Does no-one use roof ladders any more?
I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

20 years ago the roof was felted and re-laid
by men just using roof-ladders.
Has this method gone out of fashion?

--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

On Feb 21, 3:18 pm, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Does no-one use roof ladders any more?
I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

clarify "very high" ?
£1000 a day just for picker hire ? suggest you google...

Jim K

On Feb 21, 3:25*pm, Jim K wrote:
On Feb 21, 3:18 pm, Timothy Murphy wrote:

Does no-one use roof ladders any more?
I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

clarify "very high" ?
£1000 a day just for picker hire ? suggest you google...

Jim K

We have just been quoted for a scissor lift to go up three stories,
about £500 for three days

Jonathan

On 21/02/2011 15:18, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Does no-one use roof ladders any more?
I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

20 years ago the roof was felted and re-laid
by men just using roof-ladders.
Has this method gone out of fashion?


The Work at Height Regulations 2005 now apply in any case where the
height of working is such that a fall carries a risk of personal injury.
While they do not prohibit the use of ladders, ladders are unlikely to
meet the requirements for selecting work equipment in many cases.

Having said that, £1000 a day sounds a lot for a cherry picker.

Colin Bignell

On 21/02/2011 15:18, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Does no-one use roof ladders any more?
I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

20 years ago the roof was felted and re-laid
by men just using roof-ladders.
Has this method gone out of fashion?

How DIY are you prepared to go?

Once I had a rope in place I was happy up a ladder. Not before that
though, and getting the rope in place was not as easy as I'd hoped - and
for a properly high building this will obviously be worse. Though all
the properly high buildings I've used have access out of the top, at
which point you abseil into gutter-cleaning position.

Obviously this doesn't help if you're not comfortable with ropes and
harnesses, ie climber/caver or similar.

In article , Timothy Murphy
writes
Does no-one use roof ladders any more?
I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

Roped access is becoming more popular for this sort of thing. If you are
in or near a decent sized city then there should be teams doing this
sort of thing already. For a conventional tiled roof the worker can
toddle along the edge doing the clearing work while the rope man stops a
slip from escalating. For a slate roof it might be a bit more
problematic and I've seen a cherry picker used to avoid risk of damage
to the slates.
--
fred
FIVE TV's superbright logo - not the DOG's, it's ********

On Feb 21, 3:18*pm, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Does no-one use roof ladders any more?
I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

20 years ago the roof was felted and re-laid
by men just using roof-ladders.
Has this method gone out of fashion?



Sounds like someone's taking the michael. Cherry pickers dont cost
anything like that, and it should be possible to find an imported self
employed window cleaner that wants the work.

For far less you cuold buy yourself a looj gutter cleaning robot, or
an RC toy helicopter.


NT

Timothy Murphy wrote:

Does no-one use roof ladders any more?
I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,

20 years ago the roof was felted and re-laid
by men just using roof-ladders.
Has this method gone out of fashion?



Well half the people that used to work like that are now in wheelchairs,
the other half are dead.

-

On 21/02/2011 20:39, Tabby wrote:
On Feb 21, 3:18 pm, Timothy wrote:
Does no-one use roof ladders any more?
I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

20 years ago the roof was felted and re-laid
by men just using roof-ladders.
Has this method gone out of fashion?



Sounds like someone's taking the michael. Cherry pickers dont cost
anything like that, and it should be possible to find an imported self
employed window cleaner that wants the work.

For far less you cuold buy yourself a looj gutter cleaning robot, or
an RC toy helicopter.


NT
When I looked a few years ago charges for small powered or unpowered
platforms which would allow access to gutters, windows made erected
scaffolding a cheaper alternatives for anything over 2/3 days hire.
I always wondered why builders etc bothered getting scaffolding erected
for a 1/2 day job and why I never saw platforms, cherry pickers etc
being used.

Tabby wrote:

I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

For far less you cuold buy yourself a looj gutter cleaning robot, or
an RC toy helicopter.

Have you used a Looj?
I've thought about that in the past,
but have read both good and bad reviews of the device.

Also, I'm not sure how easy it would be to use the robot in my case.
The gutters are about 60ft high.
(The building is part of a 4-storey Victorian orphanage.)
It is easy enough to get through a skylight onto the slate roof,
and it might be possible to slide the robot down the slates to the gutter.
But it seems to me the robot could easily get stuck in the gutter,
and it would be very difficult to retrieve it.

--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

Clive George wrote:

I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

How DIY are you prepared to go?

Once I had a rope in place I was happy up a ladder. Not before that
though, and getting the rope in place was not as easy as I'd hoped - and
for a properly high building this will obviously be worse. Though all
the properly high buildings I've used have access out of the top, at
which point you abseil into gutter-cleaning position.

Obviously this doesn't help if you're not comfortable with ropes and
harnesses, ie climber/caver or similar.

Thanks for the suggestion, but that is definitely not my metier!
I'm frightened of falling out of bed.

--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

Jim K wrote:

I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

clarify "very high" ?
£1000 a day just for picker hire ? suggest you google...

