Doors: Some (or Much) Assembly Required

 Fifteen years into my service as business Attic Access, in metro Portland, Oregon, I find myself in a binge of calls for broken attic ladders made in Southeast USA, where fixing is the best response.

This now-repaired attic ladder, lightly used and perhaps thirty years old, was found dysfunctional at both limit arms, as I call them. The upper pivots were very loose, with springs and arms jammed akimbo; cleverness demanded to deploy or stow. It is now better-than-new and should live on another thirty years and more. With sturdy limit arms, longevity may come of care to not let step section hinges come apart with lost nuts and bolts.

Here is one of the flimsy mild-steel upper pivot cups from a much newer Werner WH3008 ladder that I demolished for recycling of the metal. The factory-installed limit arms were ruined when big rivets serving  as the upper pivots, ripped out. Functional replacement arms could not be found. The ladder would not have failed if the pivots had been strong lag screws binding to the ladder rough frame. The manufacturer sought simplest construction (the dumb rivets protruding here), installation-ready out of the shipping packaging. The installer overlooked the need to set long lag screws into the two holes not riveted to the ladder frame. The ladder frame then would measurably flex from heavy loads every time the ladder was operated, contributing to the pivot-rivet failure. 

Competent installers of ordinary doors have learned that lesser loads, even just the weight of a door, can not be supported by the door frame. Door loads are transmitted through the hinges, wanting to twist the frame. At every hinge, an appropriate screw to the flimsy 1x ladder frame, must be replaced with a screw binding to the much stronger, heavily nailed-in rough frame. 

The many-tricks in correct installation of an ordinary prefit door are well taught by trade show master presenter Gary Katz, The Katz Roadshow. I am a very uncommon resource, in offering useful techniques for the installation of an attic ladder, more tricky in its need to bear the very large loads of a person's weight and carried objects. Lesson One: Never rely on the ladder frame to bear the loads, despite claims of rated load-carrying. 

So, a ladder manufacturer will do well to include many installation steps that directly apply carried loads to the rough frame. Clearly describe them. Don't pretend that any uninstructed person with a saw, hammer and nails, can get the job done, with a rube helper, in a half hour. I fully disassemble a ladder for installation, safely and better, working alone. I sometimes extract the door from the frame. Arms and springs initially loose, are installed on the job. It takes a full day, and more, with needs of patching that often dictate the door removability.

With an attic ladder or any door, assembly is required.

In the ladder now to be repaired, study the failed upper pivots of the limit arms.

3/8" x 3 1/2" lag screws and large 3/8" washers replace a badly worn assortment of short machine bolts, a  bushing,  a couple of 3/8" nuts and a variety of washers loose and tilted at center of the cup mount.

Two 1/4" x 2 1/2" lag screws at each cup replace assorted wood and machine screws bound only to the 1x4 ladder frame, nuts falling the the floor when released.

All of this failed experimentation and years of frustration with the ladder would have been avoided if, from the beginning, at ladder installation, the springs, arms and cups had been packaged loosely, for assembly required of the installer, with lag screws as chosen now, binding to the rough frame. Choose drill sizes for the lag screws, that are not too large. Find the screw hole locations in the ladder frame clearly labeled.

At reset lower pivots of the limit arms, I made poor choices too, in reliance on fasteners from a nearby Home Depot. 3/8" x 1 1/2" coarse-thread hex bolts should have been 2" instead, permitting a washer  outside the arm and under a lock nut, at each side of the arm lower pivots. Home Depot is not a full-selection hardware store. They do not offer lock nuts for these coarse-thread bolts.  Find the lock nuts at an Ace Hardware.

I learn, and I share my learning.

A Typical Job, Completed January 2023

A Safety Pole and More: (Very much assembly is required of a competent and risk-averse installer.)

I install ladders with mandatory inclusion of every important safety measure I have imagined. A safety pole guides one from and to the ladder opening. When beyond reach of a ladder handle. always have your weight borne by a hand at a sequence of safety pole grips. A safety pole is a selected pretty 2x4 rock-solidly bridged between floor joists and roof joists with three or more hand grips, and with power and lighting control attached. Safety is priceless, and affordable. 

This is my job-in-process at late-December 2022, I keep divots of the plywood flooring cut about the ladder nearby, and set them to cover the hole while working distant from the ladder.

