Ladder safety is always a concern for those doing the actual climbing of ladders. One important point is the levelness of ground upon which your ladder is standing. Let’s take a look at an example where the ground level differs by 1 inch on a 17 inch wide ladder. Now this is not meant to bore you with the trigonometry involved, but it is always good to see how high school math can have a practical purpose. Just on a short, 16’ extension ladder, the top of the ladder shifts over 9.18” which means on a 28’ ladder, the top won’t even be under the ladder anymore. As a person climbs up the ladder, the center of gravity keeps shifting further and further to the side until, well, the ladder begins to follow gravity…..over and down.
Just from this single example, you can easily see, the taller the ladder the more unstable it is. That is a deadly combination! Workers devise numerous “techniques” to overcome this problem. You could ask yourself, “Is my life worth taking such a chance, just by being lazy?” The simple answer should be, undoubtedly…NO.
Not to lose any time handling these issues, let’s just go ahead and use the Ladder Leveler Full Kit. Now you have….Safety, with minimal setup time. This is even workable on stairs. Not everyone has time to make a platform that works on stairs, and since each set of stairs is almost never an exact match when going to a different job, that same platform wouldn’t work.
The moral of this whole story is that your life is valuable and you should never take unnecessary risks when working on a job. Always be certain to have your ladder set up correctly before climbing it. Cutting corners in an attempt to get something done slightly faster is almost always more dangerous, and surely not worth the risk. Always set up your equipment with safety in mind.
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