‘A home lift enabled me to move between floors without any help, and meant we didn’t need to move house’

A man suffering with a painful leg ulcer installed a Stiltz Home Lift to help him get between the floors of his home after his condition became so painful he could barely walk or use the stairs.

Ron Harris, 74, suffered a mysterious insect bite while on holiday in Spain and the wound became infected and then spread to his other leg and both feet.

Doctors eventually diagnosed Mr Harris’s injury as a leg ulcer and he had to have both legs put in compression bandages before his condition worsened with him ending up in a wheelchair.

“I was bitten by some sort of insect while on holiday,” said Mr. Harris. “I decided to wait until I returned to the UK to have it looked at. The doctors had no idea what it was and they tried wrapping me up in bandages but it just got worse. It spread to my other leg and my feet and was just awful.

“I couldn’t sleep at night and had a Stiltz Home Lift put in as eventually I couldn’t even walk and became wheelchair-bound. We’ve lived in our house for 35 years so we had no intention of moving home, however bad my situation became. The home lift enabled me to move between floors without any help, and meant we didn’t need to move house.”

Mr Harris had the two-person Stiltz Duo Home Lift installed in the corner of his dining room with the model travelling up to a spare bedroom. As this style of domestic lift requires no hydraulics or supporting walls and is powered by a self-contained motor which plugs straight into a normal 13-amp power socket, it was installed in just one day. Stiltz home lifts travel on self-supporting stilts with only a small opening required in the ceiling for the lift to pass through between floors.

“The lift tucked in very nicely,” said Mr. Harris. “You wouldn’t really know it was there. I didn’t want a stairlift. Stairlifts get in the way on the stairs and I would be worried about falling off the seat. As a former mechanical engineer, myself, the construction of the Stiltz Home Lift impresses me greatly. It’s compact, smooth, efficient, has all the safety features you would expect, and it looks good.

“We also use it for transferring the hoover and things like carrying the washing between floors. Having a Stiltz Home Lift has also given us peace of mind that we have future proofed our home so we never need to move again.”