i dont need to use a ladder for any of my current jobs and will not take on new jobs if a ladder would be required. If you do need ladders or any other safety equipment to do a job make sure its the best equipment you can get and you know how to use it.
if you use a crappy waterproof coat in the rain the worse that could happen is you will get wet. Please dont use unsuitable safety equipment its not worth it.

Having had a potentially fatal fall from height, although not a ladder, I wouldn’t class ALL ladder use as needing to avoid.

Using one of those ladders CleanClear is asking about is definitely something to be avoided.

I still clean gutters, despite my fall meaning my right shoulder will never be the same again. I had an x-ray last week on it due to continued poor range of motion. The result is it has arthritis as well as frozen shoulder which I didn’t have before the accident.

Anyway, I don’t clean gutters off a ladder. I use a gutter-vac. Gutter cleaning over here is big business. Many properties have it done twice per year. It brings in something like £400 a day (4 - 5 hours). Gutters are easy to clean as they’re all very wide. At least a 4” gap on all gutters between the roof edge and outside edge of gutter. Lots of peeps have a gutter guard, which isn’t those hedgehog things they have in the UK, but something that covers the gutter and just needs hoovering off.

The only time I’m likely to use a ladder nowadays is to clear a ground floor gutter by hand if I don’t have my vac with me.  And that’s an ‘A’-frame ladder not extension.

Ladders really aren’t necessary, why use a flimsy, foldable piece of crap when working at height, isn’t that just nuts?

Could they have used a garden hose to water plants etc, and splashed it up the windows. This is common in my area in spring and summer. I get customers who also let their kids loose with a hose in the hot weather too. I even had one customer with a neighbour who used to regularly wash his patio doors down with a garden hose due to his dogs making such a mess. He would spray it over the fence in the process onto my customers windows and I'd get called back for leaving the splash marks. Took me a while to figure out what was going on with this one.

Our tap water is very hard and leaves marks on glass that is hard to remove with just pure water. The more they do it the worse it gets. I've had to pre wash some with a limescale remover to get it off and then rinse with pure afterwards.

Firstly I’d sort my water quality if it was 15ppm.

Secondly I’d bin off crap jobs like that. Especially when they start complaining. They’re lucky they’ve even got a window cleaner.

😢 saddening to hear
Such a nice bloke Smudger

Gave me lots of advice
Over the years

Remember reading the other month he’d gone to hospital
Shocked to see this.
Thoughts to his family
🙏🏻