I know I'm way late on this one, but I'll throw my six cents in. :)
Cement is nice, durable. Costs a lot, and no one wants to steal it.
Clearing it of snow can be a chore.
Expanded metal mesh? Depending on the mesh they use, absolutely
fantastic traction under virtually all conditions. You can get good
traction even with a light coating of ice. Ice and snow and everything
basically falls through out of the way (or can be mostly smushed through
with your tires). If you need deicer on it, it won't stay. You can scoop
snow if necessary. Bad points: bare toes, high heels, and metal
recyclers seem to want to steal lots of them.
I don't like the recommended construction of most accessible wood ramps.
It's true that they have the design down now such that you can start
churning out a series of standard boxes and hook them to make a ramp,
but I don't happen to personally like them. My biggest objection is to
the plywood decking. It provides no traction at all, and has zero
provision for water run-off. No water run-off means the plywood is going
to delaminate and fail much quicker than it should unless you waterproof
each individual piece of wood using epoxy, as you would if you were
building a boat to last. You would still wind up with water on the
decking, whether in the form of ice, snow, or rain.
There are various ways of getting traction.
One is those friction strips that you put on stairs. I've noticed that a
lot of people use these. They work pretty well in the rain (did for me,
anyway), and can be ok with very thin coatings of ice. With ice any
thicker, or with any any amount of snow, the ramp always seemed to have
no traction at all, with a resultant full-speed uncontrolled skid to the
bottom. Not fun. We never could figure out a way to keep them attached
to the ramp anyway. Also, you basically have two choices: cover the
entire ramp with them, or run two strips of them down the ramp and make
sure that your tires never stray off of them.
Another way to get traction is to paint the deck with paint (pref. epoxy
paint) that has a quantity of sandblasting sand mixed in. This kind of
sand has sharper edges than regular sand and gives better traction. This
also works pretty well in the rain, and not so well with anything else.
A handyman we worked with would only use "pool paint" instead of epoxy,
and regular sand because he said there was no sandblasting sand in town.
There were a lot of buildings in town being sandblasted, and a few are
anyway every year, so I don't think that was right. The end result was
not much traction, plus all the paint peeled in less than a year. sigh
Here's what worked for us. Our ramp was two 1x12 boards running
underneath the length of the ramp, at the left and right sides. The
decking was formed by 1x4 boards run crossways on the ramp. The spacing
of the boards was good, being 1/8 to 3/16 inch. This let the wood swell
and shrink from the water, while keeping them from touching each other.
It also let the water run off between the boards very quickly. Also,
they were close enough together that neither toes nor high heels would
fall into the cracks.
The ramp needed a lot of improvements. It sagged a lot in the middle of
all those 1x4 boards, so we added a third 2x12 down underneath the
center of the ramp, running the entire length. At that point, we had a
couple of large people jump up and down on it. It didn't sag at all
anymore. If you want your ramp 4 feet wide, run another 2x12 underneath
down the length of it. Just space them all apart at equal distances.
We added expanded metal mesh to the entire surface of the ramp. It was
attached by putting washers on top of the mesh then driving a large
screw through the hole in the washer. To be sure to get traction at the
top and bottom of the ramp before the drive wheels engage the mesh, be
sure to extend the mesh at least 3 feet above and below the ramp. Above,
you would screw it down to the level part of the deck. At the bottom, if
it lets out onto sidewalk or bricks... you just have to get creative. It
just has to be solidly secured down. For some reason, tiny bits of the
mesh cannot be allowed to stray up into a lawnmower...
One fine but important thing about the mesh. Paint it flat black. Epoxy,
or maybe engine paint, but something that will stay on. Spray paint
worked pretty well for us. Why paint it? We got the galvanized stuff,
and it was a heavy enough mesh that it wasn't for corrosion resistance.
It was for the heat gain. Have a coating of snow and ice in 25F weather,
and it would get warm enough to melt itself off. If the whole thing was
covered, you could scoop some of it off, and that would get the sun to
heat it enough to start the process for the rest. If it needed more
help, you could throw salt on it, and the mesh would keep the salt from
washing itself or being kicked off the ramp. It would just keep the salt
working.
You also need a solid edge on the right and left edge of the ramp, to
keep the chair from accidently driving or skidding off the side. Trust
me, it helps. :-)
As mentioned, good concrete footings for any posts you put down. Worth
your while. At least a foot deep. Two is nicer. Depends on how far down
the dirt freezes in your winters.
As far as galvanized screws vs nails? Never, never use nails. Galvanized
screws are ok, but they do everntually rust. We went with stainless
screws, and never, ever had to worry about them. If you absolutely can't
afford the stainless, get the galvanized.
Needs a good railing that will take full body weight. Maybe you will
never put that on it, but eventually someone walking on their feet will
stumble, or stop to rest or talk.
[email protected] wrote on 10/14/10 15:42:
Hi everyone,
I need to install a new ramp, it can be temporary or permanent. I'm
trying to decide between Cement, Wood or deck type material or Expanded
metal.
I was thinking snow and rain would fall through the expanded metal so it
wouldn't require as much snow shoveling as the others. But would it have
good traction when covered with frost, fresh snow or wet from rain?
I have a cement ramp and it doesn't seem to have any issues unless the
snow builds up and gets packed down before it gets shoveled off. I would
think a wood or decking material would be similar to the cement.
Any ideas or comments would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Todd
