What's the best knot for an extension ladder. I've always used a bowline with two turns of a figure eight.
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What's the best knot for an extension ladder. I've always used a bowline with two turns of a figure eight.
Tie a clovehitch around the rung, trapping the halyard running up and down, and then finish it with a half hitch safety.
Yup, clovehitch with a safety.
Agreed...Clove hitch with a safety. Keep it simple.
Why are you wasting time doing ANYTHING with the Halyard?? Extend the Ladder, drop it in to where you want it, and go. Jeesh......:rolleyes:
Tying off a Halyard is something that we just don't bother with. After all these years, I still haven't seen a good reason to do so....... AND, while we're on this subject, How many of you Tie the loose end of the Halyard around ALL the rungs of an extention Ladder, making it necessary to untie the Halyard before you can extend the Ladder?? I may make a person or two upset with this, but so be it. Tying the sections together is STUPID!! Why would you Deliberately do something that needlessly increases the time needed to place a Ladder in position to make a Rescue??......... All Ladders have the Halyard spliced around an eye on the Fly end, then threaded thru the Pulley(s) and the end of the Halyard left loose. When we get a new Ladder, the first thing that we do is to wrap the loose end of the Halyard around the Bottom rung of the Bed Section, then Splice it in place. After this step, the only way to get the Halyard loose is to cut it loose with a Knife.
^^Every extension ladder I've worked with, fire service and "commercial", has the halyard tied off on the bottom rung.
After throwing the ladder the halyard gets tied to get the halyard out of the way and to stop total failure if the dogs are not locked securely. I know you can say "make sure the dogs are locked" but its for safety .. lot of other stuff we do for redundancy sake also.
EDIT: not that i am against thinking outside the box ... just those are my common sense reason for doing it. I could change my mind. Oh yeah and thats how we are taught also. Which CAN go to liability if the dogs should fail.
PS here is a link from '01 talking about some of the same stuff.
http://www.firehouse.com/forums/t17111/