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The Narrow mobile chair with brakes

The problem: The client was a single leg amputee, and wanted to be able to bath without assistance. However, the bathroom door was only 20 inches wide, which was too narrow for any available mobile chair to pass through. Widening the door was not an option. The need was for some type of chair with wheels, and all the wheels would have to have brakes so that transfers could be made safely without assistance.

The Solution: The heart of the device consists of 1) an old chrome kitchen chair and 2) an old office chair of the style that used a large diameter threaded rod for vertical height adjustment. Two sets of “feet” are provided: casters for easy movement, and rubber cane tips for safe transfer. To transfer safely to or from the unit using a transfer board, the casters must be in the air and the rubber feet on the floor, or the unit will spin out like a pinched pea. When the user is on the unit, he turns the height adjustment nut of the office chair to raise the rubber feet and lower the unit onto the casters. At the location where he needs to get off, he turns the nut the other way in order to jack the wheels and himself up in the air so that the unit sits on the rubber feet and is stable. The client weighed over 240 lb, and the disk is very easy to turn. The flat chassis is made of ¾” MDF. Four 5 inch diameter casters are fastened to the underside of this chassis, and the kitchen chair (with shortened legs) is fastened to its topside. The bracket that used to fasten to the seat of the old office chair was fastened to the underside of the seat of the kitchen chair. The legs of spider base of the office chair were shortened, and short legs of ½” threaded rod were installed at the ends of the shortened spider legs. These threaded rods were capped with rubber cane tips. The large nut is turned by horizontal disk that has small vertical pillars around its rim that make it easy to rotate. Sheet steel (as used for flashing roofs) was clamped around this nut with two hose clips, and it was also screwed to the horizontal disk. A hinged flat plate of MDF is used to connect the spider to the underside of the chassis as a stabilizing swinging arm."

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