Aluminum Ladder load ratings

[Section 31]

I am buying an aluminum ladder soon. I see that the loads ratings vary from Grade 1 to grade 3. I was looking on the net and I read an article that all aluminum ladders are tested so that each rung on the ladder can hold 800lbs of weight regardless of grade. Does anyone know if that is true ? I will be using it for around the house type of work...I take it grade

1 is good enough?

Thanks.

[hallerb]

what do YOU and any other users weigh?

the trouble is lower cost ladders sway more, are less durable, and in general given the risks your better off with the BEST ladder you can afford.

All of these issues get worse as you go higher, the sway in a 16 footer is bothersome, at 35 feet it can lead to a bad accident.

plus what jobs will you be doing? the occasional clean out gutter is one thing, drilling into concrete to mount a deck at 25 foot is altogether different.

plus cheap laddres hve cheap hardware. I have a old 16 footer I use 1/2 of in my shed it has a 10 foot interior cieling height....

anyhow the leveleling legs fell apart that why it got moved to shed use..........

BUY THE BEST QUALITY LADDER YOU CAN AFFORD

think of it this way if you fall cause you bought a cheap one and mess up your back, how much money will it cost you for lost work?

now compare that to a more costly ladder:( see my point?

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Grade I is the highest rating. Yes, it is good enough.

You don't want to buy the cheapest and trust it to take your fat ass up high every day just because it passed a test in a lab. .

[Hugh Glass]

I'd never heard anything like the article you read. It's more than simplty the load ratings. Type 1 ladders are flimsy & lightweight. Compare the weight of them at the store. If you're talking about a six foot step ladder for changing light bulbs it might suit your needs.

A 24' fully extended type 1 ladder will have a lot more sway than a type 2.

Go for the type 2 - the few extra bucks will be worth it.

[Hugh Glass]

oops I had that backwards.

[IGot2P]

Hey, please don't confuse the gentleman. A grade 2 is NOT rated as good as a grade 1 ladder! Just point your browser to

and take a look at the American National Standards.

Don

[Jim Elbrecht]

That might be true-- but even if the rung can take 8 00 pounds-- the rails will fold up just when you don't want them to.

Around the house like maybe having to carry a bundle of shingles up while nearly extended? A bundle of shingles weighs about 70 pounds-- so if you are less than 180 you can use that Class I---- but leave the nails and hammer on the ground-- and don't gain any weight. And when you feel it swaying while you're half-way up, don't worry-- you're right at the max weight.

OTOH- If you weigh 150, don't need to go over 12' high, and don't carry things up the ladder, a class III will be plenty.

If it were me, I'd much rather have a Class IAA that was 20 yrs old than a brand new Class I. I've got a used fiberglass that I don't mind lugging around a couple times a year for the security it gives me over the Aluminum ladders I could afford a few years ago.

Look at his chart that Don posted-

Remember that when you turn 40 God gives you 40 pounds for 'good behavior'.

Jim

[George E. Cawthon]

The rung rating is just that, the ladder rating includes everything and the all important rails. Cheapest are rated at 200 pounds, and then 225,

250, and 300. If you get an extension ladder of 20 feet or less (top of the ladder fully extended is about 15 feet) most any rating is suitable as long as you weigh less than 180 pounds. I have a 225 pound rated 24 foot ladder (reaches 17 feet to top of ladder fully extended) and that is good enough for me but I weigh about 165. If I weighed 180-190 I would want a ladder rated at 250 pounds.

Not all ladders rated the same are equal in stiffness. Look at the width (depth) of the side rails, the more depth the more stiffness. If I got an extension ladder longer than 24 foot, I would want a much stiffer ladder than what I have, at least a 250 pound rated ladder. If you use a ladder for more than just around the house occasions, you want a commercial rated ladder (like 300 pound).

[George E. Cawthon]

You guys need to get your ratings corrected. The ratings in increasing strengths are 3,2, and 1. 1 is the strongest, course there are subsets of 1 also.

[George E. Cawthon]

Yep, I see that. Sorry about the correction but it was the second one I saw that was backwards. How come a #1 may be at the top or the bottom of a rating?

