[steve k]

after a pretty slow week due to the weather...full day on Monday, half a day on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday off...I decided to get out today as things appeared to be thawing out and temperature was fine.
Things were going great with £80 done in just over 2 hours.
Got to my 6th house...a quick £12 which is a dream to WFP...BUT...at the back is a slightly sloping roof about 12ft deep from the house and 10 foot or so high.
The only way I can do the windows is to pitch the ladder without extending to the corner of the roof directly above the gutter. The ladder locks in here nice and solid. I then climb up with pole and wash the windows. The roof is virtually flat with a slight run off to the guttering.

I finish and walk back to the ladder, turn around keeping the pole and hose away from the ladder and place my foot on the ladder...I had 1 split second thought about the snow on the patio before the whole thing went from underneath me

The corner piece has a ornamental metal bracket which I smacked into with my ribs, I turned full circle and upside down in the air and smacked into the ladder with my right arm. The ladder had slid back to the garden and lodged itself between the soil and bricks so was at a 45 degree angle.
As I hit the ladder, I bounced off onto the lawn and lay there with a worrying spray of blood all around me...this luckily turned out to be a small cut on my finger.
My arm was numb so I thought I may have broken it but feeling came back within minutes and everything else was fine

A real heartstopping moment and so lucky that I was at a relatively low height and so lucky to have survived the fall with no damage to myself.

I`m kicking myself for being so stupid but another of lifes lessons to make me that little bit wiser.
Came back home and settled in front of the documentary channel!!
Glad to be able to tell you all about it

[jeff1]

Please to hear your ok steve.

[Paul Coleman]

after a pretty slow week due to the weather...full day on Monday, half a day on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday off...I decided to get out today as things appeared to be thawing out and temperature was fine.
Things were going great with £80 done in just over 2 hours.
Got to my 6th house...a quick £12 which is a dream to WFP...BUT...at the back is a slightly sloping roof about 12ft deep from the house and 10 foot or so high.
The only way I can do the windows is to pitch the ladder without extending to the corner of the roof directly above the gutter. The ladder locks in here nice and solid. I then climb up with pole and wash the windows. The roof is virtually flat with a slight run off to the guttering.

I finish and walk back to the ladder, turn around keeping the pole and hose away from the ladder and place my foot on the ladder...I had 1 split second thought about the snow on the patio before the whole thing went from underneath me

The corner piece has a ornamental metal bracket which I smacked into with my ribs, I turned full circle and upside down in the air and smacked into the ladder with my right arm. The ladder had slid back to the garden and lodged itself between the soil and bricks so was at a 45 degree angle.
As I hit the ladder, I bounced off onto the lawn and lay there with a worrying spray of blood all around me...this luckily turned out to be a small cut on my finger.
My arm was numb so I thought I may have broken it but feeling came back within minutes and everything else was fine

A real heartstopping moment and so lucky that I was at a relatively low height and so lucky to have survived the fall with no damage to myself.

I`m kicking myself for being so stupid but another of lifes lessons to make me that little bit wiser.
Came back home and settled in front of the documentary channel!!
Glad to be able to tell you all about it

Nasty business Steve.  I think many of us have been there too.  I know I had a couple of near misses some years back that caused me to work more carefully.
Glad to hear you're OK (relatively speaking).

[macmac]

hi steve
glad ur ok, thank god you weren't using that 40ft glass pole i gave you, if that would have landed on you, you would av been a gonner!!

tony

[S_RICHARDSON]

Glad to hear you're ok Steve!



Shaun R.

