Received by email, and with my reply...
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004
6:37 PM
Subject: Here is my review or comments!
Hi John,
Been an admirer of
your work since god knows when, back in the'
good old' PB days! (He means
Performance Bikes Magazine - Ed.)
Do you mean
BEFORE i landed in a wheelchair??? Thanks for
the review!!!
I topped my spine @
T7 on Mad Sunday 2002 (bloody born-again biker
swung into my path without indicating
or looking; but no witnesses...).
Anyway, to the
business in hand (so to speak). - Levo Combi
standing power-chair.
I returned to work
(Primary School teacher no less) part-time in
January 2003 and built up to full-time by
January 2004. I managed to get funding through
Access to Work (Job Centre Plus) for a Levo Combi
standing powerchair. I'd tried a Baldour, but
hated the way that one handled; the front-wheel
drive made the back-end fish-tail and I would
have wiped out children's ankles right, left and
centre.
They would
soon learn to move???
Front wheel
drive is only any use for people that stay
indoors in BIG houses... Its a useless setup at
speed, or outdoors!
The day came and the
rep gave me one hour of his precious time to
take me through this fantastic new £14,500
beastie. It had centre-wheel steering for
excellent manoeuvrability and sensitive enough
controls to place it exactly where I wanted it
to be. I had a tray to put a wireless keyboard /
mouse on so that I could work from anywhere in
the room.
At first the
standing feature made me quite spastic, but it
settled down when I became used to it and it has
proven very beneficial from a physio point of
view. It tilts in space and can recline fully so
that, if I'm tired, I can get a quick 40 winks
at lunchtime.
If the playground is
wet and the tyres a bit worn it's possible to
get it into a slide, which is fun.
It was all great for
a while, but I started getting niggles with the
thing. Bolts started working loose, a guard over
a motor dropped off (I don't get the impression
that it was any more than cosmetic anyway), it
sheared a bracket supporting the backrest and
then it suffered a series of occasional
electrical faults. Recently it left me stranded
in the middle of the playground; half an hour
later it worked fine again.
The suppliers
(Gerald Simmonds) were not overly enthusiastic
about sorting problems and tended to make me
feel as though I was being fussy; "It's like a
new car, you're likely to get some teething
troubles" they said, "But I've got a new car;
it's been 100% reliable, has air-con, sports
suspension, all the gadgets, cost me less than
£10,000 and the dealer service has always been
excellent!" I replied.
Isn't this
ALWAYS the case?
At just over 12
months the batteries died, despite the Levo
website saying that the batteries should last 3
years; at least Gerald Simmonds (begrudgingly)
sent me replacement batteries for free.
Well that is
to be expected (batteries dying).
SOME people
(those that do not use the chair much or only
use it for short distances) will get three to
five years from powerchair batteries.
Others (you,
and me! for example) will get 12 months or less!
Even the
BEST deep cycle (Optima AGM, Odyssey AGM)
batteries will only give around 300 cycles at a
depth of discharge of 80%.
Thats only ten months expected life.
It goes like
this... 10 percent discharge daily = several
1000s of cycles or well over 3 years use.
20 percent
and you get approx 1000 and 2.5 years
30 percent
and you get say 750 and 2 years
it gets
worse as you cycle the battery deeper!
So 300 or 10 months is not unusual if you hammer
the batteries daily at 80 percent average
discharge!
You will get
less than 1 month if you completely flatten them
daily...
And leaving
them in any condition other than fully charged
for 24 hours or so causes sulphation...
So charge
them as often as possible! Always every night,
but also for an hour or so if you get chance
during the day helps too. Called opportunistic
charging. It helps lower the average depth of
discharge and helps them live longer.
In summary it has
been a god-send for me at work and , as far as I
can tell, the best power-chair that stands you
up on the market. It has been great to chase the
children around the playing field with threats
of "Last one in gets run over by a crip!" and so
on.
If you can get one
bought for you, great, but the price-tag is
horrendous for what you actually get (but isn't
that always the way for stuff for 'the
disabled').
All the beast,
Chris Selway.
