Steel Staircases in Nairobi: Set Out to the Rise You Actually Have

The maths has to come from the building, not the drawing

A staircase is governed by three dimensions: the rise (floor to floor), the going (tread depth) and the headroom above it. Get the rise wrong by a few millimetres per step and the error accumulates until the last step is a different height from the rest: which is the single most common cause of falls on a staircase.

So we measure floor-to-floor on site, after screeds and finishes are known, and divide it into equal risers. A stair set out from an architect’s drawing before the floor levels are final will be wrong, and steel is not adjustable afterwards.

What we fabricate

Straight flights, dog-legs with a half-landing, quarter-turn stairs, industrial access stairs, and floating stairs with treads cantilevered from a spine or a wall.

Treads in chequer plate, solid timber, glass or concrete infill. Stringers in channel, plate or box section sized for the span rather than for what looked right on the last job.

Floating stairs are a structural problem

A floating stair puts every tread’s load into a cantilever, and that load goes into the wall or the spine beam. On a masonry wall that frequently means a steel spine hidden in the wall build-up, which is a decision made during construction rather than afterwards.

Retrofitting a true floating stair into a finished house is expensive and sometimes impossible. We will tell you which yours is at survey.

Why we do not publish a rate

Staircases vary too much for a per-metre figure to mean anything. Rise, number of treads, stringer span, tread material, landing arrangement and the balustrade on top all move the number substantially.

We quote per flight after measuring. Anyone quoting a staircase from a photograph is guessing, and the guess will be revised.