Aging in place in Knoxville

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 Knoxville

Knoxville is the one address on this list with its own building department: a curbless shower conversion, a widened bathroom doorway or an exterior ramp at a City of Knoxville address is permitted and inspected by the city's Plans Review and Inspections office rather than by Knox County, and that city file is the record an insurer or a future buyer will ask for. Water, wastewater, electricity and gas all come from the Knoxville Utilities Board, so the utility account and the permit come from two different bodies - KUB bills the service and the city permits the work. The houses are the reason the work here is specific. Knoxville's in-town stock was built in waves, and the mill-era and Depression-era houses of Mechanicsville, Lonsdale, Old North Knoxville, Fourth and Gill, Parkridge and Marble City are typically a single storey or a storey and a half over a pier-and-beam crawlspace, with a raised front porch. The bathroom is usually a five-by-eight hall bath with a tub, a shower curtain and a door that measures 28 to 30 inches. That door is the deciding measurement - a walker or a wheelchair needs the doorway before it needs the shower - and on a plaster wall over frame or masonry, widening it is a framing and finishing job rather than a trimming one. The post-war streets further out add slab floors and carports, and the downtown and riverfront condominium buildings add an association's architectural review alongside the city permit, which is usually the approval that sets the timeline rather than the contractor's calendar.

Municipal reference: Knoxville Utilities Board (KUB)

Getting an accessibility contractor out to Knoxville

Knoxville is the base of the map. Interstate 40 and Interstate 75 run together through the city east to west, with I-640 as the northern bypass and I-275 cutting through the city on the north side; the two interstates split west of Farragut near Lenoir City. US-441 leaves the city south as Chapman Highway, Alcoa Highway (US-129) runs south-east toward the airport and Maryville, Kingston Pike (US-11 and US-70) runs west through Bearden to Farragut, Broadway (US-441) runs north, and Clinton Highway (US-25W) carries the north-west traffic toward Powell and Clinton. Oak Ridge Turnpike (TN-95) and Pellissippi Parkway (TN-162) link the west side to Oak Ridge and to Alcoa and Maryville, and US-411 runs east toward Sevierville. The Tennessee River gives the city its shape, with Fort Loudoun Lake upstream and the river running through downtown between the north and south sides. That is why an in-town Knoxville address is usually the easiest request to fit beside an existing job: the drive is not the question, the access is. The practical limits are the old streets themselves - narrow, often without off-street parking - and the grade. Knoxville is a city of ridges and creek valleys, so a front walk that looks level from the street can carry a real rise by the time it reaches the door, and the clay soil holds spring rain on the surface rather than draining it away.

What Knoxville's housing stock means for aging in place

Knoxville carries two very different houses for accessibility. The in-town grid - the mill-era, Depression-era and post-war streets on the north, south and east sides - is largely single storey or a storey and a half over a pier-and-beam crawlspace: two or three bedrooms, one or two bathrooms, a tub-and-shower combination in a small hall bath, and a doorway of 28 to 30 inches to get into it. Floors are usually original hardwood, tile or, in the older houses, a subfloor over joists, and there is almost always a step somewhere the homeowner stops noticing: two or three risers up to a raised front porch, a step down into a back room, or a short, steep run of interior steps between the living level and the back of the house. That interior stair is the single most common thing that takes a house out of reach in this city. The newer and rebuilt houses on the edges carry wider doors, usually 32 to 36 inches, and a slab or a crawlspace with a straighter run to the door. Whether a floor can be recessed for a true curbless base depends on the structure, and in a pier-and-beam house that is a question for the contractor and the engineer, not for a website.

What accessibility work does a Knoxville home need most?

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Sources

Aging in Place tools & calculators

Aging in Place resources