The Ramp That Met Every Number and Still Did Not Work

The call two weeks after handover

The ramp was a clean job. A woman in her late sixties who uses a manual wheelchair, lives alone, and propels herself, had three steps at her front door with a total rise of 21 in. The shop built a wood ramp straight out from the stoop: 21 ft of run, measured at 1:12 with a digital level along its length, a 36 in clear width between handrails on both sides, rails at 35 in, edge protection, a 60 in landing at the bottom on the driveway. The existing concrete stoop, 36 in deep and 48 in wide, served as the top landing. The building inspector passed it.

Two weeks later her daughter called. Her mother had stopped going out unless the daughter came over. Last week she had rolled backward off the stoop onto the top of the ramp while opening the storm door, caught a handrail and stopped herself. She was not hurt. She was not using the ramp alone again.

Contain first: the same afternoon

A wheelchair rolling backward down a 1:12 slope picks up speed fast and can tip backward at the first change in surface, and she had already done it once. So before anyone diagnosed anything, the lead went out that afternoon with one goal: stop the motion that had caused the roll-back.

With her agreement, the storm door's closer was disconnected and the storm door was latched fully open against the house with a hook, so she no longer had to pull it toward herself on arrival. That left the main door, which swings in and which she could push. It was not a fix (she still had to close and lock the main door from a 36 in stoop when leaving, and the storm door could not be closed in weather), but it removed the backward roll on arrival while the real fix was designed. Her daughter agreed to be there whenever she left the house until it was done.

When the shop then asked her to demonstrate the door, it was with the daughter standing on the ramp directly below her chair and the lead beside the latch, both there to block a roll, neither there to lift her.

What the numbers said

Every figure the shop had checked was right, and that was the trap.

The arithmetic closes: 21 in times 12 is 252 in, which is 21 ft. The top landing met the residential code, as adopted by her jurisdiction, which is why the inspector passed it. It did not meet the 60 in landing length the 2010 ADA Standards use, and the shop had used the ADA figures for everything else on the ramp. Nobody had noticed the switch, because the stoop was already there and looked like a landing. The ADA does not govern a private home; its numbers are the best dimensional reference there is, and the shop had stopped using them at the one place they mattered most.

But even a 60 in stoop would not have fixed this alone, and that is the real lesson.

What she was actually doing at the door

The shop went back and, this time, asked her to show them arriving and leaving, with the daughter standing by on the ramp below her. This is what they saw.

              HOUSE WALL
   ===+======[ DOOR 36 in ]=======+===
      |4in                         |
      |<>L                      H  |  L latch, H hinge
      |    .                 .     |  storm door swings
      |       .           .        |  OUT, over the
      |  STOOP 48 wide x 36 deep   |  whole stoop
  RAIL+-----+              +-------+RAIL
            |  RAMP 1:12   |
            |  36 in clear |  21 ft down to
            |              |  the driveway

Arriving. She rolls up the ramp facing the door. The storm door is hinged on the right and swings out, toward her. The latch is on the left, 4 in from the handrail post. She cannot pull up beside the latch, because there is no floor there: the rail is in the way. So she reaches forward from the front, unlocks, and pulls the storm door toward herself. A 36 in storm door swinging out sweeps the full 36 in depth of the stoop. To let it open she has to roll back, and 36 in behind the door the stoop ends and the slope begins. She was holding a door against its closer with one hand and holding her chair against the slope with the other, at the top of a 21 in drop.

Inside the storm door, the main door swings in. That part works: she pushes it open and rolls through.

Leaving. Worse. She rolls out backward or turns on the stoop, and then has to pull the main door closed behind her and lock it, and close the storm door, from a space where the storm door's swing takes up the whole stoop again. With her chair's footprint on a 36 in deep stoop, she was turning with her rear wheels a few inches from the edge.

Why the walkthrough would have caught it

The shop's original visit had been a measuring visit. The estimator measured the steps, the stoop and the driveway, asked her daughter where the car parked, and drew the ramp. Nobody asked the woman to show how she got through the door, because she could not get to the door at all; the steps were the barrier everyone could see.

But the door motion could have been observed before the ramp existed. She could have done it on the inside, at the same door, from her chair: approach, unlock, pull, pass, turn, close. The estimator would have seen her need room beside the latch to pull a door past her footrests, and room behind her to back up as an out-swinging door came at her. That observation, not the step count, sets the top landing. See related: The Accessibility Walkthrough with the Person Who Lives There.

