I am an admitted Obsessive Compulsive.
Although there are varying degrees of ‘OCD’ (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), outside of the normal items that you may see related to this way of life with a quick Google search, there are certain things that attract my eye like a magnet which may not normally bother anyone else.
As an example, I could be in one of our offices in a Production Meeting, and my eye may catch a smudge on the large glass windows outside the office doors.
Once noticing this, I would be internally irked until the smudge was cleaned off.
Though this may not seem quite odd in and of itself, the entire shop could be a disaster area and my eye would still be focused on that one smudge on the glass.
Over the years this has carried itself over to the field where one of the things that drives me insane is seeing a ‘ding’ on someone’s gutter.
I am not referring to a 200-year-old trough gutter system that has seen its share of battles over time, but the random ding that may be seen on a more modern aluminum gutter system whose surfaces would be perfect if it were not for this one blemish, often caused by someone knocking the gutter with a ladder.
Many homeowners, and even contractors, approach working in and around gutters the same way.
They lean their ladder directly on the gutter in order to access the inside of the gutter or a point above it.
While one may argue that if the ladder is leaned up on the gutter softly enough, the gutter should be OK, my counterargument to that would be that even if the eye-catching tiny dent is avoided by the gentleness of the “lean”, there would nevertheless most likely be some type of mark where the ladder leaned up against the gutter and rubbed a tiny bit of its finish off.
Well then, if leaning a ladder on a gutter will create some type of a mark, whether it is a small dent or a paint blemish, how does one do what they need to around the gutter without placing the ladder on the gutter itself in cases where that is seemingly their only option?
Enter the ‘Ladder-Max Standoff’.
This product is phenomenal in aiding to avoid these types of dings, dents, and marks which can so easily happen when a ladder is placed directly on the gutter itself.
The way the Ladder-Max Standoffs function is they attach to the ladder by being placed over two of its rungs with two safety clips then being put into place.
Once the Ladder-Max Standoff is properly attached to the ladder, the ladder can be erected and placed in an area around the gutter, as you normally would, but the Ladder-Max Standoff prevents you from actually touching the gutter with your ladder as you proceed to do your work.
The Ladder-Max Standoff will have the bumpers on each of its arms touch the area above the gutter – typically the roof – and you will be able to comfortably navigate in and around the gutter without the worry of impacting the gutter in any way.
The Ladder-Max Standoff is available from a number of places online and we quite simply find it to be an invaluable resource which we utilize in the process of working on the exterior of people’s homes.
Whether you have tendencies such as I have to have your eye drawn to the tiniest details and have small markings drive you batty to no end, or you just want to make sure that you are able to work around your gutters and minimize the chances of you causing any type of damage to them in the process, the Ladder-Max Standoff is a tremendous product that when used properly hyper-minimizes all of these kinds of concerns.
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