Home Building - Choosing your Stairs
Posted: Sunday, December 03, 2006
by Brad Franklin
Beyond performing their purely practical functions as vertical passageways, most staircases serve as powerful design elements, presenting strong vertical lines, rhythm and pattern, and graceful forms. A stairway is an opportunity for you to be expressive. Most conventional stairs are relatively difficult and expensive to build, especially hand-crafted, hardwood varieties.
Spiral Stairs
Of the many available pre-built and knock-down stair kits, spiral stairs are the most common, because they’re relatively economical in cost and space usage. They're ideal for reaching new attic or basement rooms and for two-story additions.
Manufacturers make spiral stairs in steel, aluminum, hardwoods, and combinations of these materials. Although some specialize in making only hardwood or metal, many companies make both. They typically offer a few basic designs that you can customize by selecting from a multitude of treads, balusters, railings and other options.
Hardwood stairs come in red oak, poplar, white oak, ash, walnut, mahogany, cherry and other species. Steel and aluminum stairs come in a variety of finishes, from hot-dipped galvanized to custom color coatings. Treads may be flat or embossed steel, gratings, hardwood, rubber, or plywood or steel base for carpeting.
When ordering a spiral stair, you should get to choose the direction of twist (right hand railing up or left hand railing up) and you always specify the diameter, which should be between 4’ to 6.6 feet.
One key choice you must make when selecting a spiral stair is whether to buy a knocked-down kit or a complete, one-piece unit. Though kits are cheaper and considerably easier to ship, one-piece stairs tend to be more durable, are less likely to come apart or rust because they have fewer joints, are lighter in weight, and can be installed in as little as ten minutes compared to three or four hours for a kit. One-piece units also afford much broader choice in materials - particularly railings.
So why would you choose a kit? Because kits are cheaper to buy and easier to ship. Kits start at about $400 for small-diameter, standard steel models. One-piece steel stairs start at about $500; aluminum start at about $1500 and all-wood or wood and metal combined run from $2000 to $5000 and beyond.
Straight Stairs
This style is the most common and straightforward - literally its design is straight up and down. Some manufacturers build conventional hardwood stairs in sections, ready to connect end-to-end or at landings. Most stairs cost from $1000 to $2000, but for custom-designed products, the sky is the limit. With most pre-built hardwood stairs, the newel posts, railings and balusters are pre-cut, pre fitted, and numbered for easy reassembly.
Circular Stairs
Most circular stairs are custom designed for high-end houses. Some come as completely pre-assembled units, while others, such as custom designs are built at the factory, then disassembled into three or four large sections for shipping convenience. Both these and one-piece circular stairs are extremely heavy and require a crane or some other type of lifting device at the job site.
Prices range from about $10,000 for a stock-sized hardwood circular stair to ten times that amount for highly-custom units. It's difficult to use stock sizes, because the house's floor-to-floor heights must be designed and built exactly to the stairs' specifications. Contractors prefer to have the stairs fitted to the home, not the other way around. The average price for custom designs is about $25,000.
Know The Code
Because the location of railings and balusters, width and depth of tread, and height of risers affect the ease and safety of using a stair, these dimensions are regulated by building codes in your area. Most local codes are the same as national standards, but call your city or county building department to be sure. Tearing down a staircase because you didn’t follow the code - will be very costly.
Types of Stairs
One way that stairs are differentiated is by shape, or the direction they run. There come in several varieties:
* A straight stair stretches from lower to upper level in one straight run. Though this is the easiest type of stair to build, it can be difficult to squeeze into a floor plan.
* A return stair divides the run, reversing direction a full 180 degrees at a landing.
* An "L" stair makes a 90-degree turn at a landing.
* A winder serves like an "L" stair, but requires less space because the landing is divided into pie-shaped steps.
* A circular stair generally sweeps in a broad curve from one level to another.
* A spiral stair twists around a center pole in one of two ways. The common spiral stair has a straight center pole with steps radiating out from it; a helix-style spiral has a curving center support that follows the sweeping twist of the stair.
About the Author:
http://www.thehousedesigners.com are independent architects and designers who joined together to provide you the best home plans at the best price.
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