Not Necessarily Off Topic

[The Daring Dufas]

It has to do with wooden ladders and fire departments. I suppose that might be of concern to homeowners. I thought it was pretty cool. :-)

TDD

[krw]

The thing I thought a little odd was that they put down aluminum ladders several times but didn't mention fiberglass once. I certainly wouldn't have one of those ladders for home use.

[Evan]

Right, Aluminum ladders can be weakened by fire and fail... Same goes for the fiberglass ladders -- they are useful for certain kinds of technical rescues where a non-conductive means of climbing is required but expose them to heat and the resins will quickly soften and the ladder becomes unsafe and utterly useless...

Wood ladders can bake and char and will survive burning for a short period of time before failing...

Remember that temperatures in the thousands of degrees are common in fully involved structure fires...

~~ Evan

[The Daring Dufas]

One reason they gave for the heavy wooden ladders was that they are stable when a strong wind comes in off the bay.

TDD

[Hank]

Most FD's today use aluminum/fiberglass because of manpower shortages. One FF can handle a 20' aluminum ladder, but it would take 2 FF's to handle a 20' wooden ladder. When you need a 40-50ft. ladder, that takes many more.

Hank

[The Daring Dufas]

[Tony Miklos]

Cool. Thanks for posting it!

[krw]

Understood, but that wasn't brought up in the clip. The question was obvious and not answered.

I still wouldn't have a wood ladder. They have other issues that makes them useless and dangerous for the home.

[krw]

Fiberglass should be pretty stable. It can be made as heavy as needed. ;-) Aluminum was an obvious non-starter but spent all the time on them and never explained why fiberglass wasn't used.

[The Daring Dufas]

I have fiberglass and aluminum ladders myself. I haven't owned a wooden ladder in years. The problem I've always had with wooden ladders is the fact that the wood shrinks and the metal rods and hardware falls off. I had nothing like the SFFD ladders which are of unbelievable quality. I couldn't guess at how much a ladder like theirs would cost.

TDD

[krw]

My 6' step ladder and an *old* 16' extension ladder (that I wouldn't trust to climb) are aluminum. The others (a 8' step and 20' extension, and soon a 10' step) are fiberglass. Other than the aluminum extension ladder they're all Type-1A.

Yep. They're incredibly heavy, too.

You could guess. IIRC they said how many weeks it took to make a ladder. Multiply that by the two(?) guy's salaries, multiplied by at least four.

[Ed Pawlowski]

wrote

They said $100 a foot

[The Daring Dufas]

GAWWWWD!

TDD