I read Fine Homebuilding now for free, by thumbing through it at the mag stand over at the supermarket. One of my many cutbacks due to the crash, was cancelling most all subscriptions.
I can walk to the supermarket, and not cross or walk along any roads to do so, so walking to shop and reading the magazines while there, are making me think I’m getting pretty green.
So I’m reading Andy Engel’s timely article about building winder stairs, and it got me to thinking. I say timely because I have been designing some pretty tight small houses lately, and I happend to put a winder-U in one of them.
My Chief Architect software has tools for rapidly placing a staircase, but a winder, to meet codes where the steps turn in pie-shaped treads, needs to be worked out geometrically before you start your mouse moves in Chief. Or maybe it is me, the Chief newbie. Mike Smith can make Chief dance, and probably doesn’t need to do a workout before.
Andy discusses it all in the article, all the stuff about the 12 inch walk line, and minimum tread widths there and at the inside limit of tread.
He lays it out full scale by placing plywood on the floor, then going to pencil lead, guided by straightedges, squares, compass, and dividers.
Yawn.
I used Sketchup to lay mine out full scale, and was done before Andy had the plywood down. 😉 See my corner workout here.
Building code prescriptions are not always good things, and in this case they cause buildings to need to be bigger, if you insist on the look of a winder staircase.
As can be seen in the plan above, a three-tread wind making a 90-degree turn fits into a square that is 48 9/16″ to the side, when a stair width of 37″ is used. Thirty-seven for tread width is as tight as I will plan for, wall finish to wall finish.
But if I just used a straight right-angle turn with a 37×37 landing, my three-rise corner would only measure 47×47, figured with the code-minimum 10″ tread width.
That is 1 9/16″ savings per 90 turn, and for a U-stairs, means that the width overall is 3 1/8″ less than if done with the winder pattern shown here.
As they say, “size matters.” And in housebuilding, just as for enlargement of sex organs and other things, getting bigger costs money.
Now, maybe my workout has errors, and I certainly have not examined all the possibilities for how to make turns with winders. I just did this for a 3-tread 90. As you can see, in the example drawn, making the 6″ minimum at inside, for a tread with a 30-degree angular turn, you end up with far more than the minimum 10 at the 12-inch walkline.
Now, maybe you think winders have charm, and in Andy’s article, the photos would make you think warm and cozy thoughts about how folksy and “traditional’ (I hate that word when used to discuss houses) such a staircase can be to have.
But for me, in my new age of “less is more,” no more mag subscription costs, design for lower built-costs in housing, etc., winder stairs are just another frivolous thing we cannot afford.
Replies
One of the real weaknesses of winder stairs is getting furniture etc. up and down them.. large items are not easily put up and down them. Same with straight stairs with short runs.. You either wind up dead lifing items up the stairwell or taking them apart into small pieces something that isn't easily done.
I'm going to agree with you and Maines on that point of discussion. Sofa's just aren't made for turning corners.
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gene..... i can't read your post unless i scroll from side to side
i tried " open in new window" and that did nothing for me
did you format it differently ?
My bad, Mike. Sorry.
Copying and pasting a wide picture into the post, unfortunately stretches all the text out to the limit of the wide picture.
A temporary fix, at least with my WinXP Pro and monitor, is to hover the cursor on the L edge of the message window, and then drag it way left. It will shrink the index column down to nothing, but at least you get to read the silly message with the too-wide picture, without sideways scrolls.
Frenchy, I'm not sure you are reading this post, but your comment about winder stairs being cramps for large stuff movement up and down, means you are not thinking in 3D. The 37-wide stairs is no narrower at the winder corner, and in fact that corner is slightly bigger than one with a straight 90.
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
OK take a big sofa up them.. or a big armour, dining room hutch etc.. It's not width that stops it's the combination of length width and height (if they are closed winders)
The extreme is a circular winding staircase but a short run winder can be just as problematic..
gene... this job was from 2004...
pretty sure i had to meet today's winder code
and since the stairwell was what it was... winders were the only thing that i could make work
View ImageMike Hussein Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
here's a link to that thread
http://forums.taunton.com/tp-breaktime/messages?msg=53289.1Mike Hussein Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
A couple friends and I once moved an upright piano up a 180° flight of narrow winders. The only way we could figure out how to do it was to have me sit on the bottom step, and they got the piano onto my back. Then they balanced the piano as I slid up one step at a time.
I don't like winders anymore. Also don't like moving pianos.
Gene, the steeper relative pitch of a winder means some large pieces of furniture will get bound up at the ceiling intersection that wouldn't with a regular landing.
