Ladder standoff

Where a roof has an overhang, a ladder leaned against the house reaches the roof edge before it reaches the wall. The eave projects past the wall, the fascia board runs along its outer face, and the soffit closes the underside.

Two ladder accessory makers publish how far their products hold a ladder off the surface it leans on. Ladder-Max says its Ladder Standoff Stabilizer attaches to a ladder to provide 19 inches of standoff from roofing and walls, and steadies the ladder with arms that reach 36 inches from tip to tip. Louisville Ladder calls its LP-2200-00 aluminum ladder stabilizer a stabilizer rather than a standoff. It says the product gives extra stability when working near walls, holds the ladder 12 inches from the wall, spans 45 inches wide and attaches with two U-bolts.

Those figures belong to those two products. Nineteen inches is Ladder-Max's number and 12 and 45 inches are Louisville Ladder's, and neither is a trade rule about how far any ladder should sit from a house. What a given accessory is rated for, and how it is fitted, comes from the maker of that accessory.

The Tile Roofing Industry Alliance uses a third name. In a passage of its Roof Maintenance Guide about doing some tasks from a ladder instead of walking on the roof, TRI says ladder braces may be attached to avoid damage to gutters and tile. TRI does not describe the device, and no source read for this glossary says a TRI ladder brace is the same thing as a standoff or a stabilizer. What a ladder near the gutters means for a roof cleaning is taken up at whether roof cleaning damages gutters.

A standoff changes where a ladder touches the house. It does not change the rules for the ladder. OSHA's construction ladder rule, 29 CFR 1926.1053(b), says that when a portable ladder is used to reach an upper landing surface, its side rails must extend at least 3 feet above that landing. When the ladder is too short for that, it must be “secured at its top to a rigid support that will not deflect,” with a grasping device such as a grabrail to help a worker on and off.

The same rule sets the angle. A ladder that cannot stand on its own is used so that the horizontal distance from the top support to the foot is “approximately one-quarter of the working length of the ladder,” measured along the ladder between the foot and the top support.

OSHA's Portable Ladder Safety QuickCard adds a line that reaches accessories directly: use ladders and appropriate accessories only “for their designed purposes.” The card's own examples are ladder levelers, jacks and hooks. A ladder is not one of the three systems OSHA accepts under fall protection, and an accessory does not make it one.

Whether a roof needs a ladder at all is its own question, answered at cleaning a roof from the ground.