[steve k]

Thanks fellas...looking back on it, I am so lucky the ladder lodged against the brickwork as it did. If it had not, I was heading straight down, headfirst onto the patio. As it was, I had my arm out and this hit the ladder which I effectively bounced off/rolled down onto the lawn.
Still got paid off the customer mind you (but it wasn`t worth it... )

[H h20]

Steve,
so gald it wasn`t any worse,
is there no way at all you can do this window,can you take a photo and see if anyone can come up with a safer option,
Gaz 

[tatman]

thank god your ok mate. call me an idiot but i thought the whole point of wfp was no ladders

[RO-Sheen]

Glad your ok, I know how you feel, a few months ago I had to climb up onto a flat roof so I could reach some windows with my wfp and when I was getting back down the ladder slipped on the decking!
So angry with my self cos I could have easily seriously hurt myself. I got away with a very ugly 12" bruise up my leg!
Maybe God lets these things happen to remind us we are not invincible!

[steve k]

Tatman...there are some that are too far back over a roof that it is impossible to reach with a pole. If the roof is pitched steeply, they get left alone, but in this case, the windows are on a virtually flat roof so I have always accessed via a ladder. My mistake was not assessing the probability of ladder slipping on snow. There was ice underneath the snow...!!

[tatman]

couldnt you miss that window out? id like to think if i went wfp the ladders would be scraped all together?

[S.Carpenter]

half my round has flat roof extensions and the other half are probably thinking about it. Guess you cant scrap the ladders.

[ronaldo]

Steve, try doing these sorts of windows off a step ladder its loads easier and by the sound of it loads safer.

[S.Carpenter]

well, that might work for some, depends how big the extension is.

Wobbling on a step ladder 3 foot up might be as dangerous as just climbing up there.

A fellow window cleaner was generously showing me the ropes with a wfp before I buy my own. It was really helpful and he said I would probably want to ditch all these flat roofs. Only thing with that was he demonstrated the pole work on 2 of his houses and on one of them he climbed onto a 9ft roof using a  6ft pointer...

[brightnclean]

Glad you are OK Steve.

What on earth are any of you doing climbing ladders with poles and no doubt hose trailing as you climb?  Sorry guys but this is just downright dangerous.

I have these flat and flattish roofs on a few of my cleans. No way will I climb a ladder lugging a pole up with me. BOAB and I have both hands free. These are the only windows I do trad BTW. Safety 1st for me.

[S_RICHARDSON]

What i'd do is extend the pole above the roof and then climb the ladder and grab it at the top and haul itup, saves carrying it up! Simple!



Shaun R.

[JohnL]

Hey Steve - glad you are OK!

  .  .  .  I was a bit worried 'cus you've been away too long and for one minute I thought you were off again   

[steve k]

oh yes...definitely a mistake made. On a sunny day, you would not think twice about acessing the roof. There are 3 double windows up there and a bathroom window.
I will get a photo next time i`m there.
The mad thing was, I cut my finger and the blood was flowing pretty freely and when I fell, the corner piece of the gutter came off. After I got back on my feet and reassured the woman I was ok, I had to replace the corner piece...just a couple of clips...but the blood was all over the PVC and looked horrendous. I had to WFP the guttering before I packed up!!

I`m reading a book about an expedition on Everest at the moment and I swear that a couple of hours after this happening, I`m sitting outside my sons school reading this book and I came across a paragraph describing how complacency breeds on repeated actions of a dangerous practice...that is, the more you do something that you know could be dangerous and get away with it, then the less dangerous it appears and you start slacking on your safety...and that is when it hits you!
It happened to me today...I was foolish, took an unnecessary risk and nearly paid severely for my stupidity.
I spent 9 years carrying hose up ladders in the fire brigade so thought I was pretty competent on ladders.
The frightening thing about this is the fact that it happened so quick with no warning that it was almost violent...one second, I am cleaning a window, the next I am upside down in the air crashing into the ground.

[pjulk]

Glad you are ok steve and you got away lightly.

I have had a few heartstopping moments with ladders in the past and as you said you get no warning they just go.

I bet you will wake up a bit sore tomorrow.

Paul

[ben783]

Steve good to hear fine....as i've already said in a different post...."pescky ice under the snow, gets ya every time !!"

Learn from it and thank someone above

Ben