WHEN will people learn - always 'foot' a ladder, or a bag of sand and all set at the correct 'angle' and NOT on slippery / wet floor!! Hope he's ok!

If I work off a very tall extension ladder I have been known to foot the ladder against my van wheel to stop it slipping. That, and tying it off at the top is essential.

Z.

Or if on gavel or grass, etc., drive in a couple of spikes.

As the late Fred Dibnah said, you only fall off once.

Well the fred Dibnah way is something else, but never attached at less than 3 points if you intend to trust your life to it. Mind you the  modern way involves less free climbing.....

I watched a Sky installation guy fit a dish to the outside of a neighbour's house.  The first thing he did was to drill holes in the exterior wall, fit anchor bolts, then fix two steel wire cables with carabiners to the wall and the foot of the ladder.  I'm not sure I would want that done to my house.

No. I wouldn't want Sky T.V. either.

Z.

Man with balls the size of melons, but he knew what he was doing. Much loved and admired!

I was introduced to his TV shows by Mother who was brought up in Bolton. Always nice to hear the accent. 

The European Social Fund paid for me to the “How not to fall off a ladder course” like the Sky TV guys we should be fixing a anchor into the brickwork or fabric of a house to secure a ladder when working at height, if the customer doesn’t like it then we should tell them we won’t do the work unless they pay for scaffolding.

The last time I hired a tower scaffold it cost sixty quid including delivery and collection, so not that expensive but then it needs erecting and dropping, so it’s going to be at least a hundred quid. That’s assuming you can get in with a tower.

I prefer a cherry picker. Subject, of course, to access.