Aging in place in Alcoa

We match across Knoxville and the surrounding East Tennessee 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 Alcoa

Alcoa is its own city in Blount County, so it permits its own work and its Water and Wastewater Services department supplies and bills the water and sewer - a different building department and a different utility from the Knox County ones the rest of this list uses. That matters because the inspection schedule and the permit counter are local to the city, which also runs its own municipal electric service. For an accessibility project the housing here splits two ways and the split is unusually visible. The old company-town grid - the streets laid out around the aluminium works in the 1910s to the 1930s - carries small single-storey houses from the middle of the twentieth century, one bathroom, a tub combination and a narrow bathroom door, with raised porches and crawlspaces underneath. Beyond it, the streets built up from the 1950s onward, and especially the subdivisions off Wright Road and along the Alcoa Highway side, are one-level ranches and later houses with 30 to 36 inch doors and larger baths, where the shower is usually the project rather than the doorway.

Municipal reference: City of Alcoa Water & Wastewater Services

Getting an accessibility contractor out to Alcoa

Alcoa is reached from Knoxville on Alcoa Highway, US-129, which runs south past the airport and straight through the city, or on Pellissippi Parkway, TN-162, which leaves the interstate at the Knox County split and joins the same corridor at Alcoa and Maryville. Inside the city, Hall Road and Hunt Road carry the residential traffic, Hunt Road and Wright Road run south and east toward the newer subdivisions, and the Alcoa Highway frontage serves the commercial strips. Because the city sits between the airport corridor and the Little River and is bounded by Maryville on the east, a crew can come in from more than one direction, and once inside the city the addresses are close together - Alcoa is small enough that two full jobs in a day is realistic. The local grade story is the river and the ridges: the land drops toward the Little River on the north side and the older company-town streets climb away from the works, so a raised porch and a pitched driveway are both common on the same block.

What Alcoa's housing stock means for aging in place

Alcoa carries two stocks, and the accessibility work is different in each. The old company-town grid is small single-storey houses from the 1910s to the 1960s, usually one bathroom, a tub and shower combination in a compact layout, a bathroom door of 28 to 30 inches and hardwood or tile floors that are slick when wet; the front doors sit two or three steps above grade on a raised porch, and the floor below is usually a crawlspace rather than a slab. The later subdivisions off Wright Road and along the Alcoa Highway side are larger: one-level ranches and houses with 32 to 36 inch doors, a garden tub and a separate shower in the master bath, a garage at grade and a shorter run to the door. In both cases grab-bar blocking has to be confirmed before drilling, because neither era of construction reliably provided it where a bar is wanted, and in the older houses widening the bath door is a framing job on a wall that was never designed for it.

What accessibility work does a Alcoa home need most?

Which Aging in Place services can we match in Alcoa, TN?

How much does aging in place work cost in Alcoa, TN?

Sources

Aging in Place tools & calculators

Aging in Place resources