[Goedjn]

Ignore the "rating" and just look at the weight limit.

[Section 31]

The the weight limit is a problem. I'm 240lbs. Therefore can any aluminum ladder hold my fat ass ?

Goedjn wrote:

[hallerb]

type 1a is good to 300 pounds, i had gastric bypass surgery and used to weigh over 300:(

ALways concerned about collapsing chairs and other I was too heavy situations.

One memorable time I smashed a chair at a friends after he confirmed I wasnt seriously hurt he ripped on me endlessely.....

good the weight went away:)

[mm]

It sounds like someone was speaking in exaggerations.

OTOH< to get a ladder that will always hold 200 pounds, it probably has to be able to hold more than that some of the time.

I weighed 240 earlier this year, and borrowed a ladder to replace the gutter spikes in my gutters. I was disappointed when I saw it was rated at 200. But by coincidence, I started a diet at the same time, and after the hot weather and the rainy weather, when I could actually do the gutters, I was down to 220. It made me feel better that I was only 20 pounds over the limit. But I have no wife or children and if the ladder breaks, I&#39;ll be the only one to suffer. Still, I kept my body sensitive to any problem, made sure I didn&#39;t put the ladder too far from the house (which increases the flex weight on it) but didn&#39;t put it too close to the house either, which might make it fall backwards. I assumed that if the tread of the steps was horizontal, the ladder was correctly positioned. New ladders have a broad line that should be vertical to show the same thing.

Unrelated to your question, what really made me feel better on the ladder, better even than when I was thinner, was using a ladder stabilizer. They are either under 20 or under 40 dollars and worth every penny. Except for the three piece one that can be narrow and far from the wall or wide and close to the wall. I forget how much that is, and no one around here sold it, but I would have bought it if I hadn&#39;t gotten one free in a friend&#39;s junk. (I only needed the U-bolts, in a previous thread.)

I&#39;ve never carried more than 30 pounds up the ladder and this time under 10 counting my shoes and clothes. OTOH, I had the ladder, borrowed. I don&#39;t want to buy one because I have no place to put it except outside. If I were you, I&#39;d buy a 250 or 275 capacity ladder.

(Probably don&#39;t wear sneakers on a ladder. Your feet will quickly get tired. But wear something with a rubber sole, like hiking boots I gues.)

I only eat 1/4 to 1/2 of what I used to, and I take muliple vitamins, and I&#39;m down to 209 now. After the first 4 days, I wasn&#39;t hungry anymore, because I was used to the amount I ate, except for pschological hunger. Sometimes they show food on tv, or talk about it on the radio, or I want food because I&#39;m depressed, or to celebrate because I&#39;m happy, or because I&#39;m in the car, or because it&#39;s bedtime, or because I&#39;m at a friends. Even occasion was an occasion for eating, even when I wasn&#39;t hungry. I also eat very slowly so that I have time to get full before I&#39;ve stuffed myself. Tonight for dinner I had a half a banana, a fried egg, 2 chicken strips, and some diet apple juice. It was plenty. Any more I would have been stuffed. Soup is very good and I eat a lot of cup-a-noodles. I love it, and hot food makes me feel like I had a real meal. I don&#39;t hesitate to stop eating in the middle of a dish and put it in the fridge for later.

Taco Bell is also very good because they have quite a few small items, like one chicken taco. They don&#39;t put sour cream on the cheap items (if they use it at all, I don&#39;t recall) Almost every other place doesn&#39;t sell something that small.

I&#39;m saving a lot of money on food too, though that wasn&#39;t my goal. In theory I allow myself to eat anything, as long as it doesn&#39;t fill me up more that the previous day, but in practice, I&#39;ve cut out most really fattening foods, because I don&#39;t want this to take too long. And I don&#39;t eat much meat, because I always want candy afterwards.

They don&#39;t really sell diet cocoa, so I make my own cocoa with Hershey&#39;s cocoa and sweet&#39;n&#39;low, in a box, not the little envelopes. I add enough until it&#39;s sweet enough. 2 or 2 1/4 minutes in the microwave for a cup. Heating doesn&#39;t hurt the swwet and lo, at least this little. I think they claim you can bake with it now, although they used to say no.

