10 replies to this topic

[kat2290]

Me and my partner are just about to start building our own house and we're looking for some adaptive technology. He is a C3 incomplete and has no movement at all below his shoulders. At the mo we live with his parents and he uses a Possum environmental control unit to control the tv, dvd etc but can only use it in bed as he doesnt want to have it attached to his chair (thinks they are too bulky and make you look more disabled than is necessary!)

In the new build we are incorporating two electric doors and a through floor lift but for them to be worth while he needs to be able to use them completely independently and this is where we are struggling. Both the doors and the lifts can be operated using infra-red signals.
Does anybody have any info/advice on voice activation for these sorts of appliances? We have already looked at a few things but with such a limited market they are all so expensive its ridiculous. Also its a bit of a gamble as we dont really know if all the different things will work together so it would be great if there was somebody out there who has the same level of mobility and has first-hand experience with these things.

Any advice from anybody will be really appreciated
Kat

[Hapahowlee]

Hi Kat . . .

My husband is C5,6,7 incomplete. He and I wanted to build a custom home when we thought about moving to Arizona, but in looking at the costs of land and uprooting and replanting cactus (it's the law here), we decided to look at track homes. The very last one we saw had a layout almost exactly as we would have wanted for our custom home. The builder of our home is D.R. Horton and we talked to some of their people about how much experience they've had in modifying homes for someone in a wheelchair before we decided to take the plunge. Fortunately, we didn't have to do many things to our home. It's 1 story, about 3,000 sq. ft. and nice open floorplan. We asked for no gaps in the concrete except for the controlled expansion joints, all low-boy thresholds, all tall-boy commodes and all interior doors to be 2'8" except for the rooms with double doors. We did have issues with our master bathroom and we had to live on the guest room side for the first 8 months while these idiots tore up our bathroom. Apparently the builder didn't have experience in installing a built-in fold down shower bench, at least not safely. Also, we asked to not have a cabinet under my husband's sink and they took the cheap route and made the entire counter the height of my sink so hubby couldn't get his legs underneath. It was nice building a new home so we could tell the wiring company where to place all the outlets; phone, cable & internet plugs. I think installing automatic doors is a great idea. Does your builder have experience in building homes for people in wheelchairs? Here is a link to a site I saw a while back that might help you to decide what you want to get. Technology My husband and I talk often about what we plan to do and not do in our next home and for sure we plan to get a lot more things automated. My husband is pretty independent, but he gets so upset if he scratches the door with his wheelchair or if there is a box in his way where he can't reach the cord to lift the blinds. We also have huge windows with plantation shutters and he can't reach the top shutters to open or close them and it would be nice to have them automated.

Just curious though, are you building a 2 story home? I notice you wrote about a lift. We had a lift at our home in the town which we used to live. It was outside and installed by the State so my husband could get up to the front door. What a pain that thing was. It was loud and being in the midwest, we had to deal with very cold sometimes icy weather that would freeze the lift and left my hubby in a bind. Also storms often knocked out our power and of course the lift would not work. There usually is a manual way of using such devices in case of power failure, but the one time I decided to use the crank, it took me 20 minutes to get my husband up the lift. So when you check into automated items, be sure to ask about a backup system for power failure. Something else to consider too is how long will the motor last in whatever equipment you decide to buy. We have spent quite a bit of money on motors going out b/c of using it too much or too little. Congratulations and good luck with the building of your new home and hope you find everything needed to make life easier. Take care. Hapa

[kat2290]

Hi, yeah we've designed the house with an arcitecht so its all going to be wheelchair friendly but my partner wants to be able to open the front door and a door which opens onto a patio himself so we're trying to work out how he'll be able to do that.
It is a two storey house, the lift is going inside though and its hydraulic. Its not so much the doors and the lift themselves that are the problem, its how he's goin to be able to use them without assistance

[jyrogirl24]

Hi there, my husband and I built our home 2 years ago, here is our website, go check it out, under the features section we listed everything we did and the products used....www.wheelchairhouse.com if you have any questions let me know...

btw..the best feature we did is that we did all the corners at a 45 degree angle, which makes for very easy turning and we used 6" based boards which have saved our walls, 2 years later and we have no damage to any walls or doors (it is great)
\|\\

Tiffany

[Slowlegs]

kat2290, on Aug 26 2008, 01:57 PM, said:

Me and my partner are just about to start building our own house and we're looking for some adaptive technology. He is a C3 incomplete and has no movement at all below his shoulders. At the mo we live with his parents and he uses a Possum environmental control unit to control the tv, dvd etc but can only use it in bed as he doesnt want to have it attached to his chair (thinks they are too bulky and make you look more disabled than is necessary!)