A lighted switch, readily visible and at-hand, greets the attic user.

The ladder is MidMade LEX 70 22/47, manufactured in Northern Sweden  sheltered workshops, by handicapped, talented workers, with superior, knotty, non-splitting Norway Spruce, from local forests.

The work of a competent installer can include much custom assembly specifically suited to the unique opportunities in any home.

 .

My safety measures are original as far as I know, not offered by any other installer, and yet are  extremely important. One measure is deployment at default 60° steps angle. This is improvement from the unsafe default, out-of-the-box 70° for this MidMade ladder. Added hinging in the center section is needed to achieve the safer angle. 

Here watch YouTube video of my deployment at 60°, with a very similar ladder.

A Fakro LTK 47" ladder deploying at 60° 

Perfectly ordinary. Nothing to it, once imagined, for me.

These are the conditions upon destruction of the found drywall-plunker access at the January 2023 Midmade ladder.

Planning comes of much experience and fresh tactical thinking. The accurately-fit "hole" will be in a strong, completely rebuilt floor.

Here I am standing on the ladder, looking at the finished attic.

In the attic, looking back at the ladder, at left see three more matched sets of plywood 24" rips intended for further flooring progress. At right see the divots of the flooring cut for the ladder. Further progress is daunting. Upright 2x4s outboard of the chimney defy easiest passage. More lighting is needed.  Reserve long  strips of the home's vinyl siding are obstacles, that may now move onto flooring.

 This is the attic ladder as received from USA seller Conservation Technology, in Baltimore, MD. Packaging and instructions indicate that the ladder is ready to use, when nailed into the miraculously-produced ceiling hole.

Stuff the unboxed ladder in the attic, and place it in the hole, with the door face resting on propped supports. Anchor the ladder frame with a few nails and remove the supports. Open the door. 

Just lop off excess of the lower step section, and you're done!

Untrue!

Working with ladders never seen before, I indulged in several months of measuring, drawing, studying, thinking and trials. My detailed planning employs precise 2D graphics drawn in Adobe FrameMaker at v5.5.6, which I have owned and have daily employed for about twenty years. Circa 2002 the dotcom crash crushed a maker of CRT displays, in Beaverton, Oregon, and I acquired this miraculous tool for about $100. Bloated newer versions are useless to me. FrameMaker 2019, better only in faster 64-bit operation, might be purchased for $1100. Adobe wants, even demands, that I upgrade to a subscription at $39.99 per month, current version 17. In a thirty day free trial of v17 I couldn't accomplish anything. The graphics tools are not valued at Adobe, and are ruined.

Here is the site planning graphic in FrameMaker The imported Google Maps satellite photo has overlay of precise details of floor framing and all of my construction. All drawing is with the two simple palettes caught in the Snagit scan. The tools in FrameMaker 17 are horribly complicated by pulldowns and such for the likes of needlessly choosing between dozens of arrow shapes. 

Here again are the v5.5.6 tool palettes with drawing of improved ladder deployment, all hardware drawn at scale and noting the pinning of object groups. The ladder is much-improved beyond imaginings of a few naive inventors briefly employed a decade ago and not reimagined since, until I came along. With mid-splitting of the center section of a three-section ladder, adding hinges as a four-section ladder, limit arms and pivot positions are adjusted for deployment at a precise 60°. My reimagining of the ladder if the factory would cooperate for future production, would include elimination of what I consider a dangerous, trick, top step. I demand a broad top step for user safety. Here a probing foot  reaching out backward for descent, often first finds the pointy tops of the side rails. The danger is avoidable and the solution all-around has design and seller inventory-control advantages. There is no factory engineering staff to cooperate in this. So, just let me do the work? It is already done.

The as-shipped (default) ladder deploys at a too-steep 70°.steps and door angle, and I consider that unsafe. The steepness is needed for the deploying steps to clear the ladder frame. This ladder is assembled with too-small screws as if with intent an installer would rearrange things, then setting appropriate screws. European rule EN 14975 states that steps angle should not be steeper than 61°. Do not defy this rule! .Be grateful for means of compliance I offer, with added hinging.

