Can I safely (for me and the roof) use a ladder on my porch roof?

March 3, 2016 7:10 AM

I have birds nesting in the fascia at the base of my house roof, about seven feet above my (asphalt shingle) porch roof, which has a moderate pitch. I have seen people nail a brace onto a roof to brace a ladder so that it can be leaned against the house. 1) Is this insanely dangerous or simply moderately dangerous? 2) Does this ruin the roof (I imagine it does), and how would I patch it? 3) Is there some other reason this is a horrible idea?

Re patching the roof: what I would like to avoid is having to reshingle the roof just to fix this other problem. That must be doable.

posted by OmieWise to Home & Garden (21 answers total)

This is a question for a professional who can physically be present to look at the property in question. Get three estimate for the patching work.

There are lots of reasons this could be a horrible idea. None of us can know for sure without looking at your building.
posted by bilabial at 7:20 AM on March 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Well it's a terrible idea if the birds are actively nesting or have eggs or fledglings. Jays and owls are nesting now, so in some places it would certainly be illegal to remove this nest.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:22 AM on March 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: They are sparrows. I'm not worried about the birds.

There are lots of reasons this could be a horrible idea. None of us can know for sure without looking at your building.

Can you expand on why no one could answer my question without looking at the building? My question is basically: can I nail a brace into my porch roof, and if I do, how can I mitigate any damage to the roof after I do so? This seems like an answerable question, but I may be missing something.
posted by OmieWise at 7:32 AM on March 3, 2016

Best answer: This seems like an answerable question

We have no way of knowing what the construction of your porch roof is like or how much weight it was engineered to support. Nor whether it's suffered any damage since it was constructed that modifies what it once could have held.

It also sounds dangerous in general to do without someone steadying the ladder. This sounds like a job for an extension ladder, on the ground, with someone bracing it.
posted by Candleman at 7:38 AM on March 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

If it was me I'd run a eyebolt into a solid part of the wall, tie off the ladder and go for it.
posted by humboldt32 at 7:39 AM on March 3, 2016

I can tell you that on my porch roof, it would be insanely dangerous. But you couldn't have told me that for sure, just like we can't tell from what you've said.
posted by Candleman at 7:40 AM on March 3, 2016

Best answer: Can you expand on why no one could answer my question without looking at the building?

For one, we don't know what you consider to be a 'moderate pitch.' We also don't know the condition of the wood under the shingles. I, for one, have seen some really (structurally) ugly porch roofs.

I'd look for alternative ways to access the area, but failing that you'd be puncturing a few shingles at the very least. So long as you were careful about it and the roof decking is stiff enough to tolerate the weight of the ladder and its user, the punctures might be the only damage. You could fill the holes with roofing cement (applied with a caulking gun), but because the cement might be less durable than the shingles themselves I'd be inclined to slip a piece of aluminum flashing up between the overlapping shingles, extending under and above the punctures, and glue that in place too.
posted by jon1270 at 7:43 AM on March 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

If it's only seven feet and you don't care about the contents of the nest, could you climb up there and dislodge it with a cultivating fork or something?
posted by Jacob G at 7:46 AM on March 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

I would not nail a brace into the porch roof, you're going to puncture the roofing membranes and potentially create leaks. Assuming you are comfortable with the heights, and reasonably careful, the safe way would be: (a) put a piece of plywood down on the porch roof, (b) set your ladder on that plywood and against the house, (c) securely tie the bottom of the ladder to the house — for example, through a window and to a solid part of the house, or to a 2x4 placed across the inside of the window against the frame. This avoids puncturing the roof, either with nails for a brace, or by means of the feet of the ladder pressing through shingles.
posted by beagle at 7:49 AM on March 3, 2016

Best answer: Things we don't know:

The state of the ground the ladder would be resting on
The pitch of the ground the ladder would be resting on
The state of the wood (or other material) you'd be attaching the bracket to (rotten wood? super dangerou)
The type of bracket you're planning to use
The strength of the screws/nails/bolts you're planning to use to attach this bracket
The pitch of your roof
The type of ladder you're planning to use.

We know, essentially, nothing about your plan. Thus, we cannot in any way tell you that this is a good idea. We can tell you that it has great potential to be very very dangerous.
posted by bilabial at 8:07 AM on March 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I'd vote for just moderately dangerous. In my youth, I worked construction and we did much stupider stuff that OSHA would never have approved. Of course, most of the people I knew back then now are missing fingertips and the like. If you go for nailing a cleat down to brace the ladder to, repairing the nail holes is not difficult. The slacker way is to just stuff the holes with silicone caulk or roof cement. The proper way would be to pull up the shingles where the nail holes were, slather the area with roofing cement and lay down a thin sheet metal patch. Caulk the edges of the patch and press the shingles back down over the sheet metal. The need for sheet metal basically is a factor of how big the holes are, because its harder to allow for expansion in larger nail holes.