In the new build we are incorporating two electric doors and a through floor lift but for them to be worth while he needs to be able to use them completely independently and this is where we are struggling. Both the doors and the lifts can be operated using infra-red signals.
Does anybody have any info/advice on voice activation for these sorts of appliances? We have already looked at a few things but with such a limited market they are all so expensive its ridiculous. Also its a bit of a gamble as we dont really know if all the different things will work together so it would be great if there was somebody out there who has the same level of mobility and has first-hand experience with these things.

Any advice from anybody will be really appreciated
Kat

Not sure if it would work but perhaps something like a learning TV remote could help. Then he could perhaps velcro it to his chair and perhaps wouldn't be so obvious or bulky, not sure if that helps.

[disart]

Hi all, I am new to all this. I am a wheelchair user living in London, I am looking for help and advise on buy remote controlled wooden venetian blinds. thanks for your time and help.

[kat2290]

disart, on Mar 26 2009, 12:01 AM, said:

Hi all, I am new to all this. I am a wheelchair user living in London, I am looking for help and advise on buy remote controlled wooden venetian blinds. thanks for your time and help.

Hi, since you live in the UK you should be able to get whats called a disabled facilities grant from your local council to pay for things like that. You have to tell them why you need them etc and then they decide how much money they can give you, so you can also use it to get electric doors and things like that. I'm not sure exactly where you can get the blinds you want, but i'm sure you'll be able to find them on the interenet

[Jax]

kat2290, on Aug 27 2008, 02:15 AM, said:

Hi, yeah we've designed the house with an arcitecht so its all going to be wheelchair friendly but my partner wants to be able to open the front door and a door which opens onto a patio himself so we're trying to work out how he'll be able to do that.
It is a two storey house, the lift is going inside though and its hydraulic. Its not so much the doors and the lift themselves that are the problem, its how he's goin to be able to use them without assistance

Just curious here, so please don't take this the wrong way. Why a 2 story house? If it's not easily accessible (unusable lift?) to him, then I don't get the reasoning for building it that way in the first place. Again, I don't mean to be offensive, I'm just curious.

I'm also really looking forward to hearing how you overcome the control problem. I am going to be starting school this coming fall to become an Occupational Therapy Assistant (OTA), and will work my way up to OT from there, so I am always looking for information on solutions to possible problems/issues.

[kat2290]

Hi, we aren't building a two storey house from scratch, we are extending a two storey house. Building a bungalow wasn't really an option as we don't have the space, and we can't afford to buy the space! The two storey's isnt really an issue, it just means we have to get a through floor lift. We've now ordered one, it will have automatic doors on the outside and one-touch control pads at foot level inside so that my boyf can just knock them with his wheelchair and it'll take him up.
We've only got two doors in the whole house, the front door and the back door, the rest of the house is pretty much open plan. We've decided to get infra-red motion sensors fitted to these doors (like you get in shops), and then you can narrow down the beam of infrared so its only the size of a cup and so that it doesn't quite reach the floor. That way it won't be easily set off by pets and children etc. It's quite hard to describe, basically there will be a set point by each door where my boyfriend will drive up to in his chair and this will open the doors, so it should be totally hands free.
It's taken sooo much time and research to get to this point, and once we actually get the doors and lift installed it will have cost a lot of money too!! Fortunately living in the UK means we can get a disabled facilities grant which just about covers the cost of the lift and doors, just gotta pay for the rest of the build ourselves!!

[Jax]

kat2290, on Mar 27 2009, 03:31 AM, said:

Hi, we aren't building a two storey house from scratch, we are extending a two storey house. Building a bungalow wasn't really an option as we don't have the space, and we can't afford to buy the space! The two storey's isnt really an issue, it just means we have to get a through floor lift. We've now ordered one, it will have automatic doors on the outside and one-touch control pads at foot level inside so that my boyf can just knock them with his wheelchair and it'll take him up.
We've only got two doors in the whole house, the front door and the back door, the rest of the house is pretty much open plan. We've decided to get infra-red motion sensors fitted to these doors (like you get in shops), and then you can narrow down the beam of infrared so its only the size of a cup and so that it doesn't quite reach the floor. That way it won't be easily set off by pets and children etc. It's quite hard to describe, basically there will be a set point by each door where my boyfriend will drive up to in his chair and this will open the doors, so it should be totally hands free.
It's taken sooo much time and research to get to this point, and once we actually get the doors and lift installed it will have cost a lot of money too!! Fortunately living in the UK means we can get a disabled facilities grant which just about covers the cost of the lift and doors, just gotta pay for the rest of the build ourselves!!

OH, those controls sound really cool! That sounds like a pretty nice floorplan too! Thanks for the information.

Edited by Jax, 27 March 2009 - 06:34 PM.

[Ches]

Hey if any of you guys care to show your floor plans, Id love to see them. Mainly the kitchen and bathrooms, but an entire house would be neat too! Im always curious and interested in floorplans, design, etc...