If you are going to code of the ADA, it is a one inch rise for every foot. or in your case 39 foot. Which is, in most case not practical. 12 foot would give you a little more rise that 3 inches per foot. I just built one for a friends a few months back. His porch was 24 inches. I put in a 10 foot ramp for him and he isn't having any problem using it. That gave him a 2.4 inch rise per foot. I also built a 7 foot deck the ramp came off of and the cost for the material was about $300 including the railing. The main thing we need to know is how much space do you have for the ramp? If it was me and I could put in a 16 foot ramp made of decking and the person has a electric wheelchair or is in good shape or has someone to help, I believe a 14 foot to 16 foot ramp would be more than adequate. For the 14 foot would be a less than 3 inches rise per foot (2.78). Or the 16 foot ramp would be about 2.5 inch per foot. RJ
----- Original Message ----- From: Robert Riddle To: blindhandyman@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 7:39 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] wheelchair ramp I need to build a small ramp from the ground up on to the porch. How do I figure out the gradiant? Like the porch is 39 inches off the ground, how long should the boards be? Ideally the ramp should be cement but I don't know how to do that and it's frankly beyond our budget to have a pro do it. So I'm thinking of building a simple 2 by6 over 2 by 4 ramp and bolting it to the underside of the porch frame. Thoughts? [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
