Well, I needed to get onto the roof of the house. Actually I needed to get onto the top roof of the house. The trouble is, with the geometry of the roof, plus the fact that to get onto the top roof, you need climb up to the low roof, then drag the ladder onto the low roof and then climb up to the top roof, which is a problem because the ladder is stupid. It’s one of those folding ladders and it doesn’t sit very securely on the steel roof and has the habit of sliding away when you start climbing.
So I decided to try and fix all that. Long ago I made a wooden thingy that screwed onto the top of the ladder that hooked onto the parapet but I don’t know where that went and I’m not convinced it was super effective. I also tried bending a piece of aluminium to make a hook but it simply snapped in half when I started to bend it.
Well this time I muddled about for a bit and ended up revisiting the aluminium hook idea. I found the old piece I originally tried using and bent it round until I had the shape I needed, giving it a gentle curve instead of trying to make it bend 90°. Then I drilled and tapped it and drilled matching holes in the base of the ladder. The picture explains it better that words, but the ladder has a horizontal piece of aluminium rectangular tube on the ends, to which the plastic feet are riveted. It works okay on the ground but I reckon the whole ladder is cheap and bodgy.
Nevertheless I fixed the hook onto the end of the ladder and immediately encountered a new problem. The rails of the ladder are rectangular aluminium tubes with raw ends and when hooking the ladder over the parapet, the rails scrape into the steel capping on the roof, exposing the bare metal. I solved that problem by taping pieces of inner tube over the ends of the rails, which meant the ladder only left behind rubber marks.
Except now the hook itself was digging into the parapet and causing damage. It’s really kind of damn annoying bouncing from one problem to another. By this time I was getting jacked off with the whole process, having already spend the morning going up and down the ladder, and decided I’d had enough. I grabbed an old car floor mat, drilled a bunch of holes in it and cable tied it on the inside of the hook, solving both the problems with the ladder scraping the parapet. Of course I had also discovered that the foot of the ladder was also scraping on the roof. I grabbed a different floor mat, and threw that down under the ladder to protect the roof – like I said, the design of the ladder is just the worst.
After all that I think I have solved most of the issues with the ladder. I still have some work to do on the top roof but I think what I’ll do is set up the ladder on the low roof and access it by using the stairs to the first floor and climbing out the window, instead of repeatedly shifting the ladder.