Roof Work Safety, The Fall Protection General Info
Roof fall protection
Working on the roof (even on the seems-to-be-safe
flat roof) you shall never forget you are working in considerable heights and the ground down is pretty far and hard like... the hard ground. Every mistake, every wrong step can be really fatal.
Therefor, it is essential for the roofers to keep the strict fall protection standards, rules of working in the height and use as many fall protection tools as possible.
Fall protection training
This is nothing for the do-it-yourself roofers working on the roof just 2 or 3 times in a decade, but if you are a proffesional roofer you should apply for the fall protection training.
On such training, the spacialized trainers educate you in the OSHA (if you are from US, it means the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) safety work standards and show you how to survive healthy any roofing job.
Fall protection clothing and footwear
Your safety as a roofer is also determined by the clothing and shoes you wear when working on the roof so let us start with them.
Safety shoes must posses soft structured soil that will not slip and they have to be enough comfortable. The most used (trademarks) are Nautilus, Wolverine or Converse safety shoes.
Safety apparel is usually represented by reliable, heavy duty protective clothing (safety coverall) which, again, has to be as comfortable as possible - comfort is crucial in this case, if the clothing is too tight or doesnīt allow you to move freely - buy the new one.
Fall protection equipment
The fall protection equipment consists of (not only):
- guard rails (guardrail systems);
- personal fall arrest tools (fall protection harnesses, snaphooks, self-retracting lifelines);
- safety nets (roof fall protection net systems);
- various warning tools (warning lines; electronic safety monitoring tools);
- various covers (to cover holes, skylights, etc...).
I plan to go through the particular fall protection equipments more in details in the very next RCP articles.
