While care should be taken when undertaking any project around the house involving tools, particular care should be taken when using ladders or any other tool such as scaffolding to reach things off the ground. According to one study, falls accounted for as much as 90% of workplace related deaths in a five year period in the late 90’s, and presumably, many of these people are professionals. If you ask any emergency room physician, ambulance driver, or EMT, they can probably tell you many stories about injuries people have sustained falling from ladders, or the place they used them to climb to. For this reason, it is important to have some basic knowledge about different types of ladders, what jobs they should and shouldn’t be used for, and how to tell if your ladder should be retired.

When purchasing a ladder, this is not an area where you want to skimp. You want to make sure that your ladder is sturdy. Check the capacity (ladders have four different ratings for this) and the restrictions on how high you can go on it to make sure it is adequate for the job. Decide what material is best for the job you are doing. Ladders generally are wood, fiberglass, or aluminum. If you are looking for a relatively small ladder, wood can be a good bet. They tend to be less expensive than the other two types, and can be used around electricity as long as they aren’t wet. Some care will have to be taken with a wood ladder to make sure that its strength isn’t compromised by being banged up or left out in one too many rainstorms. If you need a larger ladder, go with one of the other two, wood starts to get too heavy in larger sizes.

Aluminum ladders are much lighter, a little more expensive than wood but still reasonable, and usually sturdy. You should not use them around electricity though, as they are excellent conductors and can cause serious injury if hit by live wires. Fiberglass is what most of the pros use, and it usually costs the most also, but has the lightweight and sturdy qualities of an aluminum ladder as well as being safe for electrical jobs. It also will survive being left out in the weather the best of the three.

When you use your ladder, make sure it is on a level surface, and don’t stretch to reach things or climb higher than the recommended step. Use your head and you should be able to do that higher up home project without problems.

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