Seeing that I was about to lift about 29 square meters of chipboard and about 18 2x4's up into the attic (about 420kg of wood) not to mention all the junk we were going to hide up there afterwards, my little leaning telescopic ladder thing wasn't going to cut it. I'm also sure it would have probably ended up with a hospital visit at some point.
So it was time to invest in a proper loft ladder. Luckily ScrewFix read my mind and put one on sale for me :). The one that we bought was the 3 piece aluminum extension type made for "light use" with a capacity of 150kg. I don't weight that much so I'm guessing heavy use with a light person maybe also counts. Regardless, this ladder would be at least fixed to the building so less chance of getting frequent flyer miles at the A&E.
These ladders are super easy to install. The kit came with hatch door hardware as well - but I already too care of that earlier (here). The idea is that they fold in 3 and collapse into an open area of the loft. The only difficulty was that the area of the loft where we have access doesn't provide for a whole lot of room. I measured the length and the height but the round arc was the issue. Will have to just test it out.
The other challenge with installing the ladder was that you still need a second ladder to get up there to fix everything. Or a really trusting friend (that you won't just leave them up there).
I used 60mm screws to hold it in place and make sure that I was screwing down to something more than just chipboard. The ladder is on hinges and slides down into place. It was adjustable to 3m so lots of height as well - think we are at about 2.8m extended.
And there you have it - a much better and safer way of getting up into the loft. Now I just need to carry my 400+ kg of materials up the ladder. Gasp!
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