Please see many issues of imperfect assembly of the default ladder. With this, then grant that improvements are just that. Intelligence added for the end-user must only reduce manufacturer liability, not affecting the manufacturer warranties.  The upper step section is cleverly bonded to the door via wood crossbars that reach out to the strong wood of the door edges, awkwardly. The lower crossbar is high up on the door, for no good reason. I will apply common sense to move that crossbar and its brackets, also replacing screws that are needlessly short. I will apply long and strong deck screws to engage the rough frame at limit arm upper pivots, at the upper attachment for balancing springs, and at all arbitrary captures of the ladder frame to the rough frame. I stand behind the ladder and its assembly, for as long as I am still walking, with proper insurance. My best insurance is that customers should never have an accident, and that they are gratefully aware of safety measures that I invent and that they must not refuse. Least-steep angle, handle(s), safety pole(s), ladder placement to step toward with momentum to maximum attic headroom, and more. Few people think installation of a door is simple DIY. Fewer should think an attic ladder is DIY.

Added hinging is required for angles less steep than 67°. For 96" floor to ceiling distance, the four-section deployment does not require "tenting."

Placing the ladder opening over a door frame below was a new challenge. Facing the need to close the hole in a two day binge of effort, I found it necessary to tilt the door frame out of the way, with temporary removal of the door. Armed with chiseling tools at my next visit, I would then reset the frame with trial and error, perhaps moving the frame. I did that cheerfully, resetting the door easily, with much-improved fastening and alignment, in further practice of best methods, taught by Gary Katz.

See the simple beauty in frameless trim, with nearly-invisible gaps between ceiling drywall, and the pretty-white durable finish of the ladder door.

This is the expected installation per MidMade Instructions For LEX 70 Laddders.

Needed door trim then, often of ugly and cheap material, poorly fit, only conceals energy-leaking large gaps.

I do much better, with the ladder nearly invisible. It is a big deal. Important invention!

All the planning and hard work result in an attic that is  accessible.

 Good things happen up here. 

It's not about storage space for most of us. Here an electrician, with my work nearly done, safely fixed a list of photographed, not yet covered DIY wiring crimes. 

HVAC linesets are safely buried, intimately shrouded by batt insulation, under the flooring.

At and beyond a house-central large chimney, much is left dark and dangerous. 

Passageways for many mouse families are still a problem.

Elapsed time for the work; thirteen days.

102 hours of on-job labor.

$1625 materials, my cost.

Invoiced $3625, me then netting $20 per on-job hour, with yet no compensation for 876 miles and twelve hours of travel to this exotic location. 

My weatherization work and business practices are an ever-thoughtful experiment and have worked well enough that I have stayed at this for eighteen years. Soon age 79, I must wish to beneficially franchise the work globally, armed with useful owned URLs: AtticAccess.com, MidMade.com and more. I wish to team up with the competent USA importer of MidMade products, Conservation Technology, in Baltimore, MD, to avail architects and demanding home owners, of smart residence attic access and valuable improvement. We should agree that an attic is not a trash heap. It is an opportunity zone for easy gains of energy conservation and of providing security and data wiring, better ventilation, air conditioning and lighting of living spaces.

A $10,000 Attic Investment Makes Sense, Whether for Storage or Not

Many things we should preserve are tolerant of temperature swings. Yet, commercial storage of such is not less costly than conditioned storage. 

$150 per month, I think.

Cumulative Payments

Kept 1 year: $1800

Kept 5 years:$9000

Kept 10 years: $18,000

A $4000 investment in attic access here, or even $10,000 for the full attic, with a lift mechanism, is so much smarter.

For most of us, in single family homes, floored R38 or R49  attic access is a good investment just for maximum weatherization, with friendly opportunity to maintain wiring, lights, fans, plumbing and HVAC. Insulation prone to ruin by access is a very bad investment.

Home Advisor says of fragile blown loose-fill: "You’ll spend between $0.25 and $2 for every inch of thickness per square foot (one board foot) or $1 to $5 per square foot total." Four inches of loose-fill coverage of half of this example attic (1000 sq ft) would cost $1000 to $8,000.

My very superior work invoiced at $20 per hour is far too much, a bargain. My work creates accessibility. The almost-universal loose-fill alternative is a cruel barrier to accessibility and usefulness.

Addressing Embodied Carbon in Residential Construction

I attended 2020 International Builders Show in Las Vegas, frustrated in a wish to have a message for those coming to the Fakro booth, in what I do to make attic ladders safer with added features. I had little to report in this blog. 

