Baby Gate

[penfold]

Now my little one has turned 1 and discovered the joys of running and how good stairs can be when you run up and down them I've got a slight problem. We have a pressure baby gate at the bottom of the stairs which is fine as the wall is solid there. However at the top of the stairs we don't have a solid wall and I'm note sure if we can put a gate there securely. When I put a pressure gate there the wall moved a little bit but the gate seemed secure but the height was a little small. Obviously I don't want to put something up which isn't secure but I'm not sure I could drill into what essentially is a partition wall or would I be better sticking with a taller pressure fitted gate?

 

Any suggestions?

[FN-GM]

From the thread little I thought there was some kind of scandal relating to babys!

[featured_spectre]

We had the same issue, we put a steel plate drilled into the wall, and then used a pressure gate (most of them are this kind annoyingly). This was 5 years ago, and we were about to take it down as DD can safely navigate the stairs and such like, when we found out baby #2 was coming, so we left it up.

[itgeek1989]

Is the baby gate the ones you twist to fit in place? Could you get a square thin piece of wood about 4" by 4" and put that between the wall and the twisty bit. Should spread the pressure on the wall. Hope it makes sense..

[Greenbeast]

on our stairs we have a wooden hinged gate that has locating 'sockets' fitted to the wall, not sure if the latch would be too easy to learn/overcome (we use it for dogs)

[Bananas]

We used these

 

Buy Lindam Extending Metal Safety Gate from our Stair Gates range - Tesco.com

 

Failing that if a taller one would do it buy a dog gate, we have one for the GSD to keep her away from the front door

[6Foot2]

We had a no trip baby gate for our son at the top and bottom of the stairs:

 

http://johnlewis.scene7.com/is/image/JohnLewis/231863902?$prod_exlrg$

 

The bottom of the stairs was no problem but at the top the gap between the riser and the wall was too wide for the gate to cope with so we attached a block of wood on the wall to act as the wall-side hinge mounting.

 

This worked well for us.

[rich_tech]

I was wondering this myself, as I have to put our second one up now at the top of our stairs and its all plasterboard walls on both sides funnily enough

[featured_spectre]

@rich_tech we had the same issue...we put a steel plate on the plaster (someone stupidly artexed the whole wall before we got there, so we sanded it down and screwed the plate in)...the steel plate absorbs the pressure, is flush with the wall and we painted it and artexed it so you'd never know. When we leave we will plaster and artex the wall where it was so it looks like nothing was done.

[penfold]

Is the baby gate the ones you twist to fit in place? Could you get a square thin piece of wood about 4" by 4" and put that between the wall and the twisty bit. Should spread the pressure on the wall. Hope it makes sense..

 

We haven't got one yet. We do already have a pressure one we use at the bottom of the stairs which is what I used to test at the top of the stairs. I suppose we could look at putting some wood between the gate and the wall.

[Greenbeast]

DaveP pictured the one we use

[JJonas]

Lindam Baby Stair Gate - less than half price £6.99 reduced from £14.99! @ Aldi - Hot UK Deals

[sparkeh]

Its not recommended to use pressure fit gates at the top of a flight of stairs. They are not as secure and as they require a bar running along the bottom of the gate they present a trip hazard.

[penfold]

Its not recommended to use pressure fit gates at the top of a flight of stairs. They are not as secure and as they require a bar running along the bottom of the gate they present a trip hazard.

 

So if it's not to be pressure fit, realistically my only option is what @nephilim has suggested?

[plexer]

A steel plate would be overkill, if it's at the top and it's also the corner of the wall then there must be some timber there.

 

If you do want to attach something to spread the load a simple piece of plywood or even mdf will do the job nicely.

 

As for the comment about pressure gates with bars along the bottom I can see the logic and the one that was posted the whole thing pivots on the hinges that are screwed to the wall.

 

That being said we used a pressure gate at the top of our stairs with all 3 of our girls and yet no-one had an accident, must be that thing called common sense I guess.

 

Ben

[sparkeh]

That being said we used a pressure gate at the top of our stairs with all 3 of our girls and yet no-one had an accident, must be that thing called common sense I guess.

 

Ben

Sure, of course you can do what you want, just passing along guidance from every baby site and manufacturer of baby gates that I've ever seen.

 

Tripping isn't really anything to do with common sense though; if someone fell down our stairs because I'd fitted something that general consensus thought wasn't a good idea and there was a safer option, I'd feel pretty bad.

[penfold]

For our stairs the bar across the bottom may not be such a problem as I may have to put it on the last stair rather than the top as we have a banister which sits right where the top of the gate needs to go. I have been looking for a extra tall gate as putting it on the last stair means it that much lower to open the gate.

@sparkeh - I'm like you, if I put something up which somebody tripped on I'd feel pretty bad, but there is that much "rubbish" all over the floor now that we are getting pretty good at balancing on one foot while the other slides on some toy:p

[penfold]

Just to let you know that we bought a screw fix gate at the weekend and that still didn't fit. The problem we have is that there is a banister which has three rails running up the stairs. As a result any gate we tried was the wrong size as it meant it couldn't be fixed properly. What we ended up doing is putting a pressure gate across the landing before you get to the stairs so there was no need to dill into any walls. It's not quite what we wanted but it does stop the little one getting to the stairs which is what was needed.

 

Thanks for all suggestions though.