Falling off the roof is not uncommonly fatal, so you'd want to be sure you trust your life to the plywood under the shingles and that you are very confident the ladder is securely attached/supported by the brace. But I'm old and we didn't wear harnesses when working on even pretty steep rooflines. If you break your neck, we'd all feel bad.
posted by Lame_username at 8:15 AM on March 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: At my house, we had the chimney cap blow off in a storm. Our porch roof has a very low slope, and we did not have the patience to nail a brace, so I simply held the ladder while my husband climbed up from the porch to the main roof. Nobody died, nothing was damaged. I've seen houses and porch roofs that I wouldn't dare try that on, but because of the fairly flat porch roof, the plastic grippy feet on the ladder, and the fairly large porch (such that we could have sufficient incline of hte ladder without being near the edge), there was nothing about the situation the felt unstable. Also note, our porch slopes away from the wall of the house, not like this (i.e. we did not need a ladder with unequal length legs).

Outside of this fairly ideal situation, I wouldn't know what to recommend. That's why people are saying we don't have enough info to comment.
posted by aimedwander at 8:27 AM on March 3, 2016

We have a shingled porch roof outside of a bedroom window, with what I would consider a moderate pitch. Twice a year Mr. Jane would climb out the window and open a 6 or 7 foot stepladder over the peak of the porch roof and climb up that to access the main roof, while I held it for him, for the purposes of cleaning the gutters.* He never damaged the porch shingles with this setup. So, perhaps a stepladder would get you to the birds' nest, without nailing into the shingles?

*We are both older and more cautious now, plus we had gutter guards installed, so we don't do this anymore.
posted by sarajane at 8:39 AM on March 3, 2016

Funny, just this morning I was remembering the time I fell 7 feet to the ground, due to an improperly placed ladder. I thought I'd broken my back and never in my life have I been so angry with myself. Angry for hastily placing the ladder and ignoring that part of me that was saying "that doesn't look quite right" and zooming up the ladder anyway.

Ambulance, hospital, recovery. Hindsight is 20/20. I realize that you want to do it yourself, but sometimes you just gotta get someone else to do it. At least the first time.

I suppose a good question to ask is what roof repair steps you should expect to be done after they nail that temporary board in (and remove it). Make sure the guy does that and doesn't cut corners.
posted by intermod at 9:06 AM on March 3, 2016

Use the ladder to access the porch roof and then remove the nest. If the nest is higher than you can reach, perhaps it would be easier to reach from the roof above.
posted by axismundi at 9:33 AM on March 3, 2016

Best answer: Yes you can nail a brace on the roof. You will likely have to smear some tar into the holes afterwards.

It's dangerous and otherwise not so hot, why?

Because
1) you don't know anything about the condition of the wood you're nailing into (will the nails even hold?) and
2) on which you will be placing your weight and that of the ladder, via two tiny surfaces (the ladder's ends), which means a lot of weight per square inch.
3) Unless you've have made a test under safe conditions that involves the same angles, same nails and the same brace you're going to use up there, you don't know whether your brace and nails are dimensioned correctly.
4) Also, you're not going to use this rig in safe conditions but rather up there so that
5) if something, if anything, fails, you won't be able to correct it on the fly, you'll just fly and finally
6) removing nesting birds, even sparrows, may well be illegal and sure is unethical even if you personally aren't worried about it.
posted by Namlit at 10:04 AM on March 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you everyone for providing more context on the unknowns here. I particularly appreciate the admonition that no one really knows what's under the shingles.

Please don't worry about the f*cking birds. They moved in to escape cold, and they don't appear to be nesting from what I can see. They are in no way protected or remotely rare in my area.
posted by OmieWise at 11:03 AM on March 3, 2016

Best answer: The correct way to do this, assuming that your setup looks the way it does in my head and that the site is otherwise safe (which I have no way of knowing is true) would be to put roof jacks on your porch roof and then set your ladder against that, with someone footing it at the base for as long as you were on it.

I have done it. I have been paid to do it. It isn't any fun, and is a little dangerous at the best of times, and if it were my house and I could afford to, I would pay someone else to do it.

It's not a good DIY project. Good DIY projects are fun and safe and relatively straightforward. This project sounds like a pain in the butt relative to the amount of feeling-of-accomplishment it will deliver, and dangerous to boot. Get someone else to do it.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:44 PM on March 3, 2016

Please don't worry about the f*cking birds. They moved in to escape cold, and they don't appear to be nesting from what I can see. They are in no way protected or remotely rare in my area.

All native birds are protected under the Migratory Bird Act. It is illegal to disturb the nest of any native birds whatsoever, whether they are rare or not. If you don't know whether they're nesting (first you said they were, now you say they aren't), you should figure that out before illegally disturbing their nest.
posted by dialetheia at 10:08 AM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: In my post I was using nesting colloquially to mean "using as a place to escape the cold." They are not brooding, and there are no eggs in the nest. Further, I'm about 95% sure they are House Sparrows, which makes them a non-protected species. But thanks very much for your clarification.
posted by OmieWise at 10:36 AM on March 8, 2016

Response by poster: I should say, in the space, because there is no nest there. I had someone out to look on the weekend.
posted by OmieWise at 10:44 AM on March 8, 2016