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Stair Pictures

by Andrew Kozlov

It's a good idea to draw a picture or diagram of your staircase before you start installation or construction. After all, even though your architectural plans may have left room for a stairwell and enough space for a comfortable rise, you never know. Indeed, mapping out your staircase plans before the fact can save you thousands of dollars in needless repair costs.

While creating a regulation single story staircase is well within the capacities of most carpenters, the job gets difficult once you add things like balustrades and ornate handrails. Indeed, the design gets even harder if you go with a double balustrade or a corner staircase. So what are some tips for improving your stair diagram, so that your staircase turns out even, intricate, and sturdy?

Improving Construction with Thorough Stair Diagrams

First and foremost, measure your rise and run, and diagram to see whether you have enough room in your stairwell to fit the staircase. At a minimum, you want to maintain at least two meters of space above the pitch line. The pitch line, for those who don't know, is the theoretical line that runs along the nosing of stairs. The angle of the pitch is the inverse tangent of the stair rise over the "going."

What happens if you don't have enough head room? One way to compensate is to lower your pitch angle. However, there's a limit to how shallow you can make your staircase. After all, in order to keep up to building code, your individual rises need to be no less than 190 mm--approximately seven inches. Thus, it may behoove you either to build a staircase somewhere else or to carve out space to allow for more head room.

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