The building is part of a 4-storey Victorian orphanage in Dublin;
I reckon the gutters are about 60ft high.

I may have slightly exaggerated the cost.
We got a quote of just over ‚¬3000 for clearing the gutters
on the whole building, of which our part accounts for
about 1/4 of the gutters.
My recollection is that the builder mentioned ‚¬1,000
for the hire of the cherry-picker, but this may have been for 2 days.

--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

In article ,
Timothy Murphy writes:

Have you used a Looj?
I've thought about that in the past,
but have read both good and bad reviews of the device.

Also, I'm not sure how easy it would be to use the robot in my case.
The gutters are about 60ft high.
(The building is part of a 4-storey Victorian orphanage.)
It is easy enough to get through a skylight onto the slate roof,

designed to allow the orpahans to clean the gutters...

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On 21/02/2011 23:07, Timothy Murphy wrote:

The gutters are about 60ft high.
(The building is part of a 4-storey Victorian orphanage.)
...
It is easy enough to get through a skylight onto the slate roof,
and it might be possible to slide the robot down the slates to the gutter.

Abseiling is the easiest answer then, possibly with something to spread
the load on the roof (tied on ladder?)

On 21/02/2011 23:41, Clive George wrote:
On 21/02/2011 23:07, Timothy Murphy wrote:

The gutters are about 60ft high.
(The building is part of a 4-storey Victorian orphanage.)
..
It is easy enough to get through a skylight onto the slate roof,
and it might be possible to slide the robot down the slates to the
gutter.

Abseiling is the easiest answer then, possibly with something to spread
the load on the roof (tied on ladder?)

Though having just seen your mention of your thoughts on heights, I'll
let you ignore that :-)

On 21/02/2011 15:18, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Does no-one use roof ladders any more?
I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

20 years ago the roof was felted and re-laid
by men just using roof-ladders.
Has this method gone out of fashion?

Why would they need roof ladders for cleaning gutters?

Just ladders might well be OK depending on the height

--
Dave - The Medway Handyman www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

On Feb 21, 3:18*pm, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Does no-one use roof ladders any more?

Not when cherry pickers are so cheap 8-)

I had a recent quote from HSS (who aren't cheap) for a new model which
had a better sideways reach than previous models that were car
trailerable (There's a conservatory in the way of using ladders). £200
for a w/e, £300 for a week.

On Feb 22, 1:24 pm, The Medway Handyman
wrote:
On 21/02/2011 15:18, Timothy Murphy wrote: Does no-one use roof ladders any more?
I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

20 years ago the roof was felted and re-laid
by men just using roof-ladders.
Has this method gone out of fashion?

Why would they need roof ladders for cleaning gutters?

Just ladders might well be OK depending on the height

What's wrong with a water blaster hose tied to a long pole? Put a
video camera on the end if you have one.

On Feb 21, 3:39*pm, "Nightjar \"cpb\"@" "insertmysurnamehere wrote:
On 21/02/2011 15:18, Timothy Murphy wrote:

Does no-one use roof ladders any more?
I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

20 years ago the roof was felted and re-laid
by men just using roof-ladders.
Has this method gone out of fashion?

The Work at Height Regulations 2005 now apply in any case where the
height of working is such that a fall carries a risk of personal injury.

Not in Dublin they don't! (Although I /think/ there is an EU
directive which the Regulations implement, so there will be something
similar in Dublin).

In article 5e333f9f-5e81-47ea-8aa8-
, "Matty F" wrote:


What's wrong with a water blaster hose tied to a long pole? Put a
video camera on the end if you have one.

Assuming your "water blaster" is a jet washer like mine, the water jet's
reaction would propel such a pole uncontrollably, much the the amusement
of bystanders. Even a metre of lance extension needs two hands to stop it
moving sideways.

Never underestimate the power of a water jet coming from a jet washer and
never practice up a ladder...
--
John W

John Weston wrote:

In article 5e333f9f-5e81-47ea-8aa8-
, "Matty F" wrote:

What's wrong with a water blaster hose tied to a long pole? Put a
video camera on the end if you have one.

Assuming your "water blaster" is a jet washer like mine, the water jet's
reaction would propel such a pole uncontrollably, much the the amusement
of bystanders. Even a metre of lance extension needs two hands to stop it
moving sideways.

You should tie the jet blaster to the pole in an inverted U shape, so that
it blasts *down* into the gutter, that way the sideways thrust which
the jet exerts upon the pole is minimised.

In article ,
lid says...
Assuming your "water blaster" is a jet washer like mine, the water jet's
reaction would propel such a pole uncontrollably, much the the amusement
of bystanders.


Two jets in opposition, then. Or possibly two at 45° from vertical so
you blast both ways - as it were.

--
Skipweasel - never knowingly understood.

Andy Dingley wrote:
On Feb 21, 3:18 pm, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Does no-one use roof ladders any more?

Not when cherry pickers are so cheap 8-)

I had a recent quote from HSS (who aren't cheap) for a new model which
had a better sideways reach than previous models that were car
trailerable (There's a conservatory in the way of using ladders). £200
for a w/e, £300 for a week.