The design rule the shop now uses is simple: the top landing is sized for the door, not for the ramp. The 2010 ADA Standards' maneuvering clearances at 404.2.4 are the reference: for a front approach on the pull side of a door, 60 in of clear floor perpendicular to the door and 18 in beyond the latch side; for a front approach on the push side, 48 in, with 12 in beyond the latch if the door has both a closer and a latch. The ADA explicitly lets those clearances overlap the ramp landing (405.7.5), but they still have to exist.

At her door, both sides apply, because she pushes the main door going in and pulls it closed going out. So the landing needs the pull-side figure: 60 in deep and 18 in beyond the latch. The stoop had 36 in and 4 in.

The fix

The shop proposed three options and walked her through them at the door.

1. Extend the landing only: 60 in deep, with 18 in or more beyond the latch side. Keeps the storm door. She would still be pulling an out-swinging door toward herself on every arrival, now with room to back up.
2. Remove the storm door and extend the landing: the main door alone, pushed going in and pulled closed going out, on a landing with the pull-side clearance.
3. Add a power door operator, later, if her strength changes. That needs an outlet and a door that can take the hardware, and is a separate decision.

She chose option 2. The storm door was decorative and the screen insert had not been used in years; she said she would rather have the door she could manage. That is her call, made with her at the door, not one the shop could make for her.

What was built. The stoop was extended with a framed landing at the same height, level to within the 1:48 the ADA Standards use for a landing's slope (405.7.1). Depth went from 36 in to 60 in, adding 24 in. On the latch side, the landing was widened by 20 in, taking the clear floor beyond the latch from 4 in to 24 in, past the 18 in reference with room to spare for her chair's footrests. The 48 in width became 68 in. The ramp itself was unchanged; it was unbolted from the stoop, moved 24 in further out on the driveway, and re-fixed to the new landing, with the bottom landing still 60 in long. The handrails returned along the open edges of the new landing.

The hardware. A lever on the main door, and a keyless lock she can operate from her chair with one hand, at a height she showed them. See related: Lever Handles and Controls a Hand Can Work.

The test. She arrived and left three times with the shop watching and her daughter on the ramp: unlock, push in, roll through, come back out, pull closed, lock. No rolling back toward the slope. She did not need the 24 in of latch-side floor to be that wide on the first pass; she used about 20 in to get her footrests past the door edge. The extra 4 in was the margin for a day she is tired.

Where the same door would need a different landing

The 60 in by 18 in figure fit her: a manual chair, a front approach, an out-swinging storm door removed and an in-swinging main door kept. Change any of those and the landing changes with it.

• A power chair or a scooter. Longer and heavier, often harder to reverse precisely, and some cannot turn in a 60 in circle (the turning space the ADA Standards use at 304.3). Measure the device's length and watch the user turn it on a taped-out space before setting the landing.
• A ramp that arrives along the house wall. The user then approaches the door from the side, not the front, and the ADA's latch-side and hinge-side approach clearances in 404.2.4 apply instead; they ask for floor space in different places. A side approach on the hinge side of a pull door is the most demanding of all.
• A door that cannot be changed. An out-swinging door that must stay (a storm door the household will not give up in a hard climate, a rental door whose change has not been agreed with the landlord; see related: Reasonable Modifications for Tenants) moves the answer toward a power operator sooner, or toward a different entry.

What it cost the shop, and what it changed

About a day and a half of extra labor and the lumber for the landing, against a job that had been quoted at about three days. The daughter did not ask for a refund; she asked why nobody had watched her mother use the door.

Two things changed in how the shop scopes ramps:

• The top landing is designed from the door outward. Door swing direction, latch side, closer, and which motions the person makes going in AND going out are recorded before the ramp is drawn. The ramp is the easy part.
• No switching references mid-design. If the shop uses the ADA figures as its reference for a private home, it uses them for every element, including the landing that was already there. A residential code minimum is a floor for safety, and in this case it was a floor no wheelchair user could open a door on.

References

• 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design, sections 404.2.4 (door maneuvering clearances), 405 (ramps) and 505 (handrails): a dimensional reference for a private home, not a requirement there.
• International Residential Code, section R311.8 (ramps) in the 2021 edition, as adopted and amended by your jurisdiction.
• See related: Ramp Slope, Rise and Landings; How to Lay Out an Entry Ramp.
• See related: The Accessibility Walkthrough with the Person Who Lives There; What the ADA Does and Does Not Cover in a Private Home.