Fear of falling off ladders is a very sensible thing.
Three bits of advice from me; read the HSE advice on ladder safety, get a stand off
I really need to paint the soffit board and sort some guttering problem is :-
A. Cant really afford a pro and I am capable of doing the work. B. beyond around 10 feet I am crap on a ladder, even if I got higher I would be hanging on rather than doing anything.
Ideally I would like to get the work done this summer although could probably wait til next year.
Anyone else got this `fear` of height/ladders and how did you overcome it. I just done feel safe or comfortable 20 feet up. Is there a better type ladder I could use thinking it may be cheaper to buy something, use it, then sell on ebay.
It is more working from a ladder than the height (I think) as I am currently painting the window above the front porch, it has a steep roof but I can access from the bedroom window, I just tie a rope around the bed hang it out and use that as a comfort thing. Strange thing is I cannot access the porch roof from a ladder, I tried and just got scared and backed off.
Any thoughts or ideas on this would be appreciated. thanks
Apart from GAMI.... Hire a tower
I don't find being on the roof a problem. It is only the transition between ladder and roof. When I lived in Glasgow, sitting on a slate roof, five floors up, gave a marvelous view over the city and was one of my flat mates' and my favourite places to enjoy an evening drink.
Colin Bignell
We used polypropylene ropes for caving as they don't stretch much and they float. IIRC they came from a hauliers' merchant, were 11mm and had a rating of about 300 - 350kg. No good for climbing but OK where there's little or no shock loading.
Get a quote for having scaffolding erected professionally. That's what I did. It was much cheaper than I though it would be. It made working on the facias, windows, etc really easy. Wouldn't do it any other way again.
I have a safety harness which works this way by having a long length of thick velcro which slowly rips apart. (At least in theory, I've never needed to try it, and it's a one-use only.) If you have to work by yourself, check the drop distance from the suspension point so you aren't going to be left dangling in mid-air. Make sure you know how to put on and adjust the harness correctly, unless you want a set of crushed nuts (a common injury with falls using safety harnesses which were not correctly adjusted beforehand). Also, the suspension point needs to be able to take to arrest force (many times your weight).
Moving from ascent ladder to roof ladder always feels much safer IMHO once I have tied the two together ;-)
I guess this sort of stuff is provided on industrial rope access kit? I'm not familiar with that kind of thing (only "leisure" climbing gear). But it sounds similar to what you get on via ferrata gear, via ferrata being a kind of "serious" version of Go Ape on proper mountains. It's designed to cope with very high factor (2+) falls by the stitching pulling apart, and is indeed single-use.
If, OTOH, you're anchored from above on "normal" dynamic climbing rope, you don't need this kind of thing (indeed, it shouldn't rip apart if you do) because the fall factor can't be over 1, because you can't fall more than the length of rope that is out. (If you're above the anchor it could reach but not exceed 2). If the rope runs up from an anchor/belayer at ground level to a carabiner at the top then down to you the fall factor will be lower.
High factor falls on via ferrata can exist because you can slide a fair way down an anchor cable before it actually "catches" you, but your "rope" (the tails with the clips on) is quite short.
I mentioned fall factor in another post - essentially 2 writes off a rope, a number of 1s can damage one, but a rope can take quite a few lower ones depending on spec. It's calculated as (length of fall before rope starts to stretch / length of rope out).
Neil
Then again, some don't even clip on:
And that the fall arrest system will be well into operation before you hit the bottom. Little point in having such a device if it only starts to slow you down in the last couple of feet of a ten foot drop...
Correctly adjusted *and* positioned...
Anchor point. Suspension point is the point on the harness that you dangle from, one would hope that a harness suspension point will take the load. B-)
Those devices only slow you down in a fairly short distance anyway. If you're lead climbing at the lower end of a route and fall off, it's entirely possible that you'll only stop very close to the ground.
Different situation I know, but my point is the gear is designed to cope with it, even with all 17.5 stone of me! :)
I'm starting to wonder, actually, if the OP's ladder is of sturdy metal construction and is fixed to something solid so can't fall over (=3Dwould take a shock loading of his weight from a 0.5 to 1m-ish fall without failing) if using something like via ferrata gear (or industrial rope access equivalent) and clipping it to the nearest rung to where he's standing might provide a bit of reassurance and a fairly good chance of safely catching a short fall from which he'd always be able to get back on the ladder easily enough?
Neil
As a matter of interest, what is the greatest height that a relatively sane man would reach on a ladder?
In article , Timothy Murphy scribeth thus
Does that include a fireman on a turntable ladder?...
And, after you've fallen, having a bed land on top of you could be painful!
Unless there's no convenient window where you're using the ladder, in which case you need to climb the unsecured ladder to drill the wall and fit an eyebolt before you can secure it.
Was Fred Dibnah relatively sane?
And depths on wire ladders....?
Roof ladder? What roof ladder? (I know, I know but I don't have anything long enough to reach the ridge on the main roof which is light enough for me to get there.)
...of course the OP also needs to take advice from someone who can see his exact situation and maybe test it and train him in its use rather than just taking advice from an Internet bloke down the pub :)
Neil
I don't think there's any limit. I've seen steeplejacks working on ladders at 400ft.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.