Are you using Firefox? If so, you can hit CTRL+- (the minus sign) to shrink the text down.
Jon Blakemore RappahannockINC.com Fredericksburg, VA
Hey neat! I knew it would shrink text or enlarge it, but didn't realize it works on the photo display size too
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That's one of the big benefits of Firefox V.3xxx. In the past, the text would shrink but the images would stay the same.I can't remember what the new way is called, there's some special term for it, but the whole page is enlarged or reduced. It is handy.
Jon Blakemore RappahannockINC.com Fredericksburg, VA
I had thought of winders to access my garage attic. Didn't have a lot of room and steps had to turn at the garage corner. Winders would've saved a rise or two... but to do them to code they didn't save anything as opposed to putting a landing in. So I opted for the landing.
Interesting - and timely. I'm just now helping my SIL with their new 30x40'x2fl house design, and found the same thing after that article!
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Forrest
Edited 3/24/2009 12:10 pm ET by McDesign
A few months after building my first and only set of winders I visited the shop of a custom stair builder with many years experience. I wanted to ask his opinion of winders because I had a lot of misgivings about the safety of the set I built, even though they were according to an architect's prints.
He told me that winders have a long history of accidents, often serious, particularly for the very young and the very old.
Although the set that Mike built look a lot safer than the cramped set I made, I still don't believe I'd get involved in building another set, just because of the chance of getting named in a lawsuit.
I've seen instances where people who had nothing to do with the actual cause of an accident still had to hire a lawyer to defend them in court. Negligence lawsuits can take many months to resolve, all the time making life miserable for lots of innocent people.
Gene, you've only used 3 winder treads, just filling the landing box. Try re-figuring with 6 as is shown in the article.
And isn't reading the magazine for free in the supermarket a little like pirating an mp3 file? <G>
Andy
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." Robert A. Heinlein (or maybe Mark Twain)
"Get off your dead #### and on your dying feet." Mom
"Everything not forbidden is compulsory." T.H. White, The Once and Future King
"isn't reading the magazine for free in the supermarket a little like pirating an mp3 file?"
I would have thought it was more like taking up space stageside at the peelers with out buying drinks at regular intervals...
Andy, my apologies. I don't have the magazine, and was reading your article while hungry for the bacon and eggs I was there to buy, so I forgot.
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My stair situation wants a U shape, symmetrical, and a total of thirteen treads. A six-tread winder corner would not do for me, so I tried things with a five. Results shown here.
As you can see, the first tread going into the wind is the one that needs to be adjusted to meet the 6 and 10 code thing. The other treads are each an 18 degree wind, but the starter and the ender are a little broader, sweep-wise.
My stairs have a planview footprint of 68 9/16 x 127 1/8 inches, and by golly, using this to-code winder set saves space, as its footprint is 65 9/16 x 121 1/8.
Maybe I'll walk over and just buy a copy of the magazine!
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
I was kidding about buying the mag, you know.Andy
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." Robert A. Heinlein (or maybe Mark Twain)
"Get off your dead #### and on your dying feet." Mom
"Everything not forbidden is compulsory." T.H. White, The Once and Future King
His new name is Gene Pirate Dylan!oops, he pirated Bob Dylan's name too!Andy, you just don't know what it's like to be old and retired. You start learning all sorts of tricks like taking extra pats of butter home with you from the buffet line when you eat out.It's all about survival of the cheapest. The new Darwinian rule.;)
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Dude, if I may call one of your advanced years that, you are talking to the King of cheap, who's married to the Queen of cheap. We joke that it's a competition between my Scottish heritage and her Jewish heritage to see who can spend the least. It's a lot of fun to tell that to salesmen, because they have no idea to respond and remain within the bounds of political correctness.Andy
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." Robert A. Heinlein (or maybe Mark Twain)
"Get off your dead #### and on your dying feet." Mom
"Everything not forbidden is compulsory." T.H. White, The Once and Future King
The winder stair project progresses in my 3D imagination. With a five-tread turn in each 90, this is now a 1-5-1-5-1, thirteen treads, fourteen risers, total rise 107-1/8".
This version is done with sawtooth-cut carriages, a few of which are seen here. I can export files in .dwg format, just 2Ds of the large side of each one, and have my local engineering shop plot them using continuous-feed paper stock.
The big long center one is from a length of 20" LVL.
The plots are then stuck to lumber stock using 3M spray adhesive, and we can saw to the lines to cut out the parts. We have done pattern work before using paper plots like this, and the results are highly accurate.
I can print all the planview back bevel angles of the plumb-cuts that contact the risers, and use the prints to set my bevel gage, then handsaw each.
