Aging in place in Fountain City

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 Fountain City

Fountain City sits inside the City of Knoxville rather than in unincorporated county land, so the building permit for a widened doorway, a curbless shower or an exterior ramp comes from the city's Plans Review and Inspections office, and water, wastewater and electricity come from the Knoxville Utilities Board - two different bodies, one city file and one utility account. The neighbourhood's housing is the oldest and smallest on the north side of Knoxville: modest single-storey and one-and-a-half-storey homes built through the 1910s to the 1940s around the old town centre and along the mill and streetcar streets, with one bathroom in most of them, a tub in a five-by-eight layout, and a 28 to 30 inch door in front of it. Many of them are pier-and-beam, so the floor sits above the ground and the front entry is up a flight of steps; others have a basement cut into the hillside. That combination - a raised entry, a narrow bath door and an interior run of steps - is exactly what makes a house hard to stay in, and it is why Fountain City comes up so often in the requests we route.

Municipal reference: Knoxville Utilities Board (KUB)

Getting an accessibility contractor out to Fountain City

Fountain City is laid out on the north side of the city around Broadway, US-441, and Tazewell Pike, with Jacksboro Pike and Fountain City Park at its centre. Broadway runs straight south to downtown and north out of the city toward Halls and the county line, Tazewell Pike and Jacksboro Pike carry the cross traffic east and north, and I-640 forms the northern bypass a short distance away with its Broadway interchange as the way in and out. That makes Fountain City easy to reach from almost anywhere in the city, which is why a job here is often fitted into a day that is already running. The setting is what makes it interesting: the neighbourhood sits on a ridge above the creek valleys that cut through north Knoxville, so the side streets climb and fall, several of them are steep enough that a driveway pitches noticeably, and a lot that measures level at the street can still carry a real rise to the front door. The old streets are narrow, parking is on both sides, and staging a delivery and a dumpster on the same day is a genuine planning question rather than an afterthought. Spring rain on clay soil runs off these slopes rather than soaking in.

What Fountain City's housing stock means for aging in place

Fountain City is one of the clearest examples of the stock this work exists for. The houses are small, single storey or a storey and a half, and mostly built through the first half of the twentieth century, with one bathroom in most of them, a tub and shower combination in a compact layout, a doorway that measures around 28 inches in the original plans, and hardwood or tile throughout. Because the ground falls away on both sides of the ridge, a great many of them have a raised front porch reached by two or three risers, or a basement garage with an interior stair up to the living level - small details, but the ones that decide whether someone can stay in the home. Inside, the plan is tight: a doorway, a hall and a bathroom in a few square feet, so widening the bath door often means borrowing space from the hall or the adjoining closet, and that decision is made on the actual measurement rather than from the year the house was built. The work is rarely about square footage. It is about the doorway, the shower floor, the blocking behind the grab bars, and whether the floor can be recessed or whether a low-profile curbless base has to do the job instead.

What accessibility work does a Fountain City home need most?

Which Aging in Place services can we match in Fountain City, TN?

How much does aging in place work cost in Fountain City, TN?

Sources

Aging in Place tools & calculators

Aging in Place resources