coping with stairs

My old house had a Bilco door with concrete steps leading from the backyard into the basement. I could drive my van into the backyard and connect a come-along or a wire rope to the hitch/receiver on the van and get heavy stuff in and out of the basement. What are you planning to use as an anchor point?

Across from the door to the basement is a bathroom. I plan on putting a 2 by 4 across the door, The stove is not all that heavy, With the interior baffles and doorls removed it is about a hundred pounds. Just a bit heavy for one person.

=20 Dan

I have pretty much made the sled. The top is made of 3/4 inch plywood and the bottom ( parallel to the stairs ) is also 3/4 inch plywood. I was planning on plywood on the vertical side, but it seems plenty rigid without doing that. I had the 3/4 inch plywood on hand otherwise I would have used thinner material.

Just don't belay off of the commode!!

Don't neglect to reinforce the stairs from below.

Top end control:

Bottom end control: Rope loves to wrap around your feet and whip you off balance.

jsw

Gotcha. I've used an HF rope hoist for something like that:

They're inexpensive and don't look robust, but they worked well for me. For $7 you could buy one and experiment. The worst problem that I had was getting them untangled after use -- they get twisted an snarled if you just throw them in a box.

If you have any marine/boating supply places they might carry better quality hoists. I've also used old boat winches with wire cables to do similar lifting/dragging chores.

Good advice, but overkill for this. Things are heavy to me when they are a hundred lbs or so. Carrying something down stairs that weighs a

100 lbs and is awkward to hold is more than I want to do. The wood stove weighs maybe 100 lbs with the doors off and the internal baffles removed. The guy I bought it from and I lifted it into my pickup so it is not too bad. So it is lighter than me and I do not reinforce the stairs when I go up and down them. With the stairs being less than 45 degrees, the force along the stairs is less than 70 % of the weight and when one throws in the sliding friction the force is probably less than half of the weight. So maybe 50 lbs force for the rope and should be finger tip control with the rope belayed around a 2 by 4.

Dan

Looks like that would work well and would be well worth getting or making if one did a lot of taking things up or down stairs. My solution is not as refined, but has been made out of material i had on hand, so only cost labor.

Dan

How about setting up some 4x4's in a tripod arrangement and lowering it into the hole with that. I've seen a couple of photos on the net of guys lowering Bridgeports into cellars that way.

RWL

Just had to deal with this at another home. I picked up some heavy pipe. Drilled through it and countersunk the holes. Screwed this to the edge of a couple 2X4s with blocks between them at the same angle as the stairs. Then built a simple flat cart with 4 cheap sheaves as guide wheels. Lowered it with a boat winch.

When it is needed it drops into place easily. Plus it stores out of the way behind the stairs.

My wife would not be happy if I cut a hole in the floor. I did hear of someone that dug a hole in the basement floor to get enough height for a Bridgeport.

Dan

That is close to what I have done. Except no pipe and no sheaves. Going down I figure the sliding friction will not be a problem. if I use it to raise things, I will be thinking of some sort of wheels. Will probably try it out tomorrow.

Dan

When looking to buy ourf irst house, we were shown one where an addition had been built, including a basement "bedroom". To reach this bedroom, you descend the original basement stairway to a 66 inch high room, crossing this area by walking along a 24 inch wide x 18 inch deep concreted groove in the floor to the entrance to the new "bedroom". One wall of the original, shallow basement had been covered with white brickwork in the form of a dual fireplace, presumably to turn the area into a recreation room - I guess you could sit on the floor with your feet in the trench and watch phoney flames in your false fireplace. Amazing what you see when looking in the first house price range!

I've done that. It works fine. Karl

I thought you had an outside Bilco door you could lower it into.

RWL

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0Dan

The Eagle has landed. The wood stove is in the basement. And the sled worked pretty well. I got the wood stove up from the garage to the house using some ramps and a come a long. And then onto a dolly and rolled it to the door leading to the basement stairs. I got the sled up to the same level as the floor and then secured a 1 by 2 to the tracks so the sled was secure. Getting the stove on the sled took a bunch of fiddling. The stove is too wide to go thru the door easily. So the stove went through the door sideways. And the legs of the stove are 27 inches apart that way and the sled is only 24 inches in that direction. So had to lay some wood on top of the sled .

Since I had to remove the 1 by 2 chock I ran the rope from the 2 by 4 across the door thru the quick link attached to the sled and back around the 2 by 4 and down to the stairs below the sled. This gave me really good control with only a little force needed to hold the sled still. So holding the rope with one hand, I removed the screws holding the 1 by 2 to the tracks and slowly lowered the stove. Very slowly as there was a lot of stiction and vibration. But it worked pretty much as planned. Maybe waxing the tracks and or the bottom of the sled would get rid of the stiction.

It would have been a lot easier if I had made a dolly that was just the size of the top of the sled. Then I could have easily rolled the stove on the dolly onto the sled. With of course a lip around three sides of the sled so the dolly would not roll off the sled. Dan

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0Dan

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 Dan

Always good to hear that something works as planned, and you don't have an incident punctuated by an expletive.

~20 years ago, a recently widowed aquaintance sold a 50" projection TV to a sales type guy. The TV was located in the rec. room of the town house so had to be negotiated around a couple of right angles and up a flight of stairs. The buyer showed up with his 85 pound wife to pick up his purchase. I ensured that he understood that the purchase was "as is - where is", to which, after a quick verification that it was in good working condition, he readily agreed and paid over the determined price. In consideration of the well being of his wife, Junior and I volunteered to help with the extraction, and after considerable effort and a few dents in the drywall, we had it outside where he insisted on laying it face down in his Jeep Cherokee whereupon I distinctly heard "CRACK." I neverdidi find out whether it worked or not when he got it home.

That sounds like an expensive mistake. I wonder if he learned from it or just found someone to blame.

At least the lady got her money before the TV got moved an inch.