How tall was that one? The OP wants to reach sixty feet up, and an
undisclosed distance sideways. I doubt we're talking about one you could
tow behind a car. The ones that size that I've seen come on a seven and
a half tonner chassis.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

Timothy Murphy wrote:
Jim K wrote:

I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

clarify "very high" ?
£1000 a day just for picker hire ? suggest you google...

The building is part of a 4-storey Victorian orphanage in Dublin;

Borrow an orphan off the council and do it the old fashioned way

On 22/02/2011 13:45, John Weston wrote:
In article5e333f9f-5e81-47ea-8aa8-
, "Matty F" wrote:


What's wrong with a water blaster hose tied to a long pole? Put a
video camera on the end if you have one.

Assuming your "water blaster" is a jet washer like mine, the water jet's
reaction would propel such a pole uncontrollably, much the the amusement
of bystanders. Even a metre of lance extension needs two hands to stop it
moving sideways.

You can get extending lances for pressure washers - up to 7.3 metres,
working pressure up to 200 bar. They come with a belt kit as an option :-)

I've used a 5.4m one at 140 bar and it isn't easy to keep control of the
bugger.

http://www.dualpumps.co.uk/images/Ca...s_Wash_Acc.pdf

Page 13 of 36.

--
Dave - The Medway Handyman www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

www.GymRatZ.co.uk wrote:

It is easy enough to get through a skylight onto the slate roof,
and it might be possible to slide the robot down the slates to the
gutter. But it seems to me the robot could easily get stuck in the
gutter, and it would be very difficult to retrieve it.

Could you not get a few sets of chimney/drain rods and do it through the
skylight with something like the following?
http://tinyurl.com/4ddkzma

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think it would be possible -
certainly not for me - to get near enough to the gutters to use this device
without going onto the roof sloping down to the gutter,
which I would not do while sober.


--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

Steve Walker wrote:

The building is part of a 4-storey Victorian orphanage in Dublin;

Borrow an orphan off the council and do it the old fashioned way

Actually, while up on the roof I saw that a number of the slates
had names and dates - around 1900, IIRC, scratched on them.
I've often wondered what frightening episode led to this.
I have a picture of orphans scampering over the roof,
with spectators down below closing their eyes.


--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

John Williamson wrote:

I had a recent quote from HSS (who aren't cheap) for a new model which
had a better sideways reach than previous models that were car
trailerable (There's a conservatory in the way of using ladders). £200
for a w/e, £300 for a week.

How tall was that one? The OP wants to reach sixty feet up, and an
undisclosed distance sideways. I doubt we're talking about one you could
tow behind a car. The ones that size that I've seen come on a seven and
a half tonner chassis.

Actually, the man who gave us the quote did the building next door
(that is why I asked him for a quote)
and the cherry-picker he used did have quite a substantial chassis.

--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

Timothy Murphy wrote:

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think it would be possible -
certainly not for me - to get near enough to the gutters to use this
device without going onto the roof sloping down to the gutter,
which I would not do while sober.

So do it while not sober. No matter how ****ed your economy is, you
can't be telling us there's no drop of alcohol to be found in Dublin.

In article ,
Matty F writes:
On Feb 22, 1:24 pm, The Medway Handyman
wrote:
On 21/02/2011 15:18, Timothy Murphy wrote: Does no-one use roof ladders any more?
I want the gutters in a very high building cleaned,
and I'm told that a cherry-picker will have to be used,
rental for a day costing around £1000.

20 years ago the roof was felted and re-laid
by men just using roof-ladders.
Has this method gone out of fashion?

Why would they need roof ladders for cleaning gutters?

Just ladders might well be OK depending on the height
What's wrong with a water blaster hose tied to a long pole? Put a
video camera on the end if you have one.

You don't want a "blast" at all - you'll displace the rubber
sealing strips, leaving the gutter leaking at all the joins.
You just need a brush, with water flow to wash the debris away.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On 22/02/2011 23:52, Timothy Murphy wrote:

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think it would be possible -
certainly not for me - to get near enough to the gutters to use this device
without going onto the roof sloping down to the gutter,
which I would not do while sober.



Funny that. I wouldn't dream of going up a ladder when drunk...

Perhaps I just don't get that drunk.

Andy

On Feb 22, 5:05 pm, John Williamson
wrote:
Andy Dingley wrote:
On Feb 21, 3:18 pm, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Does no-one use roof ladders any more?

Not when cherry pickers are so cheap 8-)

I had a recent quote from HSS (who aren't cheap) for a new model which
had a better sideways reach than previous models that were car
trailerable (There's a conservatory in the way of using ladders). 200
for a w/e, 300 for a week.

How tall was that one? The OP wants to reach sixty feet up, and an
undisclosed distance sideways. I doubt we're talking about one you could
tow behind a car. The ones that size that I've seen come on a seven and
a half tonner chassis.

3.5t
http://www.nationwideplatforms.co.uk/pdfs/t20c.pdf

Jim K