Health and Safety and Sky Installers

Because they're gay?

In message , ARWadsworth writes

Because the world as we know it has gone to hell in a handcart.

There was an article in the Telegraph, a day or two ago, saying that Dave plans to rein in all this OTT H and S malarky. We'll see.

Sky upgraded us to HD at the beginning of the year - and the installer did drill the wall (after formally asking my permission), tie the ladders to the wall and even used a safety harness clipped to the top of the ladder so he 'couldn't' fall off if the ladder moved while he was fitting the new dish (and he even wore his blue hard-hat) - and this was just over 7ft off the floor!

I was in bloody stitches and took the mick out of thim something awful - but he took in good part, and even threw in a second remote control free when I asked.

Health and Safety gone a little crazy, but I suppose in this litigious age, these companies must protect their over-inflated bottoms. All great fun. ROTFL

Cash

Insurance is one key thing ...

If they slip off ladder - big claim If they slip off joist and put foot through ceiling - big claim

Easier to say no.

Just look at building trade, as student I worked weekends & holidays on site ... 1cwt (50Kg if you are a child of the Nintendo) bags of cement were humped about all over the place. You can't buy one anymore .... only 25Kg ... as 15Kg is considered safe limit for manual handling.

Last year I had new outbuilding, wanted roof tiled to match house .... 3 different roofers stated they wanted all round scaffolding to do the job .... finally small builder with a horde of Polish workers came along and did job of trestles & ladders.

Almost all time spent on the roof walking over OSB or battens ... scaffolding would be of no help, other than when fitting first couple of rows of tiles.

How's he going to do that then? The reason they have the restrictions is the insurance companies want too much to allow the engineers to do what they want. Its nothing to do with H&S.

Not many visiting engineers are allowed to go into lofts. Fairly sure BT ones aren't. It's far to easy to put a foot through a ceiling and follow it with your whole body. Especially now that they insist on

er, how do they install the eye bolt without going up the ladder? If it's "safe" to go up the ladder and drill for the eye bolt why isn't it safe to go up to drill and mount the dish?

Not overly convinced that being attached to the top of the ladder is particulary safe. It strikes me that the "safety officer" hasn't heard of suspension trauma. You don't have long dangling in a harness before you are in serious medical trouble. I guess the "safety officer" is assuming that the engineer is still concious and will be able to scramble back onto the ladder, bad assumption. A worse assumption is that the householder will be able to assist or be summoned to call for help fast enough.

Far enough to break things if you fall and possibly kill if certain bits of you bounce of objects on the way down.

Maybe it also reflects the quality of the people they employ for this work, the pressure they are under (must do 6 installs/day or whatever) combined with lack of proper training, (which includes a week being supervised by someone with real experience), in doing the actual work.

They were about 10 years ago, had my ISDN line installed upstairs, with entry through eaves and drop down into room on far side of house.

My loft had only a few loose boards and one dingy light at the time.

There is a fold-flat scissor-tower - or rather a few of them. One goes to 2m working height, the other 3.2m working height and there is another that goes to 3.6m working height. They are =A31000, =A32400 & =A33500 or something like that. Sweet nothing against Sky's profits. I suspect they will fit into a suitable "big van" without difficulty, require minimal ground access & integral outriggers.

Could be a loony "no-win-no-fee" crowd stuffed Sky on a job or the loony "H&S" crowd did it for them at a cheaper bid!

It has got to the point where the "generic tradesman" need telling how to do the job, if not having the occupier do the job for them.

Got my mother's gas meter moved outside today, for free. All the grid stuff done fine, tiny 20mm supply pipe. All the post- meter work was... gas-tight but freakin-hilarious.

Piping oversized, piping forcibly bent around obstacles making the box cover difficult to fit & distorting piping, piping not vertical or horizonal as all miss-cut lengths, one talon clip not locking due to distorted pipework, unprotected copper but "gas" labelled peeling off, literally buckets of flux left on pipework, solder like ye olde candles on horizontal never mind vertical, gas sleeve through wall too tight around pipe to permit internal seal, gas sleeve too short to reach through wall, hole around gas sleeve unfilled and open enough for a mouse (mice skeletons in garage), scaffolding style pipework inside away from wall rather than flush. Screws zinc plated but will not last by a grid, hose tap water spray inches away, solid wall, wet verge 4ft above, solid double brick with banked ground, black ash dyed mortar creating acidic environment - and once those screws rust they will split a line of mortar it is so weak, if they do not neck-rust & snap (cement bonds to ash before sand IIRC).

