Safety Harness - Combat Heights
As a roofer who is a tad nervous of heights it is perhaps not a major advantage of my job that I spend most of my time 40 foot above the ground on people's roofs.
In all honesty the 'fear of falling' I have developed has only recently become a problem after we moved from Devon to Brighton. I had spent many years quite happily walking around people's roofs, talking to people as they walked past and even admiring the view but now each job comes with a sense of foreboding and dread.
The difference between doing my job in the countryside or in the city is quite obviously the height of the buildings. The city is a concrete jungle of high rise blocks mixed with the kind of regency architecture that you would expect from Brighton.
A lot of my work of late has been as a result of the gale force winds and torrential rain. The winds have forced tiles from roofs and the torrential rain has found its way in or beaten its way through. It has been a distressing time for people, but none so for me, who has been stuck on the top of people's roofs being blown around and quite frankly thinking of giving it all up for a desk job.
I have always had a safety harness but in all honesty I felt that there was not much call for it when I was working in Devon, but these days I can quite honestly say that I would not be able to go to work without it. I decided that I would invest in an upgrade and bought myself a Fall Arrest Roofers Safety Kit. It is early days, but I am starting to feel safe again and the thoughts of a desk job just make me laugh now as I take in the sea view from the roofs of Brighton.