Now, this is all in my head right now. I'll have to peruse your article some more to see if the housed stringer approach can be done for this, and if it looks easier. It might be easier, because cutting these treads to fit, even using the stair gage tool, will be kind of tricky, with the angles. Half inch mortises can hide cut errors, and the wedges sure do a nice job of keeping things tight.
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
Gene, I get vertigo looking at that view. Funny - I'll concede your computer drawing offers a lot of advantages, but it's not something I'd ever do. Carpentry is every bit as much about the process as it is about the money for me. I'd rather make less in order to be able to noodle it out the old fashioned way. Good thing I'm more than halfway through my expected lifespan, I guess.Andy
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." Robert A. Heinlein (or maybe Mark Twain)
"Get off your dead #### and on your dying feet." Mom
"Everything not forbidden is compulsory." T.H. White, The Once and Future King
And don't forget to consider that the noses of the treads are going to cut at an angle, while the mortises will be square cut. It can make you go a little googly eyed if you haven't laid it all out first.Andy
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." Robert A. Heinlein (or maybe Mark Twain)
"Get off your dead #### and on your dying feet." Mom
"Everything not forbidden is compulsory." T.H. White, The Once and Future King
same here - whi8le I design on CAD, I may make minor revisions for jobsite situations, so I take the info and still run it out on site.BTW, I hear cheap is the new chic`
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Does that mean us guys with beards and no mustaches are stylin'?Andy
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." Robert A. Heinlein (or maybe Mark Twain)
"Get off your dead #### and on your dying feet." Mom
"Everything not forbidden is compulsory." T.H. White, The Once and Future King
You and Paul do bear a bit of a resemblance....
This morning I finally got around to reading your winder stair article. I like your technique of using plywood under the winder treads to allow for movement. Someday I'll finally try doing housed stringers. I haven't read your stairbuilding book; do you ever use tread jigs like the one Jim Collins makes, or do you always use pinch sticks?
Thanks, Mike. Do you mean Dave Collins? If so, I have a set of his stair templates. I rarely build stairs that way, but when I have to, the templates work quiet well. Collins Tool Co. makes a number of good things - I also like the miter clamps and the Coping Foot. One of these days I might spring for a set of his little planes, but I can't justify it right now.Andy
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." Robert A. Heinlein (or maybe Mark Twain)
"Get off your dead #### and on your dying feet." Mom
"Everything not forbidden is compulsory." T.H. White, The Once and Future King
LOL, yes, DAVE Collins. Next to my FHB is a Fast Company magazine with JIM Collins on the cover, who wrote "Good to Great."
I never got a coping foot, jumping on the angle grinder bandwagon instead, but I did buy Dave's spring clamps, as well as his router bit that prepares plywood for edgebanding. Those little planes look handy too.
How do you like the router bit?BTW, I usually cope softwoods by hand, but find the CF works well on hardwood crowns.Andy
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." Robert A. Heinlein (or maybe Mark Twain)
"Get off your dead #### and on your dying feet." Mom
"Everything not forbidden is compulsory." T.H. White, The Once and Future King
The router bit works great, but it's very hard to get set up just right. A hair too high or too low and the edging doesn't go on square to the face.
Thanks. I'll bet you get a nice, tight glue line though.Andy
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." Robert A. Heinlein (or maybe Mark Twain)
"Get off your dead #### and on your dying feet." Mom
"Everything not forbidden is compulsory." T.H. White, The Once and Future King
I wouldn't cut any of it until the reality of the stair well is framed even if I framed it myself.
I would think that if you made the outside stringer housed you'd be able to slide the treads into the housed side and then slide the inside edge down. Might be even better if you use a thicker stock for the housed stringer so the mortises could be deeper but not lengthen the tread.
That is an interesting approach to cutting the stairs Gene. Post an update on how it goes.
Gene,
What will be the total depth of that long stringer? At a guess, I'd say something over 20" with maybe 3" of intact material below the cuts.
I built a similar stair some years ago with four treads in the winders. I'm with Andy. Figuring it out on the spot is fun.
In Canada, the National Building code says that, where winders come to a point within the stairwell, there can be only one set of winders turning 90 degreesd in any run of stairs and there can be be no more than three treads in this set. And I had to argue hard with the building inspector that stairs like you have drawn and like I had built didn't fall under that provision because they don't come to a point.
I convinced him and he passed them, but these days he'd probably demand an engineer's stamp or some dam thing.
Ron
Gonna be an interesting continuous guardrail/handrail on that set of winders.
