Just because I can get in the front door, doesn’t mean that your house is handicap accessible. Most people think that just because the door frame is wide enough, you can get right in the house. The chair I am in now, the pin under my chair that latches me in my truck, is taller so I don’t have issues of it getting caught on the door threshold. In my last chair, if the threshold was more than an inch tall, the pin would catch. I have gotten stuck trying to get into houses and restaurants and businesses because the pin would catch and I couldn’t cross it to get in. I am not trying to call anyone in particular out on this, but I need a normal persons house so I am going to use my grandma’s house as an example. With some boards and a make-shift ramp, I can get in her house. Trying to go in the front door, I rub the door closer bracket on the bottom of her screen door, as well as the door itself on the other side when I go in the front door. If you have ever tried to fit a refrigerator or something wide like that through a door, it is a similar problem, the door itself kind of gets in the way as it can’t open far enough.
Once I get in her house, the chair inside the door usually has to be moved as there is not enough room between it and the couch to actually get into her living-room. Once I get past that obstacle, I usually catch her rug that she has in front of her couch with the pin under my chair. I have gotten caught on rugs in other peoples houses as well, its not just hers. I haven’t been able to go into her kitchen in probably 5 or 6 years as there is a chair that sort of blocks the entrance way into the kitchen. Even if I go in the kitchen, there isn’t much place for me to go as it is fairly narrow between the table and the stove. I haven’t been able to use her bathroom in probably 10 years because it is narrow going to it, as well as it has a step down into it. I have heard her say she could put a ramp into the bathroom, but as I shared in my last post, the room required just for the chair isn’t really there now and a ramp would make it worse. So if I need to pee while I am there, I have to go outside, or would have to use a bottle. When I go to leave her house, I once again struggle to go through the door, but this time with an added challenge. Her house is a old house, and the floor in front of the door isn’t as solid as it once was. As such, it is not completely level in front of the door and the right side of it sits lower that the left. When I go to go through it, the slight change in elevation on each side causes my chair to take a right turn as I go through the door and more times than not, I get stuck against the right side of the door frame. That is always fun trying to overcome and I am surprised I haven’t broken something yet, going in or out.
The path from the front door to her driveway is another issue. Her sidewalk is about the same width as my chairs so if it has rained or the ground is soft, I have to go slow to stay on the sidewalk so as to not get stuck in the yard. I can go down her porch if I park on the garage side of her house as it has a deck that goes between the house and the garage. Some days I have issues with the transition from the deck to the sidewalk as it tends to get soft and if I hit it wrong, my crazy wheel on the back will get stuck in small gap between the two. As you can see, there are a lot of obstacles and this is just one house as an example. I will now switch to my house as an example. I remodeled it and put a wider hallway and wider doors in it. It is a basement house that is all one level. Some days in my house, my doors don’t seem wide enough and I still brush against them. I also have a few holes in my wall where the part that sticks out above the crazy wheel or my foot platform has went through the drywall. Right now they are just in my bathroom, mostly because it is honestly too small to be using it as it really isn’t fully handicap accessible.
I have a similar situation at work. The crazy wheels on the front and back of my chairs are just that, crazy. You can’t always predict which way they will decide to pivot when you back up. As such, it causes them to hit things like door frames and walls and furniture, and I feel I am a pretty good driver with it. I would also like to point out that my grandma’s front door is only 6 inches off the porch. Compared to most houses, this is really short. There are rules governing ramps outside of businesses and that, that are fairly flat. In my experience, I can personally go up a ramp that is twice as steep as they recommend. I struggle with ones that are more than that. The only other thing I would like to mention is the weight of my chair. It weighs 366 lbs without batteries and found the piece of paper the other day that shows it weighs 411 lbs with batteries. I weigh around 200 lbs so it and my chair weigh over 600 lbs. My chair has 6 wheels on it so as a rough estimate, each wheel will have around 100 lbs on it. That is part of the reason I will get stuck easy in a yard or small gaps between things.