went with a 35" x 5' aluminum ramp from Allegro Medical Sales.
Bill

[Rob Luter]

Glad to hear it worked out for you.

[Jim Becker]

Thanks all, went with a 35" x 5' aluminum ramp from Allegro Medical Sales.
Bill

That was likely a very good choice for this application...designed for the task for sure.

[Alan Lightstone]

Sounds like a great choice. Does it work out well for you with your mobility scooter?