Accessible Entries and Outdoor Paths

Why this matters

A house with three steps at every door is a house a wheelchair user cannot leave on their own, and one that a person on a walker leaves less and less often. The entry is where outdoor conditions, building code and the body all meet: grade has to fall away from the foundation, a path has to be firm in February, and the route has to start somewhere a car can actually stop. The usual mistake is to pick the front door because it is the front door, then build the longest ramp in the neighborhood to reach it, when the garage entry needed a fraction of the length. The second mistake is to bring the ground up to the threshold and pour water against the house. This card covers how to choose the route, the slope and surface figures worth knowing, and where the water goes at the door.

The figures, as a reference

The 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design are the best dimensional reference for a path and they do not govern a private home. Use them as the starting point, then walk the route with the person.

• Running slope of an accessible walking surface no steeper than 1:20, or 5 percent (403.3). Steeper than that and it is a ramp, with its own rules. See related: Ramp Slope, Rise and Landings.
• Cross slope, the side-to-side tilt, no steeper than 1:48, about 2 percent (403.3). Cross slope is the figure people forget and wheelchair users feel most: a chair on a steep cross slope pulls toward the low side the whole way, and a walker's legs rock.
• Clear width of 36 inches minimum (403.5.1).
• Surface firm, stable and slip resistant (302.1), with openings in it, such as a deck gap or grate, no wider than 1/2 inch (302.3).
• Changes in level up to 1/4 inch vertical, or up to 1/2 inch beveled at 1:2 (303). A heaved sidewalk joint is usually the first one you meet. See related: Thresholds and Changes in Level.

Choose the route by rise, not by which door is the front

Measure the vertical rise from where a car stops to each door's finished floor, then work out the length of path or ramp each would need. The door with the least rise near a parking spot usually wins, and it is often the garage.

• Front door. Often the highest rise in the house, with steps that were built to look good from the street and a walk that starts at a curb.
• Back or side door. Sometimes on grade, sometimes over a deck.
• Garage entry. A car parks under cover, the rise into the house is often one or two steps, and the route stays out of rain and ice.

The garage door to the house has rules of its own. Under IRC R302.5.1 in the 2021 edition, as adopted by your jurisdiction, the door between an attached garage and the house has to be solid wood or solid- or honeycomb-core steel of a stated minimum thickness, or a 20-minute fire-rated door, and self-closing or automatic-closing. A modification keeps all of that. A self-closer heavy enough to latch the door is also heavy for a person in a chair, so look at an automatic operator or a closer that can be adjusted, and test it with the person. Do not let anyone idle a car in a closed garage while the house door is propped, and keep the carbon monoxide alarms the code requires in a house with an attached garage working.

Where the water goes at a zero-step entry

A zero-step entry means bringing the outside surface up to the door sill, or the door down to the surface. That runs straight into the rule that grade falls away from the foundation: under IRC R401.3, as adopted, the grade must fall at least 6 inches within the first 10 feet, with exceptions where lot lines, walls or impervious surfaces get in the way, and impervious surfaces next to the building sloped away at 2 percent. Concrete poured up to the sill with no other provision sends water against the door and under it.

The solutions all do the same thing: separate the walking surface from the soil, and give the water somewhere to go that is not the house.

            HOUSE         door sill
             WALL      ______|______
              |       |  landing    |__________
              |  +-+  |  falls away  path falls
              |  |T|  |  at 1:48     away at
              |  |D|  |  max         1:20 max
              |  +-+  |_____________|__________
   siding --->|   ^                     grade
   kept above |   trench drain at the sill,
   soil       |   to daylight or a drywell
   ===========+ foundation

A trench drain at the sill catches the water that runs down the door and the water the landing sheds, and it needs an outlet: to daylight downhill, or to a drywell sized for it, never into a foundation drain that already struggles. Its grate is a walking surface too, so its openings stay at or under 1/2 inch and run across the direction of travel.

A bridged landing is a slab or deck that spans over a gap at the wall rather than touching it, so siding and framing stay clear of soil and splash. The siding and sill have to keep the clearance to soil that the code and the siding maker require, which is why the soil below the landing stays low even when the walking surface comes up.

Flashing wherever a deck or ramp attaches to the house. A ledger bolted to the band without flashing above it is a rot problem in a few years. Whether a ramp attaches or is freestanding belongs to a sibling. See related: How to Lay Out an Entry Ramp.

