Ramp accessible to wheelchairs
Ten years ago, I founded a Wheelchair Ramp manufacturing company. Over the course of building and selling 250,000 aluminum portable wheelchair ramps, I've seen some mistakes made by my customers. Due to the size and weight of this kind of product, returns could be very expensive. So I'd like to share some of my observations. Mistake # 1 - Buying a ramp that is too long You should always choose ramp length according to a 6:1 ratio: every inch of vertical rise requires 6 inches of ramp length. This ratio would work for over 95% of customers - power chairs, manual chairs, scooters, and walkers. I often hear this: I'll go with a little bit of a longer ramp to have a better incline. Ramps of shorter length are not affected by this. For example, from a 3' ramp to a 4' ramp, the increase is over 30%, which would make a noticeable difference. However, for longer-length ramps, the incline does decrease that much unless you increase ramp length significantly. For example, mo...