Canyon lots, long stair runs and what they cost in San Diego

The short answer

Stairs do not change the price. Not one flight, not four, not an outdoor switchback staircase down a canyon slope with a landing halfway.

A sofa is $126. A refrigerator is $164. A queen mattress and box spring set is $143. A half-truck clearout is $431. Those are the same numbers on a flat lot in Mira Mesa and on a house in Mission Hills where the front door sits two flights below the curb.

No stair fee, no walk-up fee, no long-carry fee, no charge for parking on the street because your driveway is too steep to back down. The minimum for any visit is $75.

Why so much of San Diego is built this way

This city is cut apart by canyons. Finger canyons run between neighborhoods all over the older parts of the metro, and the buildable land sits on the mesas above them. Which means thousands of houses here were built on the rim - street along the top, house stepping down the slope, yard on a terrace below that, and canyon brush below that.

It produces a specific and locally normal arrangement: the garage and the parking are at street level, the living space is one or two levels below, and the connection is an exterior staircase, usually narrow, often with a turn in it, frequently with a handrail on one side only.

You see it in Mission Hills, Bankers Hill, Del Cerro, San Carlos, Bay Park, Rolando, Golden Hill, parts of Point Loma and up the Mount Helix slopes in the East County. If you have ever tried to get a mattress into one of these houses, you already know what the removal looks like.

Everything goes up, which is the hard direction

This is what makes canyon lots different from a third-floor walk-up in Pacific Beach.

In a walk-up, gravity is on your side going down. On a canyon lot, the truck is at the top and the furniture is at the bottom, so every piece is carried uphill, outdoors, on stairs that were sized for people rather than for a French-door refrigerator.

It is why some haulers price stairs, and why a crew that has not worked these neighborhoods before will look at your staircase and start recalculating in your driveway. We do not, because the price was published before anyone drove out.

The stair-carry price list

All of these are carried out from wherever they sit:

A sleeper sofa is the worst object on that list to bring up a canyon staircase, and it is $149 regardless.

Tell us about the stairs anyway

Not because it changes the price - it does not - but because it changes the crew size and the time we block.

Useful things to mention when you book:

• Roughly how many steps, and whether there is a turn or a landing.
• Indoor or outdoor, and whether the treads are tile, wood or concrete. Wet tile after a marine-layer morning is genuinely slippery.
• Where the truck can park. Many of these streets are narrow with no shoulder, and some have a hydrant or a curve that removes the only spot.
• Whether the driveway is usable. Plenty of canyon-lot driveways are too steep or too short for a loaded truck, which just means the crew walks a bit further.
• A photo of the staircase. One picture answers all of the above.

What tends to be hardest

From experience in these houses, in rough order:

• Sleeper sofas. Heavy, rigid, and the mechanism means they will not flex around a turn.
• Side-by-side refrigerators. Wide, top-heavy on stairs, and usually installed before the kitchen doorway was narrowed by a remodel.
• Pianos. An upright is $290 and the stairs are the entire job. Tell us it is a canyon lot when you book so we bring the right crew.
• Hot tubs on lower decks. Cut into panels and carried up piece by piece. $322.
• Anything solid wood from the 1950s. A large armoire at $197 outweighs a modern sofa by a lot.

Real jobs on real slopes

Mission Hills, living room two flights below the street. Sofa $126 + armchair $77 + coffee table $67 + bookshelf $72 = $342.

Del Cerro, lower-level bedroom and the deck below it. Queen mattress and box spring set $143 + king bed frame $152 + dresser $126 + patio table $89 = $510.

Bay Park, whole lower floor before a remodel. Half truck $431, every load up the outside staircase to the street.

Rolando, kitchen replaced on the lower level. Refrigerator $164 + electric range $134 + dishwasher $109 = $407.

All literal sums of the published prices. None of them moved because of the slope.

The other San Diego stair situation

Canyon lots are one half. The other is the walk-up apartment stock in the beach neighborhoods - the 1960s and 70s buildings in Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach and Mission Beach with three stories, exterior stairwells, a landing turn at every floor and no elevator anywhere in the building.

Same policy. A mattress from a third-floor PB unit is the size price - $103 for a queen - and the stairs are included. Same for the long interior corridors in Mission Valley garden complexes, and the reserved freight elevators downtown and in Little Italy.

If the phrase in your head while reading this was but they have not seen my stairs - send a photo. The answer will still be the published price.

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