Fitting a Loft Ladder

Freakbro

Freakbro

Freakbro

Soldato
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29 Jul 2010
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I'm looking to board out some of the loft and use it as extra storage, so I'm going to need to fit a loft ladder in a fairly cramped space in the hallway, but there is enough room.

The thing is, the current loft hatch is hinged and folds up and back into the loft.

Now, I'm being told it needs (or would be better) to have the hatch fold down and have the ladder fitted above the hinge side, I just thought we could fit a ladder as the hatch currently is and fit it to the opposite side of the hatch hinges.

Is there a problem with that, do loft ladders need to be fitted to downward hatches?

It just seems like a lot more hassle to remove and rebuild all the surround and arcatrave just to make the hatch come down if it's not necessary.
 
Loft ladders usually overhang the opening by about 30-45cm, so even having the hatch on the opposite side won't work unless the hatch is very large.
 
I just fitted a new loft ladder last weekend (Abru 3 section). Previously had a hatch which just sat on some battens around the hole.

The ladder came with all the bits to convert the hatch so that it can sit inside the hole and hinge down.

I had to replace the actual hatch as the existing one was only a ~6mm bit of plywood, and the fitting kit required screwing the hinges into the end of the hatch(ended up using a bit of 19mm pineboard I had left over from building some shelves which was almost the right size already!).

Other than that, it was easy to fit the hinges and latch.

Depending on how your current hatch sits, you may be able to just trim it down slightly so it fits inside the hole, and use the fitting kit (if the ladder you get comes with one) to convert it.
 
Ok cheers, so it's looking like I do have to convert the loft hatch to swing down.

Bit of a PITA but doable (for my mate :p)
 
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