The UK's tallest Aerial Ladder Platform (ALP) has recently been received by Stevenage Fire Station as an upgrade to their old 30 metre ladder platform, which will remain in service.  The new ladder has a vertical height of 45 metres, and a horizontal reach of 25 metres.  These factors mean that the extra height capabilities will make fighting attic fires much easier as the fire engine can be parked in a different street and the ladder reach used to get over the top of smaller buildings.  The ladder platform can also be lowered down to seven metres below ground making it ideal for all types of rescue operation, as well as [...]

55-year-old Robert Loucks has been in construction all his working life, and ladders have featured heavily in his work; he has first-hand experience of falling off a ladder and has spent several years pondering a solution to the problem of unstable ladders.  Although he has been formulating the idea for 15 years, his impending retirement has seen him spring into action with designing and patenting his ladder stabiliser, which he hopes will give him a comfortable retirement income. His ladder stabiliser comprises of a bracket which mounts to the side of a house and clips on to the rungs of any straight ladder, keeping it firmly in place at the base.  [...]

Getting stored items in and out of the attic is a job normally reserved for a weekend or another free day, when adequate care and attention can be given to the task at hand.  Climbing a ladder is never a risk-free endeavour, but when you are also carrying items up or down with you it is impossible to maintain three points of contact with the ladder, making it much more dangerous.  For this reason, it is vital that you take your time and have another person present to hand you items and take them from you, reducing the amount of time you are not in proper contact with the ladder.   [...]

Health professionals are often the first people to deal with the aftermath of a ladder accident and they see so many, that they are often more well equipped to make safety improvements than ladder designers, seeing first-hand what actually goes wrong in the real world.  A paramedic, in Australia, has designed a safety accessory for extension ladders that will make them safer for domestic users and reduce the number of accidents caused by ladders being improperly secured at the top.   David Kay came up with the initial concept around 16 years ago, but was astounded to learn that no-one else had dreamt up the same notion when he recently started [...]

A 61-year-old woman from New Hampshire, USA, had a scary experience recently when her pool ladder broke leaving her stranded in the water for three hours.  Leslie Kahn had been enjoying a dip in her back garden when the ladder broke as she tried to exit the pool.  She injured her knee in the accident and could not get out of the pool unaided.  After realising she was stuck, she used a pool skimming net on a long pole to reach her iPad, which was on a recliner near to the pool.  She posted a message on social media, alerting friends and neighbours to her plight and was rescued by neighbours [...]

A ladder is a means of accessing something which is at height: whether that is a window or guttering to clean, a high shelf or cupboard, or even a roof terrace, or attic conversion.  The humble ladder is the obvious choice for reaching destinations that are located high up, but sometimes there is a better way, especially in the case of loft conversions, mezzanine floors and roof terraces.  Instead of using a ladder, a spiral or spacesaver staircase could be the answer; allowing for access but in a more comfortable manner than by a ladder.  In a home setting, you may well encounter guests who are nervous about climbing ladders and [...]

A recent viral video showed two men in Florida transporting a ladder on their car.  Unremarkable, you may think, until you see the clip.  They don't have a roof rack, but instead both men are sitting on the same side of the car, one behind the driver.  They both have an arm out of the window, holding the ladder down on the roof.  It seems that they had a good grip because there are no reports of a ladder being found on the road; given the high number of such incidents, it is quite something that they did not accidentally let go and send the ladder flying in to traffic. A [...]

Library ladders are a perennial favourite of interior designers; stylish, classic and indicative of sophistication they are often made a feature of rooms but they have a practical use as well.  Although bookcases are designed for book storage many people use shelving as storage for other items such as: DVDs, clothing, entertainment systems and even towels and linen.  One house in Yokohama, Japan, has been designed with shelving at the forefront of the design, with a double height wall entirely lined with shelves across the entire width of the house.  Despite the fact that the shelves line an entire double height wall, the residents have no need of a library ladder. [...]

It should be obvious that the combination of ladders and chainsaws is a potentially dangerous one, and that extreme caution should be exercised when using the two, but there are still people out there who think they are above the laws of both physics, and health and safety.  A video emerged online of a man performing some amateur tree surgery using both the aforementioned pieces of equipment.  He was straddling the branch he was cutting off, and had at least ensured he was sitting on the part that was to be left attached to the tree, but had not thought about what would happen to the branch when it fell.  The [...]

Our favourite artist Charlie Brouwer is at it again with his community ladder sculpture project, Rise Together.  It is a travelling installation project, which brings together members of each community it visits, relying on donations of ladders to create the unique sculptures, which remain in place for several weeks in each location.  This time he is in Kingsport, Tennessee, where businesses and individuals have all donated ladders to the project.  At each location the installation looks different, as the construction depends on the types and colours of ladders that are donated to the project.  In Kingsport the Rise Together, artwork stands outside the Renaissance Centre, in the heart of the city, [...]