chris French wrote:
In message , Phil L
writes
Having had to work off ladders with fairly heavy machinery for many
years, I can say with all honesty that the only time I was scared
was when some idiotic council made us use these stand offs, the
stabilisers are even worse.

The worst thing about the stand offs are that they make you too far
away from the wall - they are 18 inches away at the top rung! - if
you are a few rungs down from that you are over 2 ft away, so you
have to stretch, this is when accidents happen.

Well if you use them in totally the wrong situation then they aren't
going to help are they?

A stand off is designed to lift the ladder away from the wall so that
it will clear things like gutters, so that the ladder can extend up
past the gutters. You are meant to be standing with the upper part
of your body above the stabiliser. this makes working on gutters so
much easier and safer than if the ladder stops on the wall below it,
Esp. if the building has deep eaves. I consider them pretty much
essential for using a ladder to maintain our gutters etc.


The ones we had to use attatched to the top of the ladders and held them out
from the wall about 14+ inches, not good when you are trying to drill holes
in aformentioned wall with a Hilti TE72 with a 25mm diameter and 15 inch
long drill bit! - I suppose they could be handy for working on gutters in
the scenario you describe above, but I've always just placed mine onto the
facsia board.


They can also be useful when working on windows. The stabiliser is
placed below the window, with the ladder extending up in front of the
window. You can work from the ladder with out the problems you
sometimes have in placing the ladder securely. It is also easier to
work on bits of the window that would be very close to the ladder -
say when a ladder was resting on the wall above a window.

As far as the 'stabilisers' go - would you *feel* safe climbing a
ladder resting in that contraption?

What exactly are your objections to them (I've never used one, I'm
genuinely interested)-

I just don't feel safe with them - the only ones that were OK were simple
'T' plates...a sort of flat aluminium plate about 2 ft long and a foot wide,
and coming up from the centre was another aluminium plate about 3 inches
high, like an upturned letter T, on the bottom was thick rubber with grips
on it.


The best ladder stabiliser is soil - simply place the ladders on a
flowerbed where possible and jump on the first rung to sink them in

Having had the experience of a ladder starting to move when I was up
the top when it was resting on soil - and I had done my best to firm
the feet of the ladder. - it's not something I would ever recommend.
Even trying to firm the foot of the ladder in as you suggest you can
never quite be sure how secure it is..


Provided both feet go in the same depth, it can't slip backwards - your
weight, and that of the ladder, is bearing down on the feet, it would have
to uproot itself out of the soil/clay...the only time it can move is if one
foot hits a rock and the other hits soft soil, hence my recomendation to
jump on the bas***d as hard as you can before climbing.


....failing this
(if they are on hardstanding) sprag them off a wall, kerb or any
other solid upright - I've even seen people knock a bolster chisel
into gaps and put the foot of the ladder against it to prevent
slipping

I've used a couple of bags of sand at the feet for the same sort of
thing.

Worst situation IMO is a slope across the foot of the ladder. No
matter how well I pack out the base to level it, I never feel
entirely happy that something isn't going to move.

I've got to agree, having had my ladders fully extended on a garage apex
while drilling out the peak of a high gable more than enough times than I
care to remember!

I also remember doing Blackpool Royal hospital many moons ago, with 40ft
ladders (the ones with ropes to extend them) and not being high enough, we
placed them on top of a van on a plank...needless to say, I took the van
keys with me up the ladder.