Roofing is a part of construction processes, and something that has never changed but always takes the first position in construction is safety. Regardless of your level of professionalism, without ensuring safety, you might be ending your career sooner than imagined through injuries. Sometimes it might get worst, and death will become inevitable.
Either you are installing a new roof or carrying out repairs on the old one. You must never let safety out of your mind regardless of who you are. What then are the safety precautions you should practice and why?
Electrical safety
The possibility of you getting electrocuted in the process of trying to get to the rooftop for installation or repair is higher than you think. You might be thinking about why. This is because electricity can leap from wires easily several feet away to your ladder. The worst part of it is that the speed of electricity is high that you won’t get the opportunity even to shout before it drops you to an early grave.
Ensure you are using a non-conductive ladder made of fiberglass or preferable wood whenever you want to work close to a wire. Remember you should never for any reason attempt to touch a live wire with your hands or conductive tools either you are trying to get it in a position that would allow you work easily or you are trying to get easy passage.
Never walk or work on a wet roof
Except you intend experiencing roof diving instead of going on a nice vacation with your friends and family to skydive. Walking on a wet roof should be the last thing you want to try.
A wet roof is really slippery, falling from one to the ground would put you in a serious mess that might prevent you from doing anything reasonable for weeks because you could break your hand, leg or possibly hit your head on an unexpected object which could cause a severe head injury.
Aside from your body suffering from injuries, you could break the shingles or tiles in the process of falling from the roof due to collision with the roof in a way that your weight becomes too much for the roof to hold.
Safety during hammer handling
When you see some of this experienced roofers or roofing contractors with extreme knowledge of safety precautions working on the roof, you easily get this feeling that handling a hammer is not something too tough or difficult for you to do. Nevertheless, before you end up damaging those beautiful hands, I would advise you to learn how it is done.
Ensure you are always wearing eyes protection whenever you want to use a hammer because the process of striking a nail wrongly could lead to blindness when objects fly back to your eyes. Ensure you wear gloves to prevent your palm from damages, especially when you accidentally hit the hammer on your fingers. To also prevent the hammer from hitting your fingers, try to strike the hammer squarely.
