Mr Sergiew who wants to put a spiral stair up to his loft room, has come up with the idea of getting rid of his main stair, and putting a spiral staircase from the ground floor right up to the loft. He asks is this possible with the Klan spiral stair kit?

The answer is yes it is possible, but it is fraught with many problems.

First off are the Regulations which require different size spiral stairs for different functions. So a main house stair going up to the bedrooms on the first floor, will need to be approx 2000mm in diameter (depending on the constructional details of the spiral). While a spiral staircase serving only one room in a loft conversion can be reduced down to approx 1500mm in diameter. All this is still possible but the larger diameter staircase is outside of the range of any kit stair, so you will need to go up market to a made-to measure stair system.

The bigger problem is the rotational geometry. The treads of any spiral stair rotate at a fixed degree of rotation per tread, and this degree varies with the stair diameter. What this means is that the stepping on and off points at the top and bottom of a spiral stair have a fixed relationship with each other, and these may not suit the layout of your property. This situation is made worse when you add another floor onto your spiral stair, because you add another exit point to the problem. In practice this can mean that the layout of your hall requires that you step on the spiral staircase at a certain point, but the exit point on the first floor may end up not where you want to be, but pointing at a wall.

So two storey height spiral staircases are possible and look superb in a property, but you may need to go to a made-to-measure range which will cost more, and you definately need expert advice very early on in the project to check the feasibility of the staircase with your specific house layout and floor-to-floor heights.

The Staircase Doctor