My youngish (50) SIL had a stroke from estrogen use. They installed a stairlift in their center hall colonial style home. This was over ten yrs ago.

They finally retired to our hometown and have a home now with a first floor master but the stairlift was a lifesaver in that house.

I know my bil had a company install it and it worked very well.

I can find out more details.

My boss had stair lifts installed in both of his parents homes. No problems, I think they may have had to have it serviced once or twice. Took them out when they put up the homes for sale. Both were installed by a company. One thing to make sure is that the company that installs it will also service it if there are any issues.

I have a good friend with one. She went from one of the chair kind to one that is a flat roll on. Her issue was the transfer from a wheel chair to the stair lift seat was more than she wanted to do multiple times in a day.

Learning more than I ever wanted to know about these but thanks for responses. Service certainly would be an issue.

It depends a lot on your specific facts. A friend had one installed for her mother. Even with this installed there was still too much walking to get to it from the kitchen and then from it to her bed. They had no issues with how it worked or the installation (my friend would've looked into this very carefully before proceeding) but because of how her mother was injured getting her off the chair at the top of the stair was super difficult. They finally had to put a hospital bed in the downstairs den.