Door Safety Handle

Being somewhat concerned for a while about falling when entering and exiting the PC and after seeing what the factory had done at the request of a new owner I decided to install a safety handle inside the entrance door.  I had a friend that fell while exiting his motor home and broke his leg and suffered for several months with a cast and later recovery.  My friend’s injury along with the fact that as we age one needs to take precautions to reduce the chance of injury spurred me to install the handle.  I found the stainless steel marine handle on Amazon and installed it in about 15 minutes.  Thanks to the forum member who initially posted on this modification.

Looks great! 
When we were visiting the factory to check on our build (a couple weeks ago), we asked to see the handles they have available. They are white and look real nice. Dave offered to have one installed for us, but instead, we will pick one up, with the related hardware, and do it ourselves, so we get the height that will be comfortable for us. We definitely agreed that this was a nice feature to have, to lower the risk of injury.

I seen pics of someone's PC with a handicap-style grab bar (pictured) mounted on the side of their kitchen galley base cabinet at just the right angle, used like a handrail at home.  Doing so, they must have given up their flip-up counter.  It looked real nice and seemingly very effective.  These types of grab bars are sold in various lengths and easily found at your local home improvement store with their bathroom fixtures.

Just sharing one more consideration.  We would surely miss our flip-up counter top with this option, but someone struggling much would have different priorities..

Heading for the factory next week and I plan to ask them to add the new grab bars on ours.  I was looking into adding something on the right side as DW has a bad knee and grabbing on the right side helps.  Saw the post about the new grab bars while I was typing up my lost of things I want them to work on.  Great timing.

Be careful with grab bars. Those nice bars for the the bathroom are installed through the drywall and secured with HUGE steel wing-its. You're talking about putting the bar on a very thin panel. The whole thing could rip off. It is dangerous to have a grab bar that may not hold your weight. The handles mounted through the steel door frame should be fine but you would have to rebuild or reinforce that sink cabinet to take the force of a falling person. False security is not good. Besides the fall, you'd probably get whacked with the metal grab bar.

Be careful with grab bars. Those nice bars for the the bathroom are installed through the drywall and secured with HUGE steel wing-its. You're talking about putting the bar on a very thin panel. The whole thing could rip off. It is dangerous to have a grab bar that may not hold your weight. The handles mounted through the steel door frame should be fine but you would have to rebuild or reinforce that sink cabinet to take the force of a falling person. False security is not good. Besides the fall, you'd probably get whacked with the metal grab bar.

It was my assumption they installed the grab bar properly.  But good to make note to others of the importance in doing so.

If I were to install such a grab bar, I would add a sheet of 3/8" plywood on the inside of the cabinet and use machine screws with nylon lock nuts and fender washers.

If I were to install such a grab bar, I would add a sheet of 3/8" plywood on the inside of the cabinet and use machine screws with nylon lock nuts and fender washers.

You could, but I feel the cabinet itself would part at the seams before the screws would pull out using #8 screws with a pilot hole (or without.. its stronger! In particle board at least..)

http://9wood.com/files/rd_reports/screw_withdrawl.pdf   Scroll down to the chart on page 10.

'low D' (low density, or the weakest) particle board with under torqued or properly torqued #8 screws will support 125 (weak torque, pilot hole) to 187 (proper torque, no pilot hole) pounds before pullout. The grab bars pictured use 3 screws each end, 6 total.  So on the 'low' side, it would take ~600 pounds of force to pull that bar out.  I feel the cabinet structure would start to fail after the first 1/4 TON of force... (500 lbs)

1/2 inch drywall with the fanciest high load anchors?


""1/2” drywall - impact force applied at 600 lbs. downward force and 700 lbs. pull away force.""

Page 3 section 5. https://www.moen.com/assets/moencom/documents/literature-center/BA0721.pdf

Another interesting observation from the same paper -

""Conclusion: Based on the research and testing done by North Olmsted reliability, the speed a human can grip and hold a bar will never allow a load greater than 120% of the person’s body weight to be applied. 95% of the population will apply only 80% of their body weight. Therefore the performance of the bars far exceeds any real world load that would be seen during a slip or fall. ""

I am in the process of installing grab bars all over our house for a disabled relative who now lives with us. Been doing some research.    I tend to overbuild, and to ridiculous lengths sometimes. Trying to do better design engineering now.

The factory installed one of the white grab bars on our rig today.  Doug asked where we wanted it and marked the spot.  It is white heavy plastic and bolted through the metal on the right side of the doorway.  Seems quite sturdy and being white is almost invisible against the white doorway metal.

A nice addition that makes entry a bit easier.