A friend has stairs out of dining room that emerge through a rectagular opening in attic floor. The opening is covered with a piece of plywood backed by insulation board. This "flap" is hinged along one long side, and can be lifted and kept there by hook and eye. The flap appears to weigh about 30 pounds. The lady who owns the house is getting older, and wants to know if I can install an automatic opener/closer for the flap. Do they make such a thing?

I doubt they make anything specially designed for for it. You could mount a little reversible motor with a drum maybe to a rafter and run a cable to the door. It would be over kill, but you could even adapt a garage door opener to it. They come complete with limit switches to automatically shut it off when it is open. Maybe a reversible drill would work. There are stands available to make mounting it in place easier. You would need to either rewire the controls to be below the attic, or mount the drill below the ceiling and run the cable up through and to a pulley above the flap.