Welcome to the 7th instalment of The Painting Solution!
With the team currently on their way to start work on a new project, it gives us the opportune time to write about the use of a cherry picker or scaffolding on site. Since the building we will be painting measures up to 13.5 metres in parts, scaffolding or the use of a cherry picker/boom is the only way to paint at that height in a safe, efficient manner. Today’s post is all about the cherry picker and it’s many uses and advantages to the painter.
One of the main problems with most forms of high access is that they only allow you to access a small area at a time. Take an extension ladder as the example – these only give you access to anything that’s within arm’s length of where you place the ladder. That means that if you’re carrying out work over a large area you will constantly have to descend and move it into a suitable position. This is a huge waste of your time. The alternative is scaffolding or a scaffold tower which can provide access to a larger area, but has the downside of requiring lengthy setup times.
A cherry picker is a much faster and more adaptable way to get access to high areas. As the arm is mobile, workers can be moved into position, allowing them to carry out tasks quickly and efficiently. This means that using a cherry picker not only reduces the amount of time you need to spend setting up the equipment, it also ensures that people can spend as little time working at height as possible.
Cherry pickers can be used for a huge variety of tasks – you would be surprised at the range of possibilities. They were originally designed for use picking fruit in orchards (hence the name) but over the years these machines have been adapted so that they are perfect for a wide array of uses, mostly on construction sites and in building repair. Commonly cherry pickers are used for painting and other forms of building maintenance where workers need to get up to difficult to reach spots. They also have clear advantage in terms of cleaning, especially cleaning the windows of high buildings which could be very challenging for other high access equipment.
Whether you’re carrying out basic home maintenance on a residential property or dealing with delicate work on a Grade One listed building you need to have the right equipment for the job. Thankfully, there are many different cherry picker models available that give you the ability to get to the right height or reach the location properly. When other access equipment can do the job, cherry pickers are often able to reach high and put you in the right place. Of course cherry pickers have the additional advantage that they don’t have to go to their full height, so you can use them for a broader range of tasks than some other forms of equipment. For example, scaffolding that has to be assembled to a certain height does not allow for the versatility for many tasks.
It’s not just the height that cherry pickers can offer you. One of the major reasons that cherry pickers have become so popular is that they can be used in awkward spaces that many other forms of high access equipment simply aren’t suitable for. Cherry pickers can reach into narrow spaces and allow you to get work done quickly.
One of the inevitable challenges of working at height are the safety issues. Using a cherry picker is a very safe way to get up high as long as they are used correctly. This is because you are surrounded by a cage which makes it very difficult for you to fall. Equally, as you are able to stand in a comfortable position you are able to work without tiring as you might do on a ladder. When you are working at height, safety needs to be your number one priority and working with a cherry picker allows you to avoid many of the dangers.