What You Need To Know About Manual Wheelchair Lifts

Wheelchairs have come a long way in just the last ten years. Wheelchairs that weigh a mere thirty pounds can hold 250 pounds and last for years. You can even buy good quality used manual wheelchairs. Many people first look on their wheelchairs with scorn and then come to love it as a kind of artificial limb with some quirks of its own. Unfortunately, wheelchairs still aren't very good at climbing stairs. Until we get some manual wheelchairs with jet rocket packs strapped to them, we're going to need to use a manual wheelchair lift.

For The Home

In England, an elevator is called a "lift". Perhaps that will help you learn what you need in a good manual wheelchair lift. It has to be like an elevator or exactly like an elevator. In some, you ride a big metal box up and down the floors of your home. In others, the chair attaches to a mechanical pulley system along the wall of your staircase to pull you up.

A manual wheelchair lift was featured prominently in the hit movie "Gremlins", but unfortunately that scared people away from these lifts for years to come. The gremlins fiddles with her lift to cause her and her chair to be flung out of a second-story window and out into the Christmas night. That actually cant happen, because manual wheelchair lifts move very slowly.

There are two basic kinds of manual; wheelchair lifts electric and hydraulic. The advantage of electric is that it's cheaper. The advantage of hydraulic is that it still works if the power goes out. Hydraulics is what powers many elevators in buildings today. They can be installed inside or outside of your home. Either kind is costly, going into several thousands of dollars. In America, Medicare and Medicaid will pay for only part of a manual wheelchair lift. They generally prefer to only pay for the actual wheelchair and not much else.

For The Car

People are more familiar with manual wheelchair lifts for vehicles. Most public busses in Europe and North America are equipped with such a lift to help wheelchair-bound passengers in and out of the bus. There are much smaller versions available for people to get in and out of their personal vehicles. They usually cost less than $1,000 (US). They also work at very slow speeds, so you dont have to worry about being catapulted into the sky.