At the Hanley Wood Media Builder magazine booth I watched a Shawood Demonstration twice.

Here is the complete Builder booth sessions calendar handed out to show goers. 

The IBS exhibit was continuation of that seen at CES 2020, and summarized in this pdf.
New to the US: A Home Resilient to Natural Disasters  

Glimpse the technology at this Shawood web site:
Sustainable Construction Technology - Shawood Homes 

In fact, from this Shawood web site, you will understand most of what was seen in January 2020 Las Vegas Convention Center events. Imagine how quickly a home can be assembled with engineered factory-built beam elements. Exterior walls have full freedom of window and door placement. 

Know from the IBS presentation, that superior Bellburn porcelain tile siding is a very-visible element of this construction. Sample siding was on display. From the search, find this builderonline article:
Chowa Living in Balance - February 26, 2020  
LESSONS LEARNED: HERE ARE FIVE CRITICAL TAKE-AWAYS FROM THE 2020 BUILDER CONCEPT HOME BUILDING 


Download a comprehensive white paper, from builderonline:
a deep-dive into the architecture, planning, exclusive construction techniques, consumer research, and building science behind Chōwa



Surely there is much in the sixty-year old developing technology of Sekisui House that is central to the hope of the ASHRAE webinar, Addressing Embodied Carbon.

I hope to make this information detectable in a Google search:

fireproof exterior siding in new home construction

Inspiring Young People to Become Carpenters: Just Learn How to Install a Prefit Door!

At 2020 International Builders Show I was educated by the team of Rick Arnold and Gary Katz, presenting  Problem-free Prefit Doors, as the Katz Roadshow . The half-hour-long demonstration was a rerun for me, and yet I know I need much practice to overcome wrong intuition applied in the only-three doors I have installed so far.

 At wrap-up, we were offered pencils labeled with a URL, thus:

We were told: Go to the URL on this pencil, where you will see preserved to be viewed for free, all the good information you have learned here. Pass the pencil on to some young person who might win a carpentry job, just by knowing, really knowing, how to hang a prefit door. And I immediately did that, giving my pencil to a young person next to me on the city bus to my hotel that evening.  I picked up two replacement pencils the next day.

Only now, six weeks later, I have tested whether the URL by itself might give the intended inspiration. Go there , and see.

Recall that "prefit door" is the subject and enter that in the search bar. Then read the full article,  (Click this caption.)

Problem-free Prefit Doors

It is photo and text instruction, a bit like my blog, not the video I imagined. At bottom is this link to the promised video instruction:

A bit of education may open doors of opportunity.

A Mission At 2015 International Builders Show

I assisted in the Fakro booth at 2015 International Builders Show in Las Vegas, with a complementary message for their presentation of attic ladders. That message is: Do provide safe and efficient access to your attic. Then, please consider enabled improvements of your attic.

The Fakro display included their excellent skylights, one working ladder, and a large screen showing attic ladder and skylight installation videos. The ladder is steel scissors type, Model LST 22x31 .

To some visitors, I admitted my preference for wood ladders.
















I had a collection of photos to share, upon business cards, and on iPhone and tablet displays. No one cared to see my photos. Yet, I did engage with very many people, hoping they would remember me and my message, via taken business cards.















Here is a sampling of the shared photos and captions

Lighted safe access leads to remarkable results like these:

Very large savings are achievable in complex but inexpensive attic floor sealing. You can't do this without an in-attic vacuum and chop saw.

I have much to contribute toward better HVAC ducts , enabled by good attic and crawl space access.

Leading-edge adoption of residential LED lighting  is enabled with good access. These beautiful and bright Nicor DLS LEDs necessarily replaced a half-dead T12 fluorescent fixture/ bug collector. More commonly, the large savings and better satisfaction are in elimination of awful can lights.




The "starry sky " in this closet was carried throughout the house, replacing all can lights with Nicor DLS LEDs.

In the above photo and in numerous demonstrations, see application of my flexible grout to dress the edges of the ceiling cut-through, air tight about the frame. The trimless installation minimizes visibility of the closed door.

I practice innovation with attic ladders , for service not achievable with out-of-the-box construction. Would you buy a bicycle without any options to better serve your needs? The challenges and opportunities are similar.

