• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Wind and ladders!

T

TrimTheKing

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Just spent 30 of the most nerve jangling minutes of my life up and down ladders swapping out bulbs in my 3*500w floodlights which are conveniently located at 3 courses below eaves height, on a 2 storey building!

We live on a ridge nicknamed 'Windy ridge' and for good reason. LOML was supporting the ladder but I found myself grabbing onto the light fitting on a couple of occasions until a particularly gusty gust had passed!

At least they're done now, hopefully for another few years!

Cheers
Mark
 
Don't you believe it, Mark. The new bulbs go too damn quick.

I have one of these http://www.amazon.co.uk/DIY-Aluminium-S ... B001O36XXA

51kQM7lbj5L.jpg


OK...not worth putting up to replace a few bulbs but the luxury when painting or maintaining...

What's not shown are the outrigger stabilisers.
 
RogerS":3moqwnhv said:
Don't you believe it, Mark. The new bulbs go too damn quick.

I have one of these http://www.amazon.co.uk/DIY-Aluminium-S ... B001O36XXA

51kQM7lbj5L.jpg


OK...not worth putting up to replace a few bulbs but the luxury when painting or maintaining...

What's not shown are the outrigger stabilisers.
Click to expand...

Well these ones are the first replacements since we moved in, just over 6 years ago, so I would hope for the same…

I like that Roger, I was just saying to The Wife that I think that's going to be my next purchase. Might look and see what's on Fleabay…

Cheers
Mark
 
Be careful - what is on e-bay is not always what you might call good quality if you are looking at second hand! Anything over about 3M is decidedly unstable (and unsafe) without out-riggers.

I recently spent ages looking into this as I wanted to get to my eaves, which are 7 meters (vertically) from the ground. This would need a 10 meter ladder which is a pain to move. Scaffolding is extraordinarily expensive to hire for some reason, I guess because most people don't want or need their own so a captive market for hiring it. If you are buying, then Boss type scaffolds are also very very expensive (although top quality). In the end I found a company who were local to me (they ship nationally and are on e-bay as well) and I went to see their range:

https://www.aluminium-scaffoldtowers.co.uk/

I went with one of their towers in the end (the Super DIY 7 advanced), figuring I could sell it afterwards if I didn't want it again. I need it for ages (rennovating sash windows so weeks worth of hire) and buying was much cheaper than hiring. I weigh approx 19 stone and the super DIY tower will hold me happily. To be fair however, I still put a couple of eye bolts either side of the window I am working on and tie the tower to these for extra security - more peace of mind than necessity. I can put it up on my own but do have to tie the top pieces to a rope and pull them up. It would be far easier with 2 people but not essential. Will it hold 2 people? No. Is it as robust as a Boss tower? No. But is is perfectly acceptable for DIY home use. I did look at their trade towers, which were stronger, but they did not offer the ability to 'step' the tower for doing stairs/hallway and the DIY tower did. As the next job after the windows is hall stairs and landing that was important to me, otherwise I would have paid the extra and gone for the trade tower.

Am I glad I bought it - yes. Will I sell it when done? Probably not - the ability to stand safely and work rather than reach off a ladder is well worth the outlay. If I was painting the eaves (which I will have to do at some point) it would be a pain to move the scaffold tower after painting six foot and I would want to do that from a ladder with a stand-off bracket. In fact although I got wheels with mine, unless you are on a very flat surface (eg tarmac) I wouldn't feel comfortable pushing the tower around - too unstable.

Bottom line - an expensive outlay but well worth it in my opinion, will last a lifetime of DIY use and I will keep it unless I retire to a bungalow!

Steve
 
Steve... the one I linked to is very stable and would take 19 st! But Mark is nothing like that weight ;) :)
 
Thanks Steve, will be careful!

As for weight, 13st's I am, and now I've started my post Christmas training I will probably be somewhere around half a stone lighter than that come my 100k ride in March. :)

Cheers
Mark
 
+1 for scaffolds. Mine is steel, so it weighs a bit, and it is 3m wide which both tend to make it more stable, but even so, like Steve, I put a couple of eye bolts in for security. They are not very conspicuous, so I simply leave them there at the end of a job and over time you find that most places you need to go they are already installed from the last time.
 
I think if I were to drill the walls in our house for eye bolts the vibration would turn the lime mortar into mush and the stone would vibrate itself out of the wall!
 
I've only one real high spot on my house where I've still got an outside arial attachment that I use as an "eye bolt".
The other gable end has my garage underneath so much less of a fall.

Rod
 
Order placed, after needing one for a while but final straw being Barney's birthday present of stomp rockets ending up in the gutter! :lol:

Cheers
Mark
 
Yup, my second tower came from BPS for £200 or so. Very good customer service to boot.
 
I never knew that they were called stomp rockets. I made some with the kids last year just using the car foot pump and bottles of water. Not as good as the real thing but great fun and we did manage to get one of them to clear the house.
 
Good fun making stuff like that Andy. With a decent stomp I can get Barney's to probably double the height of our house. Problem is angling it the right way to make sure the wind doesn't take it onto the roof.

Needless to say we've failed twice, luckily neither of them were me, although the Spider-Man helicopter which was the final straw, was most definitely me! :)

Cheers
Mark
 
Stomp Rockets, wait until you graduate to Mentos and Coke rockets. No issue with it getting stuck in the gutter because they will take the gutter clean off the house :lol: . Oh and your head if you are not careful!

Terry.
 
Dunno if it would work at all and if it did I doubt it would be as impressive.

It's something to do with the way aspartame in diet coke lowers the surface tension of the liquid which when combined with something in the mentos enables the compressed gases in the bubbles to expand very rapidly.

I don't think soda stream is at such a high pressure.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk
 
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