Steel Stairs in Mill Valley

Floor plan of the stairs

My clients wanted steel stairs rather than traditionally framed wood stairs as a key feature to the main level of their new home. They also wanted to eliminate 2 steps that had been drawn into the plans at the top of the stair run. In the drawing to the right you’ll see the 2 steps after a 45 degree turn at the top of the stair run.

I did some very detailed measurements taking into account the eventual finished floor elevations and the distance between the windows and the top landing and came up with the drawing below that proved that we could fit the stairs in without the turn at the top. The first step is always determining if you have enough distance (run) in order to get from one floor to the next (rise). The trick here was trying to get the lower set of stairs to start in the vicinity of the top stair coming up from the ground floor AND getting the last step at the top to fit into a structurally mandatory landing at the top. A simple drawing like this one proved that it was possible. The rise and run of 7-3/8” and 11” falls nicely into the comfortable and code compliant range for residential construction.

Proof of concept - the stairs will fit

Once the proof of concept was worked out I started working with the fabricator and engineer to sort out various steel size profiles and assembly connections. This step is always iterative. A drawing goes out, some comments come back and eventually we ended up with some shop drawings that were ready to release for fabrication.

Final concept comes together

The previous 3 pictures represent the evolution of the idea from material profiles for the rails and the steps to working out some assembly detailing to the fabricated and installed stairs. Sketchup is an excellent tool for this type of work because I can work in real world dimensions and build the model accordingly. If all the planning and measurements are good then things go right into place when the parts come back from the fabricator as they did in this case.

Finished Stairs

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