They can't get your Goat if you don't tell them where it is hidden.
Shouldn't be a big deal as the IRC allows handrails to be interrupted by newels.Andy
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." Robert A. Heinlein (or maybe Mark Twain)
"Get off your dead #### and on your dying feet." Mom
"Everything not forbidden is compulsory." T.H. White, The Once and Future King
You'd save money too if you just wandered through the store and open packages of lunchmeat and eat them right in the store and hide the empty wrappers, then you can help yourself to an apple or some grapes, maybe wolf down a small packet of chips, eat a candy bar and hide the empty wrapper, etc.
I'll bet you'd get real mad if someone called you and you gave him advice on how to do something, or a bid, or you drew up a plan and he didn't pay. Are you that hard up? Sorry to be so catty, but I can't seem to find a nice way to phrase it all. Taunton won't stay in business very long if everyone else uses your money saving technique!
"Now, maybe you think winders have charm, and in Andy's article, the photos would make you think warm and cozy thoughts about how folksy and "traditional' (I hate that word when used to discuss houses) such a staircase can be to have.
But for me, in my new age of "less is more," no more mag subscription costs, design for lower built-costs in housing, etc., winder stairs are just another frivolous thing we cannot afford."
I just went thru that excercise a couple weeks ago for a customer.
Fact is, he was sold on the idea that he HAD to have a winder inspite of the fact I could have given him a better layout in less space with a couple different stair designs. He has one he loves in his existing house and loves it, and in that house, it does make some sense, but this one is an entirely different situation.
But the customer is always right
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Ahhh! The beauty of 3D.
From the 5-tread corner workout, came the frame-up and its stringers, in Sketchup.
Chief won't figure this all for me. I can represent it in plan, to scale, but it wants to call it a curved-stringer thing in 3D. I wanted square corners, as Andy did. Will your software?
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
I was able to get a three tread winder safe easily, and figured out how I would use it to build a five tread with wedges like you show and like Mike built, but there would be a few extra steps to doing it with the stair tool. Another optional way of doing it would have probably been similar to the process you used in SU, by creating individual solid shapes and elevating them each to position within the framed walls.For that display, we can set the opacity or transparency for each element in a rendering ( or the reflectivity for something like a mirror or a SS front on the refrigerator)
Or can just turn off the visibility of an item.Sometimes simpler to just use wire frame display to check something quick, but for a client that gets too confusing.
Welcome to the Taunton University of Knowledge FHB Campus at Breaktime. where ... Excellence is its own reward!
We just had a winder stairway taken OUT - and replaced with a standard staircase.
We accomplished this by taking out about 2 feet of the upper floor - giving us the height needed to (a) put in a better stair and (b) bringing more light into the entire house via the new "lightwell".
Winder stairs are NOT in the local code here in Canada anymore - too many accidents.
They are DANGEROUS - everyone who has visited our home - including ourselves... have slipped on those stairs. I would rather avoid a potential lawsuite/injury - than have winder stairs again.
We did have a rotting old outside stairway - since replaced - which was our way of moving new applicances into the house. Otherwise, we would have had to get a crane.
To all those that have built winder stairs, and have an idea of what Andy did with the plywood tread substrates for the kite-shaped winders:
What seasonal wood movement problems have you seen with large tread widths such as these?
It would seem to me as if one would want to insist on something like QS white oak for those wide treads, and definitely not maple, if you are not doing something as Andy did.
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
most of our stair treads are factory glued-up oak
so, when we make the wider treads we need for winders, we just slice & dice and epoxy glue up the larger sizes
haven't noticed any ontoward movement of the treads... the flooring will usually give warning of humidity problems before the treadsMike Hussein Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Here is the thing as proposed, that gets the winder.
911 sf footprint, not including decks and porch, 3 beds, 2 baths.
Suggest to me a siding scheme that has something up, a hatband rim trim, and something else lower. I want to break up the tall gable walls.
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
I'll think on that one Nothing dramatic comes to mind.Got another view of the back side?Funny, I can take my 3D models and use the mouse to twirl them around real easy now, so I find myself trying to grab a picture like that and rotate it to see the other side, then when it doesn't work, I have to laugh at myself
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Here is a pair of rendered views, showing the big window wall looking due S, and a view showing the two other walls facing E and N.
Hope the download speed doesn't kill you.
The E and N elevations are tight up to woods. I know they are unappealing, no symmetry, etc., but that is what we have.
All the low windows have the same head height, including those topped by transoms, and that head height matches the doors.
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
Place reminds me of this one below.But those tall casements give you a problem with any bellyband sort of trim...
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