Unless you’re wearing a secured safety harness, you don’t just walk around a roof on your 2 feet. You need 3 points of contact at all times. The third point of contact is a hand or knee or your butt. This is also a practice in free-climbing or any risky climbing-type situation.
Not to be confused with “third point of contact” in a parachute-landing fall, which is sort of a side-roll to distribute impact. Ideally the impact sequence is feet, knee, butt, lat muscle. In that context, the third point of contact is always your butt, which also makes it a suitable euphemism for the same.
Main point, again, being: without a secured safety harness, you don’t just walk around a roof on your 2 feet, make sure a 3rd point of contact is touching at all times.
This. A middle-aged guy, who’s been doing it for years, and hypothetically knows what he’s doing (and what not to do) is extremely different from sending two teenaged boys, who almost undoubtedly do not know how to do it safely (the OP mentioned that the kids were just walking around upright), up on a roof that’s 30 feet above the ground.
No, the OP is not a jerk. My son broke his arm when his ladder kicked out from under him while he was cleaning gutters. He was left dangling (ala Chevy Chase) until the gutter started to give way, so he let go and landed on the ladder. I chastised him for not having someone bracing the bottom of the ladder while he was up there.
I’ve replaced 4 roofs. But the pitch was not too steep. You can of course make a mis-step and that would be it.
I used ropes/protection on two of them. It is a pain in the ass. But so is death. Now that my homes roof is steel, I simply cannot climb up there without using ropes. It’s too slick.
Or the alterative. You don’t be a jerk and then when (not if) one does fall off the roof and has compound fractures in both legs it is YOUR fault for not telling them they’re being dumbasses.
I roofed for a summer, hardest work I’ve ever done by far. While I would walk on the roof near the ridge, I immediately hunkered down anywhere near the edge. Wore out the seat in a couple pairs of jeans that way.
/
Only accident we had, somewhat ironically, was the teenaged son of the contractor/owner who did fall off the roof walking near the edge. Fortunately, he was not badly hurt, but we never saw him on the job again.
I’m a bit alarmed at how close the right leg of the standoff is to the corner of the building. Any slip-sliding away to the right and he’s going to get a very brief flying lesson.
So, my ex was born and raised in China, has no experience, and thinks the roof is like climbing a tree and fear of heights. And, what I mean is that she is as naive as my son. That said, she agreed to pay someone to do the job.
This morning, I took my son outside on the driveway.
“you ever work a construction job?” No (but Dad, me that is, did for a few summers)
“How high up you reckon that gutter is?” About 30 feet
“What are we standing on?” Concrete driveway
“How many injuries would you sustain if you fell?” Silence
“We lost your twin sister in January to a tragic household accident, you think I want you to be number two?” Very silent
A professor of mine fell off the roof. Broken bones, serious concussion, personality changes including very poor decision making that led to complaints of sexual inappropriateness in the classroom.
Surprised this has gone without comment. Impresses me as pretty over-the-top precaution.
When I was a kid, I loved being out on the roof in our Chicago bungalow(s). Not a steep roof and not terribly high. Cleaning the gutters was my job as soon as I was big enough to move the wooden extension ladders. No big deal at all. (never understood folk who cleaned gutters from the roof if a ladder could reach…)
Our first home was a split level, so the highest eave was no more than 15’ off the ground. Then we moved to a taller home with a steeper roof, with the back eave over a walkout basement and brick patio. Had to ladder up to the front and then climb over the eave and down to the back gutter. That gave me the willies.
Now, in my 60s, I’m in a split level again, and have little interest in getting up on the roof. Fortunately, the way our house is situated, leaves collect only in the lower level’s gutters. So I easily reach them off of an aluminum extension ladder. I remember one time as a kid, my mom had jury duty in a case where a guy fell off a ladder - standing too high and reaching too far. If you avoid those errors and are careful about ladder placement, it isn’t a big deal.
I’m regularly impressed when I see roofers walk about on often steep roofs. Can’t recall ever seeing protective harnesses used. That really has to beat up your body over time.
Curious about safety equipment, I googled “roofers” and looked at images. Seems about half and half, people wearing a harness and people not. I did notice that for nearly all the people wearing harnesses, you can see a rope going down from the harness (not up).
I guess if they get stuck on the roof, people on the ground can pull them down.
