Wanted to get feedback on a situation I’ve been confronted with many times.
Latest is a assisted living campus, outside only cleaning, 3600 windows total where the apartment side is 4 stories and has 160 balconies located on floors 1 thru 4.
A lift isn’t possible due to landscape, options are to ladder and climb over balcony railings each time or get access to each unit with a balcony from the inside. Laddering would be fastest but entering units would be safer?
Ladders with a footman for top floor. Unless youre doing inside gaining access to that many units will be a logistical nightmare (we do some of the largest a.l. facilities in n.e. and have plenty of apt,condo complexes with same design ). Only other option would be lift safety and speed may offset rental cost?
I just did work at apartment complex. I went through the units with a manager. Each balcony had one double hung; it took me about 3 minutes a unit. A heck of a lot safer in my opinion. Of course doing it at assisted living facility would take longer because the residents will talk forever.
This is just me but I wouldn’t do it without a lift. Climbing from ladder to porch is one thing but climbing from porch to ladder is a whole different ballgame.
I will have this same situation here in the next month. I included an option on the bid to leave out balconies and leave those for the tenants. They choose that since it was cheaper. My thinking was if all else I would just make the guys wear harness and clip off to the railing when going back-and-forth over it just in case. Like previously said getting onto the balcony is easy but getting back onto the latter can be a little difficult.
[quote=“Deanswc, post:9, topic:41517, full:true”] My thinking was if all else I would just make the guys wear harness and clip off to the railing when going back-and-forth over it just in case.
[/quote]
Why tie to something that isn’t likely rated as an anchor?
Lanyard may get in way at that point and cause you to utilize a fall system that isn’t rated as one.
Yeah you are right. I thought about that as well, osha says each fall protection needs to be able to hold 5000 per employee I believe. Definitely more than the strength of a railing. What is the osha approved way to climb over a hand railing from a ladder?
to safely do this you would need a small step ladder to get off the balcony as well as extension ladder 3" above the railing, I would also use one of those bike locks to ensure the ladder was stable while you were transferring on and off the ladder and while you are not on the ladder, as well as a footing person.
Then it comes down to logistics as how to get the stepladder around as it would be unsafe to climb the ladder with a stepladder. The easiest way i would think is would to have a rope attached to it and pull it up when you were at the top of the ladder, then after the top balcony lower it down to the lower level and so on.
I would not put the ladder above the rail. That for accessing roofs where you can store onto the roof. In this case your climbing oven the rail which is different. I would use a stand off on the ladder which would go through the rail openings and prevent the ladder from sliding side to side, place the ladder so it just reaches the top of the rail so you can go over the top of the ladder and over the rail, use a small 3 step ladder on the balcony floor, and if you still don’t feel safe use a fall protection harness and a carabiner clipped to the railing when going over the top. Once on the balcony or back on the ladder, uncle the biner and your good to go.
Enter from inside. It takes longer but add that to your pricing. No way I would climb over all those railings. Maybe one or two but any more than that on a job is just asking for an injury.
There have been a few methods discussed, the obvious method to simply clean from entering the unit from the inside. With that carries the huge cost and inconvenience of access of doing so.
If OSHA allows using a ladder for accessing to and from a deck I will take that method.
If access from inside the unit is required I will state on bid that we are not able to clean the deck windows due to OSHA Safety Standards, we will not enter each unit only to access the decks.
We would not do any work that would be a safety violation, especially wearing a harness to connect to something that isn’t rated and certified as an anchor.
We find 95% of these bids turn down the balconies as they are easy enough for maintenance/tenant to access.
To be clear I was only suggesting that because you seemed determined to access the balconies from the outside. even if the railing is not rated it would be safer than no harness and accessing it with a ladder. I get staying within standards. I am just not familiar with he standard and was just suggesting a logical solution.Its good to follow the conversation for future reference. Im curious to know what the OSHA standard is as I have to climb over railings often on exterior only residentials where customers are not home. Let us know what you find out.
Take a rope and tie it snug on your back like a back pack. Frees up your hands.
Last apartment complex we had this situation they had the pvc capped railings you could see them bowing with the ladder just resting on them I told the owners we would just skip them and lower the price. It’s just plain dangerous to do 50 times too.
