Aging in place in Drexel Heights

We match across Tucson and the surrounding Pima County communities, so the contractor you are introduced to is one whose crews actually work your part of the county.

Permits, utilities and local rules for Aging in Place work in Drexel Heights

Drexel Heights is unincorporated - the size of the community suggests otherwise, but it has no city hall of its own - so a bathroom conversion, a widened doorway or a ramp is a Pima County Development Services permit. Water comes from Tucson Water, which serves the southwest side from the same system that serves the city and maintains the mains along Ajo Way and Valencia Road; Metro Water District also serves small pockets in the southwest, including the Diablo Village area on Ajo Highway near Ryan Airfield, so the provider is worth confirming by address. The housing is the clearest example of the post-war Tucson ranch house: single storey, concrete block on a slab, two or three bedrooms, one bathroom in most plans and two in the larger ones, with a tub-and-shower combination in a five-by-eight hall bath behind a door of 28 to 30 inches. Floors are tile, slick when wet, and the walls are block, so widening the bathroom door is a framing and finishing job and grab-bar blocking has to be added rather than found. In the older blocks near Ajo Way there are also manufactured homes and small apartment complexes, where the entry step and the shared stair are the parts of the route to plan around.

Municipal reference: Tucson Water

Getting an accessibility contractor out to Drexel Heights

Drexel Heights sits on the southwest side of the metro between Ajo Way (AZ-86) and Valencia Road, with Mission Road, Cardinal Avenue and South 6th Avenue carrying the traffic north to south, and I-19 running along the community's east side on its way south to Sahuarita and Green Valley. The drive from central Tucson is short, and a crew working the south side can usually take a Drexel Heights address on the same run as a South Tucson or a Sahuarita job rather than making a separate trip. The practical constraint is the street plan rather than the distance: these are older valley subdivisions, platted tight, with driveways that meet the street at a short radius and little room for a dumpster and a delivery at the same time. The other local note is the ground - caliche over expansive clay, with the settlement that shows up as a walkway that has dropped away from the house or a garage apron that holds water after a monsoon storm - which matters when a ramp has to keep its slope across ten or fifteen feet of that ground.

What Drexel Heights's housing stock means for aging in place

Drexel Heights is the classic post-war Tucson house, and it is the stock this work exists for. The houses are single storey, concrete block on a slab, with two or three bedrooms, one bathroom in most of them, and the bathroom is a tub-and-shower combination in a five-by-eight space behind a door that measures 28 to 30 inches. Floors are tile, hard and slick when wet, and the block walls change how a grab bar is fixed: there is no cavity to find a stud in, so blocking has to be cut in and finished. The entry is usually one or two risers above the walk, with a carport or a garage a step below the living level, and the roof overhang that keeps the summer sun off the walls also leaves the walk in shade for part of the day and not the rest of it. Because the soil is caliche over expansive clay, slabs move, and a bathroom door that has started to stick or a floor that slopes toward one corner is worth telling the contractor about before a recessed shower base is priced, because on a settled slab that decision changes the scope.

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Sources

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