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I cannot come up with a reliable way to keep the ladder steady when it's leaning against the shed roof. I need to paint the trim two storeys up. When the right side of the ladder touches the roof edge at the point indicated by the arrow in the sketch, the ladder's left leg comes up off the ground a few inches. The ladder is then a-kilter, standing on one leg, and I'm concerned it will slide down the roof with me on it.

Is there something painters rig up to solve this problem, short of scaffolding? Something more reliable than a couple of bath towels draped over the drip-edge?

Scaffolding would have been the safest solution, but it was hard to find one in a timely rental (and it's in the back yard and inaccessible to a cherry-picker). I managed to jerry-rig a solution to the tippy ladder problem. My son said to me, you don't want to hear 'jerry-rig' and 'ladder' in the same breath. But the clamps actually held the ladder quite securely.

Makeshift ladder clamp

Tippy ladder on shed roof

Peter Mortensen
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mr blint
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6 Answers6

17

Rotate the bottom of the ladder toward the downslope a bit, and shift it the same way. Let's not overcomplicate things. That's all it takes. It would be counter-clockwise in your diagram.

It may seem like this creates a tilt in the ladder, but that's actually how things are in balance. All four points of contact are stable.

Here are the various situations demonstrated on a 6:12 pitch roof and level slab...

1. Ladder leaned square with wall, bottom parallel to the wall, top gapped on one side

enter image description here

2. Ladder leaned square with wall, bottom gapped one side, top tight

enter image description here

3. Ladder skewed with respect to wall, bottom rotated and shifted, top tight

enter image description here

enter image description here

#3 is clearly the ticket. This arrangement can be found for any roof pitch, assuming fairly level ground, though at some point things get weird and potentially unsafe (beyond maybe a 10:12 pitch).

If you can't get this to work with just a slight side offset, your ground surface is probably out of level. Use a scrap of wood or masonry to add height as needed, or dig a little divot. Be sure it's not slick, and don't stack things unless you fasten them together. They'll tend to slide when you don't want them to slide.

From there, follow good ladder safety practices:

  • Maintain approximately a 1:3 slope
  • Keep the ladder feet on stable ground which isn't slippery (use the ladder's flippy toes where appropriate)
  • Keep your weight roughly centered over the width of the ladder
isherwood
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12

ladder standoff image from zoro.com no endorsement implied

A ladder standoff is fairly normal for this sort of issue. Put the feet on the wall.

Ecnerwal
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I would place the top of the ladder against the wall under the overhang.

  • You need to paint the soffit, so this works well for that.
  • You need to paint the fascia. It doesn't work quite so well for that because you have to reach backwards a bit and don't have much reach.
    • Because of the limited reach, you'll need to move and reset the ladder a lot.

Personally, I'd use scaffold. It gives you good, safe, solid access to an 8-10' section all at once. It is (or at least was, last I looked) pretty reasonable to rent a number of sections. It takes a while to set up, but the do make wheels so you can roll it around (you may need to set it on some 2x10" or 2x12" to give you a surface to roll on). The amount of time spend setting it up is recouped by the amount of time not spent in the hospital because you fell off the ladder stretching to reach that one last little spot because you didn't want to move the ladder for the 53rd time.

FreeMan
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3

My jerry-rigged solution was to clamp an "outside corner" length of wood to the roof and then to clamp the ladder to that piece of wood. You could make one of these pieces by sawing out a section of a 4x4 post to get an "extruded" L-shape.

My feet were on a rung only about 8 feet off the ground. Had I needed to go any higher than that, I would have waited until a scaffold rental was available locally.

I tested this rig to make sure it was secure given my particular set of circumstances, but the safety of this sort of hack depends on the clamping force of your clamps and on the nature of the task.

So, CAVEAT LECTOR!

roof-ladder-clamp

mr blint
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I learned what a "headstrap" is while recovering from a fall off an extension ladder leaning on a pole. The normal process is to chain or rope the top of the ladder to the thing you're working on so it can't fall.

Admittedly in this case there's no pole, but you could run a pair of long ropes across the roof in opposite directions, even if it means going clear over the house.

If the porch roof were strong enough to support your weight, then simply stand on the roof while painting and leave the ladder positioned somewhere else around the house. Just paint backward toward the ladder, and avoid literally painting yourself into a corner.

You can stand on the main roof and use a long pole and roller to do the porch roof from above, if its not load bearing.

Criggie
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Looks like you won't be able to reach the middle of the wall above the extension anyway, so get some boards that will straddle the 'joists' on the roof, and use those, getting there up the ladder firmly standing on the grass shown in the pic.

There is (I use one) a leg extension which clamps to the bottom of one stringer. Very safe, but won't really alter the mating between upper ladder and sloping roof. Better for use on sloping ground/steps, etc.

Tim
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