Ladder vs Scaffolding Tower vs Something Else

[Michael D]

I=92m going to paint the upstairs windows of my house. They=92re at standard first floor height and there=92s a fair bit of work to be done on them.

I=92m wondering whether a normal ladder is fine for the average DIY'er or if I should invest in something more substantial? I previously lived in a flat so didn=92t have this problem.

Obviously a scaffolding tower would be more secure while working, but would be much more expensive & I=92d have to take the risk of reselling it or the cost of hiring for several weeks. I'm also slightly nervous about having it at the front of the house for a couple of weeks.

Any guidance would be much appreciated.

Michael

[george [dicegeorge]]

I bought a 'fall arrestor' and harness, which is like a seatbelt, i clip it to the roof when i'm laddering about, hope not to fall off when i'm clipping it though!

about half of DIY accidents are falls, its possible to bash your head even falling off a kerb, but the higher you fall the harder you hit, ladders are more dangerous than table saws...

How much would it cost you if you slipped and only broke a leg for a few months?

[g]

[Dave Starling]

I agree with that point. Don't look at the cost of the scaffolding as a negative point. Its much easier to work for long periods of time on a flat surface than perched on ladder rungs. All your hand tools and paints etc are close to hand. You might also find you end up doing other jobs while you have scaffolding access such as cleaning/ replacing broken guttering.

Dave.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Long discussion of exactly this in the "Destroy it Yourself" thread.

[js.b1]

There are several hire firms, Hire Station seem to be cheaper than HSS.

Scaffold Mini-Towers are about =A365/week. Just ask for outriggers which it may come with anyway. Whilst you have to watch the weather, I suspect you can do any task in 1 week.

To die you need 10 stories - to be disabled you just need a ladder.

Stepladder with hoop to 6 steps for general, mini-tower for everything else - saves up/down for tools, screws, dropped paint; saves over- reaching; saves painful soles of your feet too.

[stuart noble]

If "a fair bit of work" involves two handed jobs, I'd forget the ladder approach. Rubbing down/painting is possible one handed, but not much else. What sort of windows do you have? If you're prepared to take them out, maybe you can do the worst of it from inside.

[Dave Liquorice]

Ok so you don't hurt yourself with a sudden stop at the bottom or part way down but when you've knocked the ladder away and are dangling in the harness how do you get down? Bear in mind that you have at most 30 mins stuck in the harness before you get damage to you legs due to restricted blood flow. Oh and of course you may not be concious so could be dangling upside down...

The most important part of any fall arrest system is how do you get the body (unconcious or not) down safely and quickly.

[Huge]

This rather scarey article is worth reading;

[John Rumm]

With sensible precautions, then just painting a window is doable from a ladder (lets face it - painters have been doing it that way for ages). For anything that needs two handed work, a tower or some form of platform becomes much easier and safer.

[ARWadsworth]

Not to mention the trouser cleaning bill.

Adam

[spamlet]

I?m going to paint the upstairs windows of my house. They?re at standard first floor height and there?s a fair bit of work to be done on them.

I?m wondering whether a normal ladder is fine for the average DIY'er or if I should invest in something more substantial? I previously lived in a flat so didn?t have this problem.

Obviously a scaffolding tower would be more secure while working, but would be much more expensive & I?d have to take the risk of reselling it or the cost of hiring for several weeks. I'm also slightly nervous about having it at the front of the house for a couple of weeks.

Any guidance would be much appreciated.

Michael

A third way that someone very helpfully put on my old house, presumably when they added a 'conservatory', was to embed some lengths of angle iron in the wall below the windows. One just had to feed a scaffolding board out and hop on. Lots of very old buildings have holes left at regular intervals in the walls, for beams and boards to be assembled as an ancient form of scaffold. Some simple such arrangement below the windows of modern buildings would be a very useful design feature for the ladderably challenged - except of course that many of us now have reversible windows or can simply take them right out to make painting easier...

And a fourth way, of course, if you adopt the remove and paint approach, you can then simply lean out (suitably tethered) to scrape and paint the frames (helps if you are ambidextrous). Now we have power screwdrivers, I generally find this the easiest way, esp as I can take the sashes themselves into the garage to work on, on the bench, in the dry; dunk the hinges in paint stripper; minimise drips and runs etc. One has to take care to mark which sash goes where and not to drop them when replacing, of course.

(Above the 'conservatory' there were also angle irons and cross boards on the edge of the roof, just in case any tiles slid off and would otherwise have gone through the 'conservatory' roof. This was all very well, until the boards themselves needed painting, and I took them off in the end as it was easier fitting new panels on the 'conservatory' than maintaining the boards on the roof!)

S

[Harry Bloomfield]

Michael D laid this down on his screen :

We already have a single ladder and an extension ladder and we have used them several times to paint the outside, fit new soffits and gutters, the odd roof repair and etc.. The only time I felt the need for a scaffold was when we did the flaunching on the roof edge up to the peak.

I have never seen professional painters use scaffolding to paint the first floor, except when the scaffolding is already there. A good ladder, a hanger for a paint pot and one hand is usually all that is needed.

[tony sayer]

I had a fall from 8 metres last July onto concrete from a ladder when the power pole it was up against collapsed.

Result was a fractured skull, done on a lower roof on the way down, two weeks in a coma and a broken femur.

Wheelchair for 2 months.

Grannie frame for a further one.

Crutches for around 2 months.

Off driving for SIX months.

[tony sayer]

Indeed very nasty that....

[Nightjar]

I would use a ladder, but then I keep to H&SE guidlines when using a ladder - make sure it is secure, don't lean out and always have three points of contact, for example, holding with both hands while climbing or holding with one hand and keeping both feet in one place while working. Not that I do it because those are the H&SE guidelines, but because that was how I was taught to work from a ladder.

Mobile scissor lifts look like fun, although this is bigger than most I see in use:

Bignell

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember tony sayer saying something like:

Bloody hell, I thought you'd gone a bit quiet for a while, then. Similar thing happened to an old lad I bumped into rather a lot, when he'd be out and about doing odd jobs. I didn't see him for months and when I next met him he told me he'd been up a tree via ladders, fell off and damn near had a fatality. Several broken bones and internal injuries. If the homeowners hadn't been home, he'd have been a goner, for sure.

[george [dicegeorge]]

xxxxxxxxxx

T> I had a fall from 8 metres last July onto concrete from a ladder when

Ow! and afterwards you can never stretch so far, and you're a bit fatter and older, and aches and pains when its cold and wet or you're tired of fluey, [g]