This morning I was booked in to replace 2 fascia boards on the gable of a tall Victorian-style house in WSM.
Because the building was relatively high, I decided to use my heavy-duty, extra-long ladders instead of the lighter set that I use mostly on houses such as this. So, early this cold and frosty morning, before it was hardly light, I walked round to the back garden and lifted them off the wall brackets on which they were mounted. Well...!
I couldn't believe how heavy they were! Wow, I thought, I really must have gone overboard at Christmas, time to get fit again Mr.Englishman. So I persevered throughout the morning, and eventually got the job done despite staggering under the weight of these heavy duty ladders as I moved them along the wall as I fastened the fascia high above.
Eventually the job was done, so now it was time to pack up and go home. I struggled to get the ladders onto the roof-rack thinking how unfit I had become, although the ladders were definitely heavy, surely I hadn't become so unfit in just a fortnight that I could barely carry them?
Then suddenly...gurgle, gurgle, whoosh! Water everywhere!
Finally it dawned on me . The ladders were of an aluminium closed box-section profile, not like the lighter "H" section variety that I normally use. Occasionally, this section fills up with water during heavy rain by way of the hollow ladder rungs and needs to be drained off by tipping before I carry them to the car.
We'd had rain a few days back, and then the weather had become really cold so that we have had several days of hard frost, which is quite uncommon in WSM. The water trapped in the ladders had frozen solid, so that it was unable to drain automatically once it was moved off the horizontal plane. So, there I was staggering about beneath ladders full of ice, convinced that I had become as weak as a kitten.
I thought the ladders were cold to the touch too. Doh!
Englishman.
Edited by - Englishman on 8 January 2003 9:26:55