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Guide to Ladder Buying for a New Crew The first ladder purchase a new crew makes tends to be whatever is on sale at the nearest store, and it tends to get replaced within a year. Buying the right four ladders once costs about the same as buying the wrong ones twice and spending a season working around gaps. The Four Ladders That Cover Most Work A commercial crew needs a short stepladder for low interior work, a taller stepladder for ceilings and racking, an extension ladder for roofline and ext …

Guide to Erecting a Scaffold Tower Safely A scaffold tower arrives as a stack of frames, braces and planks, and the order they go together is what decides whether it stands. Crews that build towers every week do it the same way every time for a reason: the sequence is the safety system, and skipping a step is how a tower that looks right comes down. Start at the Base and Stay on It The base is built flat and level before anything goes up. Base plates on every leg, sills under the plates on anyt …

Guide to Working Alone at Height Working alone is normal for service techs, inspectors and small contractors. It is also the situation where a fall is most likely to become fatal, because there is nobody to notice that someone did not come down, nobody to call for help, and nobody to stop a setup that obviously looks wrong. The work is not the problem; the planning is. What Actually Changes When You Are Alone The equipment does not care how many people are on site. What changes is everything ar …

Guide to Ladders for Plumbers and Mechanical Trades Plumbing and mechanical work happens in the awkward places on a job - between joists, above a ceiling grid, in a shaft with a wall on one side, or in a mechanical room where the floor is the only flat surface. The ladder that suits that work is not the same one a framing crew carries, and picking wrong shows up as an hour a day lost to repositioning. Rough-In: Extension and Short Stepladders Rough-in work is reach and repositioning. An extensi …

Guide to Pump Jack Maintenance and Care A pump jack system is a simple machine, which is exactly why crews stop looking at it. Two poles, two jacks, a crank and a platform - nothing to service, nothing to fail. Except the poles take a beating, the feet wear into the ground, and the parts that hold the setup together are the cheapest pieces on the truck and the first ones to go missing. Start With the Poles Poles are the structure. Check them for bends and dents, especially near the ends where t …