Learned a brutal lesson about ladder placement at a job site in Phoenix

I set my extension ladder on some loose dirt during a 3-story gutter repair last August, and it slid out from under me at 15 feet up. Has anyone else had a close call with ladder setup that made you change your whole approach?

2 comments

2 Comments

claire9996d ago

Honestly, that loose dirt thing is terrifying because it looks solid until it isn't. You said it slid out from under you at 15 feet, did you have the feet dug in at all or did you just set the rails on top of the ground like I usually do? I always wonder if there's a trick to spotting bad soil before you even step foot on the ladder.

the_vera21h ago

Honestly I used to be one of those people who thought "ah it's fine, I've done this a hundred times" and would just plop the ladder on the dirt without digging the feet in. After that day though? I'll never do that again lol. The ground looked totally normal, like hard packed dirt with some grass on top, but underneath it was all loose and crumbly. What I learned the hard way is you gotta do the toe test first - kick at the dirt hard with your boot and see if it flakes away or if it's actually solid. If you can easily scrape a few inches of it away with your shoe, that's bad news for a ladder.