They advertise on some food, low carbs, but all that matters is the total calories, not the carbs, but most of my diet is based on not eating much. Maybe I&#39;m very healthy, but it has had no effect on how I feel or how much energy I have.

I&#39;m 5&#39;8" and my destination is 160.

Of course 240 might be a good weight for your height. If so, nwver mind.

[George E. Cawthon]

((Snipped))

[Nick Danger]

Anyone who has ever had to climb off a ladder onto a roof - and then back on the ladder again - knows how important a stabilizer can be. It&#39;s a lot easier to climb off the ladder than to get back on it. Ask any volunteer fireman in a residential area. They&#39;ll tell you about the calls they had to go on to rescue a homeowner stranded on a roof. It&#39;s still not easy with a stabilizer, but at least you feel like you have a chance. I&#39;m amazed that anyone would try to work without one. The laws of physics work differently when you are at the top of a ladder or on a roof. First, you find that it&#39;s a lot farther from the roof to the ground than it is from the ground to the roof Secondly, as you approach the edge of the roof, even if you are right on top of the peak, you&#39;ll find that gravity actually comes up and then moves sideways as it tugs you toward the edge.

Another thing to take into consideration is the angle of the ladder. Ladders generally "feel" more stable if they are at more of an angle, and are less likely to fall over. But that puts a lot more stress on the ladder. I have one place where there&#39;s a room on the first floor that juts out a little bit, so I have to have the ladder at a 45 degree angle to get to the roof. At 150 pounds, I probably could have gotten by with a Type II ladder, but because of this one spot, I went with Type I. I would have gone with Type IA, but I think then it would have been too heavy to handle.

I remember several years ago when we had our house painted, and at one very high section where the ground is at the level of the basement floor, the painters used a 40 foot ladder with a section of another ladder tied to the top of it - and of course no stabilizer. Since it was so much work to move it, they leaned out as far as they could to paint as much area as possible. I knew right then that I didn&#39;t have the Right Stuff. When I had vinyl siding put on a few years later, the contractor said he planned to rent a 50 foot ladder to do that area. I wasn&#39;t home when they did that work, so I don&#39;t know what they used.

[hnurcaj]

replying to Nick Danger, hnurcaj wrote: I have a relatively cheap 200# extension ladder with a stabilizer. That stabilizer was worth it's weight in at least silver, if not gold! It's a 16 foot ladder which, of course, extends to a max of 14'. I weigh 220 and was wondering about the meaning of the ratings. In my mind, a 200# rating was probably tested at 400, 500 or 600 pounds without problem. I realized that when I extended the ladder to 13 or 14 feet, there was a sway which made me a little nervous. I felt secure with the side rails because I knew they would not buckle. I had laid the ladder on the ground with the stabilizer and stood and bounced on the middle of the ladder (fully extended). If in full horizontal it was strong enough, I knew that there would be no strength problem with it leaning at 20 degrees or so up against the house. But the sway bothered me. Then the solution came to me on how to deal with the perceived looseness (sway) when fully extended with me up there near the top. What I did was use 1/2" nylon strapping...(very strong stuff). I wrapped the side rails at 4 points where the rails overlap with the strapping...one at the top and bottom of the overlapped section on each side. At each point I put 2 loops of the strapping on (one piece wrapped around twice) but left it loose enough where the loops, when pulled, would extend out about 4 or 5 inches from the side rails. Of course I tied the strapping. That 4 or 5 inch "looseness" in the strapping allowed me to put a short (8 or 10 inch) piece of pvc pipe into the loop and twist it until I couldn't twist it any more. To keep it from unwinding, I stuck a small spike of wood into the closest rung hole which stuck out enough to keep the pvc from unwinding. By doing this at the 4 points previously cited (bottom and top of the overlapped section of the rails) ALL sway was eliminated and the ladder felt totally secure. I know that this would not be recommended by the pros but for me, it solved a a scary problem problem and made it usable for what I needed it for. Hope that helps.