Tutorial: Building stairs from the basement up through a foundation

[AnnDruvez]

**additional edit** OK, I started on a fresh lot, built a foundation basement with stairs going down. Added a set of stairs above the lower stairs and sent in the building inspector. He was able to use the stairs in both directions. So then I went to CowgirlBlues house and built a copy of the basement next to the original house, brought in the inspector and he can't come up the stairs! So then I moved him to a different block where we built another foundation basement and again he can't come up the stairs. It's when the stairs are stacked, but what I can't understand is why on some blocks it works and others it doesn't. I do have a few thoughts, it could be something to do with blocks being bulldozed, but I need to test this a bit more before I make a decision.

As I recall, hasn't this been isolated to an issue with lot orientation? As in, when editing the location of the lots in Edit Town, there are arrows that point in one direction or the other. Follow that direction and it works, don't and it bugs..... Ah, here it is:

http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=11724.0

It's interesting that this was never a problem until recently. I've seen people say that about stacked stairs and the orientation of the lot before but I was never able to reproduce the problem they spoke of before and I use stacked stairs in almost all of my builds. It is,after all, how they are often placed in real buildings. It just makes sense to stack them. These aren't even new builds I've been having problems with but a few of my oldest favorite residential builds that I've used many times but some how recently they stopped working.

Anyway, I found a solution mentioned on another site that was much easier then redesigning the whole floor plan in a way to rotate them 90 degrees. I just slid the upper stairway back by one square so they aren't directly over top of each other. This only eats up one square of floor space so it was relatively easy to do and now they work fine.

Yet another bug on the long list of bugs EA will never fix I guess.

[Joe E]

No cheats, just turning the foundation into a basement level. No real secret in that, but what I've been testing is how easy it is to do in pre-existing houses considering how difficult the game mechanics make adding a few stairs within a foundation.

I've been using an adjustable stair bracket system made by EZ Stairs (see the videos on their website) and it's great for situations where you have to adjust the stairs to make them fit in a certain amount of space. They're strong and easy to use.

[ThornQueen]

I've tried all the tip and methods suggested here, but none seem to work. It keeps coming up with 'terrain too high' or 'can't level ground'. Any ideas or help would be much appreciated
Thanks

[Lilygirl]

One thing I've found is if you are trying to place stairs on the ground level you need to put down floor tiles first. For example, my game never lets me place stairs down from the second floor onto the grass if it's inside a room, I have to cover the grass with floor tiles first.

ThornQueen, if you could provide a more detailed description or a picture of what you're trying to do, then we could give you specific help and advice.

Have you tried using the ground leveling tool to level the ground around where you are trying to place the stairs? Try placing floor tiles. I've never encountered "terrain too high" but it sounds like you need to lower the ground a bit more. Sorry if you've tried these tricks already. A picture would help us see exactly what you are trying to do.

[theotherhalf]

What I have done is put the stairs from ground level to the basement then add stairs from the foundation to the ground and it lets me have them lined up like one big stair case.