Surfaces and light

Firm when wet and when frozen. Concrete with a broom finish, pavers on a compacted base with joints kept tight, or a deck with slip-resistant boards. Loose gravel, bark and stepping stones in lawn fail the firm-and-stable test for a chair and are a trip hazard for a walker.

Ice is the real enemy of a north-facing entry. Shade, an overhang that drips onto the path, or a downspout outlet that discharges across it will build ice on a surface that is perfectly sloped. Re-route the downspout, extend the overhang or gutter, and where a path will ice anyway, consider a self-regulating heat cable or mat listed for the use, installed to its instructions on a GFCI-protected circuit.

Light the whole route, not just the door. A motion-activated light at the parking spot and the door, and low path lights where the path turns or changes slope. The IRC requires a light source for exterior stairways in its stairway illumination section, as adopted; the path to a ramp deserves the same thinking even though no section names it. See related: How to Improve Lighting for a Customer With Low Vision.

Worked example: three steps at the front, one at the garage

The customers are a couple in their late seventies. He uses a walker indoors and a wheelchair outside, pushed by his wife on longer trips. The front door is up three steps from the walk, a total rise of 21 inches. The garage is attached, two-car, 20 feet wide by 22 feet deep, and the door to the kitchen is up one step of 7 inches. They own one car.

Front route. At a 1:12 ramp slope, 21 inches of rise needs 21 times 12, or 252 inches, 21 feet of ramp. That is under the 30-inch maximum rise for a single run in the ADA reference (405.6), so one run would do, but with a 60-inch landing at the top and the bottom the structure is roughly 31 feet long, plus a turn to keep it in the front yard. The walk from the driveway also has a 1-inch heaved joint and a cross slope measured at about 4 percent (a 2-foot level reading 1 inch low at one end, 1 in 24), twice the 1:48 reference.

Garage route. 7 inches of rise at 1:12 is 84 inches, 7 feet of ramp, plus a 60-inch landing at the bottom and a landing at the door. With the car parked in the left bay, the ramp runs along the house wall toward the right, rather than straight out from the door into the parking space, and the car still fits. The garage floor slopes toward the overhead door for drainage, about 1/8 inch per foot here, which is roughly 1:96, gentler than the 1:48 cross slope reference, so it is fine to roll across.

The call. The garage route: a third of the front route's ramp length (7 feet against 21), under cover, and starting where the car stops. The door from the garage keeps its solid-core construction and self-closing function; the shop fits an automatic operator with a wall button at the bottom of the ramp and one inside, so neither of them fights the closer.

What the shop still does at the front. The front walk is how visitors arrive and how he leaves for a walk on a good day with his walker. The 1-inch heaved joint is ground down to a bevel, done wet with water fed to the blade or with a shroud and vacuum, and with respiratory protection under a written program per 29 CFR 1910.134, following the silica controls for that task in OSHA's construction silica standard, 29 CFR 1926.1153, Table 1. The cross slope is left; correcting 4 percent would mean replacing the walk, and the garage route makes that a want rather than a need.

What would have changed the call. A detached garage, a garage full to the walls, or a door from the garage that opens into a hallway too narrow to turn in would each send the route back to the front or the back door. So would a household where the wife also uses a chair, since a 7-foot ramp in a one-car-wide space works for one chair but not for two people passing.

Checking it before you leave

Run water at the door. A garden hose on the wall above the door for five minutes shows where water actually goes: into the trench drain and out its outlet, or along the landing and under the sill. Rain is not a test you can schedule.

Read slope with a level, not by eye. A 2-foot level with a tape at its low end gives the slope directly: 1/2 inch low over 24 inches is 1:48, 1-1/4 inches low is about 1:20. Read the running slope and the cross slope at three points along the route, because a path is only as good as its worst stretch.

Have the person do the whole route both ways, from the car seat to the kitchen and back, at night with the lights on their timers or sensors, operating every door themselves.

References

• 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design, sections 302, 303 and 403, used here as a dimensional reference; they bind places of public accommodation and commercial facilities, not a private home.
• International Residential Code, R302.5.1 (garage-to-dwelling door) and R401.3 (drainage), in the 2021 edition, as adopted and amended by your jurisdiction.
• 29 CFR 1926.1153, Table 1, for silica controls when grinding concrete, and 29 CFR 1910.134 for respirator use.
• See related: Ramp Slope, Rise and Landings; How to Lay Out an Entry Ramp; Thresholds and Changes in Level.