I thought they used Tracpipe for this sort of stuff, which would be a tracpipe-to-BSP fitting to the meter and a tracpipe-to-BSP fitting to the internal pipework. No "we can not use compression fittings". I will change the screws to stainless one-by-one when time.

Interestingly the design of the box means the gas ECV is hard to turn

- the ball valve handle is too-close to the side-wall if you have anything but very slim fingers to snag it.

All the H&S nonsense and the workmanship has no hope of getting close. I wonder if that is as much why Sky do what they do - assume lowest common denominator of skills, but some installers can do a proper job. If they drill from the inside, and the mortar is black ash dyed there is no chance of getting it out of carpets be they cream, beige or polka dot?

Think uk.d-i-y need to start their own training programme :-)

The eyebolt is installed at head height and is installed before you go up the ladders. A strap is then used between the eyebolt and the ladders at somewhere around 1/3rd of the height of the ladders.

Dutch method of roofing: Construct on ground with a hinge at the top. Lift on crane into place and open up like /\ and fix in place.

I should also add, longer overhanging eaves (altho not quite like the SS housing).

Very similar for me. We had ISDN and I wanted a new POTS line for ADSL (in 2002). Loft with a few loose boards and one dingy light (OK, it had a ladder...). BT guy did it no problem. (I won't call him an engineer)

Do they remove the eyebolt & make good?

The eyebolt would need to be into a brick face, not into mortar for mechanical strength. If the eyebolt is left and plain zinc plate, it can corrode enough to blow a brick (ok takes a fair amount of time, but it will split a mortar line and can crush a brick as I found this summer and that was very sheltered albeit 15yrs old).

Could be Sky found they can employ lower skilled (cheaper) people - or might have had to re demand going by Freeview lately :-)

I remember, about 9 years ago now, we got sky installed in the house. There was me, 5ft 2" female, 2 week old baby in arms, sky engineer, big burly chap, needed to install telephone extension and said "i'm not allowed to move that furniture to fix this cable, you'll need to do it, sorry love".

So I did. Ok, so equality and all that, but for f**k sake, there was me humphing this furniture out the way, having had a baby 2 weeks previously (by C section !), and he stood and watched. Don't think I've ever been so genuinley aghast.

Wiring in lofts takes longer than chucking the cable over the roof or tacking it down the wall.

Drilling from the inside means any spalling happens outside, drilling from the outside they might even drill into the wrong room. This is not unknown even with non-sSky installers

So that Sky aren't liable if they fall off.

Owain

That could be interesting if they ever need access to my master socket - it's in the loft. It was there when we moved in and doesn't look like it was moved by the previous owner so I assume that's where BT installed it. And it wasn't boarded over at the time either, but is now.

Did he hold the baby while you moved the furniture?

A few months ago I managed to tear a tendon in my left foot. I could not bear to put the foot to the ground and was in absolute agony. Being the only driver around, I had to hop on one leg to get into the car (automatic) to take myself into A&E. A&E were rung and warned to expect me and that I would need a wheel chair and obviously have to park somewhere close to the door to transfer to a chair - otherwise they would need to send an ambulance.

I parked up as much out the way as possible, plenty of room for ambulances to get in and out and it was quiet anyway - yet there was one complaining as I struggled just to get into a wheel chair that I couldn't leave my car there.

Got into the waiting room still in the (4x small wheel) chair and the 2 months pregnant assessment nurse asked me find a way to get myself into her room - she wasn't allowed on H&S grounds to push me in. So I struggled to reach down to the small wheels to turn them with my finger tips - she said I wasn't allowed to even do that on H&S grounds, as I might strain my fingers. A pensioner on sticks took pity on me and pushed me in and later back out.

Then I was called through to the doctor, he came out and he refused to push me - he wasn't allowed to on - you guessed H&S grounds, so the crippled pensioner again stepped in to show him how its done.

Eventually another kind patient pushed me back out to my car and the one complaining about my parking there made a parting shot of threatening to report me for not being fit to drive if I couldn't walk

- of course I told him to get on with it in not very polite terms. An automatic only needs one foot to be able to drive, you would normally tuck your left foot out of the way anyway.

That was Pinderfields hospital at Wakefield.

You have never met Staff Nurse C******** then?

I would say a trip to Pinderfields A&E is well worth the injury if she is on duty.