The drawing shows a ladder easily deploying between 48" confining walls.

 A 2015 IBS visitor asked whether a drop-down ladder could serve with 14 ft floor to ceiling distance, and I responded that I have served FC of eleven ft (130.5"), despite manufacturer-claimed limits. I have imagined ladders that reach easily, more than twelve ft , comfortably in reach even for a short person. 14 ft might be difficult. 

Some possibilities involve manufacturer offerings to, and requirements of, professional installers, that may not be offered to a casual consumer. Such offerings do not yet exist.




All of these achievements, in Portland, Oregon, should be possible anywhere, with professional networking that I seek to establish through means including IBS presence.

Portland's 2014 Better Living Show, Attic Access

For more than you may want to know about the contractor view of being in a "green" trade show, please download a PDF album , at Google Docs. The Better Living Show is an annual event in Portland, Oregon. I participated this year with some new messages. My principal display was a working attic ladder, Fakro Model LTK 22/47 . A ladder display may inform in national controversy about required insulation value in the ladder door. An attic ladder has less thermal demand than an exterior door, and need not exceed the insulation requirement of an exterior door, about R3. Most ladders I install are about R5. Several jurisdictions in USA require an attic ladder to exceed R10, causing great confusion.

Fakro LWS-P 22/47, R 5.2
$2.10 per year replacement heat cost

Fakro LTK 22/47, R 7.5
$1.64 per year replacement heat cost

Fakro LWT 22/47, R12
$1.15 per year replacement heat cost, at ladder price higher by about $300, than for LWS ladders. Where the savings in replacement heat cost are more by only $.95 per year, payback on the larger investment is an absurd three hundred years.

Show visitors might support reasonable decisions on required ladder insulation, preferring minimum R5 .

I really like the R7.5 show ladder, but can not sell it at price much higher than that of the very nice LWS ladders. I think the better LTK features are worth another $100, but that can not be for better R-value. 

Here is the LTK ladder upon a display structure imagined and built for the show.

This is much nicer than confusing displays I presented at shows in 2008 and 2010:

This is the compact deployment of a ladder that I achieve by cutting ladder sections, adding hinges. Please see deployment I call "friendlier", in a slide show that plays as a movie.
Compact Attic Ladder Deployment . 

LED lights displayed are those I honor at Pinterest . Please see there how you may buy them. These lights are the subject of many blog posts . I keep a small inventory of these lights, and employ them as a large factor in weatherization savings that I achieve.

A visitor might have climbed the display ladder to see how I install ceiling light junction boxes. Here I ran out of time, and did not run wires. For more detail in this, and for other innovation in electrical device mounting, please consult this Picasa album .

I hoped a home builder would stop by, and would order a few insulated attic access plugs. This is much less expensive than framing in and drywalling the surround of the usual leaky drywall plunker with a useless R38 batt tied on. Know the batt pulls away from drywall in closure, and has no insulating effect, just one more bad joke on new-home owner. This is tolerated by jurisdiction authorities, some smart enough to know better; here now, is exit from fraud. Exit too from harm to those struggling upon a stepladder, worried about defacing or breaking the fragile drywall, about to fall. I imagine a finger-grip in the drywall face; push up twist and tug down, and stow clean against your hallway wall. There is some weight, from 5/8" drywall for a ceiling with 1/2" drywall, compensating for gasket thickness.

A worker in the attic may close the hole for many good reasons including his safety. There are so many good reasons for this, and the show visitors took no notice.

Here are drawings of the show access plug. I imagine demand might establish a usual opening about 20.5" by 30" in 24" framing.

Let's do Portland, Oregon gas-heated home Insulation Math on this plug:
Plug is 18.25" x 20", 2.53 sf
R7.5 foam is 16.75" x 18.5", 2.15 sf
Wood frame at  R1.4 is 2.53 - 2.15 = 0.38 sf
2.53/(Reff +3) = 2.15/(7.5 + 3) + 0.38/(1.4 + 3)
Reff = 5.7
Annual heat cost = 2.4*2.53/(5.7 + 3) = $0.70
vs. R38 floor: 2.4*2.53/(38 + 3) = $0.15
Vs. no access, this plug adds 55 cents per year to home annual heat cost.