Staircase design space saving options

[Mikefromlondon]

OK I will see if i can sketch it quickly.


Let me explain to you what I mean by a final step near the door.

Imagine you have reached the top of your landing, this would take you all the way up to about 2400mm (240cm) final height, you still have to overcome another 20cm, so now as you turn to open the bedroom door, you then take a final step of 20cm into your bedroom.

But this can be pretty nasty, a sudden deep step right near a door can cause problems.

So I suggest that we put half step (10cm) at the top and not full 20cm, so any impact of missing your footing especially coming out of the bedroom will be limited.

So we now make up for the short at the bottom landing, so what we can do is raise the whole of bottom landing by 10cm, so in other wotrds when you want to go from living room to your kitchen, you will need to overcome a small (half step) to get on top of the bottom landing, and then down again by 10cm step into the kitchen, people soon get used to such steps and need not even be conscious of it, subconsciously they know they will be stepping up or stepping down.

So effectively as you want to go up, you climb 10cm from your living room to your landing, then negotiate 12 step risers of 20cm each, this takes you to 2500 (250cm) and a final 10cm step into the rooms.

I done a pencil drawing, but can't find my camera and if i do I will take a picture and post it later on, the steepness or angle is just 45 degrees which i believe is just about acceptable and each landing width will be 70cm, which is more than adequate.

 

[Mikefromlondon]

Here is a straight stairs but very very tight, reaching very tight tolerances, and no guarantee the BC can approve it, provided you explain to them this is how all houses in your street have been constructed and you have a slight improvement over the old layout as old layout protruded too much into paths and landings. The slope or angle is less than 45 degrees, approx 42-43 degrees. Note Hand Rail should be fitted to both sides not shown in the drawing.

 

[Mikefromlondon]

A slight problem with my plan, I had always measured Going from the tip of the nose to the riser wall of the step, and I proposed 30mm nose on a 200mm step, hence I stated the going is 230mm, but this is not the case, Going is measured from nose to nose, which would come to 200mm, which BC may reject. They state minimum 220 going and with a nose of about 25mm you get an overall step footprint of 245mm, so that means if we were to increase our going from 200 to 220mm, we will not be able to fit 11 goings in a span of 2200 to give us 220mm going, it would only give us 200mm going plus the nose.

So it is back to drawing board I am afraid, However, if you look what they require height wise for the riser, they can allow maximum 220mm, which I find to be a little too uncomfortable to climb especially by older people, as well as the regs suggest minimum width of 900mm whilst you have only 800mm width for the stairs, I think in your case it will be a special concession allowed by BC as the layout of your existing house cannot allow you to use reccommened figures.

But yes if you were to raise the step height from 200mm to 215mm, you will then only need 11 risers (steps) and that means 10 goings, which can then fit within 2200mm span and providing you 700mm landings at either side, with two half steps one at the bottom and one at the top. (Unfortunately the 11 steps now makes them very steep, 45degrees which may not be acceptable, unless you are prepared to have one step running in the lower landing, we can then have 12 steps and this should give us a little ease on riser as well as reduce our steepness angle. You decide if you think it is acceptable to have a step intruding in the pathway from living room to kitchen (lower landing) and what the BC may accept.

So please re-think about my drawing where I have shown 12 steps (risers) and 11 goings, we need to change this to 11 steps and 10 goings where riser is 215mm and going 220mm+ nose of about 30mm, this will then fit within your available span of 2200mm, however the angle may be a little problem, it may just be acceptable. Remember their notes says that exception can be considered in older buildings, on new ones, no way.

Revised drawing:

A third option below, where one step intrudes into the hallway or passage that leads you from living room into kitchen, in practice such intrusion is not a real problem as people don't walk right near edges due to their shoulder blades keep their feet well away from edges or walls. I have a situation like this for my loft stairs where a step protrudes into the passage way, it has not caused us any problem whatsoever, with rounded edges it looks rather nice as a feature.
This also eliminates a small step at the top, so upper landing will be level with room floors, I prefer this and it is a compromise all around where the slope of the stairs is also less than 45 degrees, approx 43degrees

 

[Hl.house]

MFL, thank you so much. Your help is really appreciated.

 

[Mikefromlondon]

You are welcome hi.home, found a slight discrepancy in my last plan of 50mm, if you add 12 steps of 200mm riser, that comes to 2400mm, and this includes the bottom protruding step, however, as you can see the bottom landing has been lifted off the actual ground level by 150mm according to my plan, and if you were to add the 50mm discrepancy, it would make it rather too high at 200mm, so we can split this by two so that our bottom landing will be at 100mm off the ground level, that means we will finish off the top landing at 100mm lower, so there will be a 100mm step at the top landing as well, unless you distribute this 50mm difference across all 12 steps that would then make the riser 204mm, or you could make the lower landing 100mm off the ground, and so now we have 100mm difference that we can also spread over our 12 steps which will then make them 208mm riser for each step. You have a few choices here, all depends what you would prefer. This plan gives you a compromising solution between the steepness, decent bit of landing at the top, remember top landing is crucial as you don't want to come out of your rooms and have no landing and yu could miss your footing and fall down all the way.