Lifting and Lowering (useful "rule of thumb")

[B52s]

Pushing health and safety legislation firmly to one side...

I recently had reason to reference Figure 2 below from 'Getting to grips with manual handing' a short guide by the HSE and thought self-builders might also find the diagram useful, as I feel, everyone tends to lift and move goods, building materials, etc. well beyond the weight limit guidance noted in the diagram.  Might be of particular interest to those in their autumn years who suffer occasional back issues like me.

 

Figure 2 Lifting and Lowering

• Use Figure 2 to make a quick and easy assessment. Each box contains a guideline weight for lifting and lowering in that zone. (As you can see, the guideline weights are reduced if handling is done with arms extended, or at high or low levels, as that is where injuries are most likely to occur.)
• Observe the work activity you are assessing and compare it to the diagram. First, decide which box or boxes the lifter’s hands pass through when moving the load. Then, assess the maximum weight being handled. If it is less than the figure given in the box, the operation is within the guidelines.
• If the lifter’s hands enter more than one box during the operation, use the smallest weight. Use an in-between weight if the hands are close to a boundary between boxes.
• The guideline weights assume that the load is readily grasped with both hands and that the operation takes place in reasonable working conditions, with the lifter in a stable body position.

 

Twisting

Reduce the guideline weights if the handler twists to the side during the operation. As a rough guide, reduce them by 10% if the handler twists beyond 45°, and by 20% if the handler twists beyond 90°.

 

Frequent lifting and lowering

The guideline weights are for infrequent operations - up to about 30 operations per hour - where the pace of work is not forced, adequate pauses to rest or use different muscles are possible, and the load is not supported by the handler for any length of time. Reduce the weights if the operation is repeated more often. As a rough guide, reduce the weights by 30% if the operation is repeated once or twice per minute, by 50% if the operation is repeated five to eight times a minute, and by 80% where the operation is repeated more than 12 times a minute.

[ProDave]

So I cannot (as a man working on my own) pick up anything heavier than 10Kg off the floor.

 

If I stuck to that, my house would never get built, sorry not going to happen. We don't all have a helper on hand to assist. Welcome to the real world.

[vivienz]

Ah, the shangri-la world of health and safety.  Where were they when I had to shift 750kg of stainless steel wire off a pallet in the pouring rain at work last week?  I think the lightest reel of wire was 13kg, and I had to crawl around to stash them under the work benches - that blew any of the 'twisting' restrictions out of the water.   

[ToughButterCup]

1 hour ago, B52s said:

Pushing health and safety legislation firmly to one side...

[...]

 

In the spirit within which the post was intended, I hope, I had a careful look at the document to which your refer. Quite a few of us will, by now, be carrying niggles in various bits of our body.

 

Guidance is always welcome. Reminders, useful. Useful because it points to what it is reasonable to expect.

 

Here, in the context of self-building, it is a pointer to what we might reasonably expect of ourselves. I venture to suggest that our job is so challenging that if we were to worry about ourselves all that much, the job wouldn't even start, let alone get done.

 

@ProDave, I think the issue is how much we lift in relation to where on our body: thus 25kg seems to be the most we are advised to lift: say a bag of cement tucked on our hip..... , well we have two of those and most of us I bet would tuck one under each arm - 50kg. That's a fair bit. 

[ProDave]

I remember when cement came in 1 Cwt bags.....

[B52s]

4 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I remember when cement came in 1 Cwt bags.....

 

I believe "pressure" is being applied to plasterboard manufacturers to move to half sheet sizes, which again is sensible, but I understand this presents challenges in respect of modular timber framing, etc., ...but I'm sure it will happen in the fullness of time.

[Mr Punter]

11 minutes ago, B52s said:

 

I believe "pressure" is being applied to plasterboard manufacturers to move to half sheet sizes, which again is sensible, but I understand this presents challenges in respect of modular timber framing, etc., ...but I'm sure it will happen in the fullness of time.

Where we are the tackers are just finishing installing 1000 sheets of Soundshield plus on the walls @ 37kg a sheet.

[ToughButterCup]

23 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I remember when cement came in 1 Cwt bags.....

 

Yes, and I remember one lad carrying one under each arm: off a suitable height lorry bed. Offloading in the rain, I tried, and failed spectacularly.  I had wet trousers and wet boots on. That's when I learned about how cement burns. 

[B52s]

4 minutes ago, Mr Punter said:

Where we are the tackers are just finishing installing 1000 sheets of Soundshield plus on the walls @ 37kg a sheet.

 

Yeah, I have always been amazed to watch "good tackers" single handed fixing full sheets onto ceiling joists.

[Ferdinand]

That diagram does not seem to involve bending at the knees (?)

 

F

Edited May 30, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Nickfromwales]

I remember when I was 14 or 15, finishing Comp and going to my house which was gutted on a 100% grant ( remember those  ). Cement in 50kg bags getting delivered and me, about 8 stone wet, sitting them on my knees and shuffling up the drive at 1/4 walking pace to get them into the lean-to in the dry. 

After about 4 bags I couldn't move any more and just dropped one and left it there. 

I was also boarding ceilings on my own, 8x4's 3/8" onto the ceilings with 2 deadmans for company. Oh, and no screws back then, it was nails. Lots of nails. Lots of misses. Lots of flat digits. 

Child labour at its best. Oh, and for H&S, I won't mention my stepdad and I on the roof joined by a piece of blue nylon rope tied around each of our waists . 

If he fell off I'd have been chopped in half, and if I fell off he'd have had a broken back. 

How we laughed ?

[Pete]

When I joined the fire service everybody was within a few inches of one another. After equality kicked in, my last few years were spent putting up 4 man ladders with female f/f's next to me who where at least a foot smaller if not more and that is meant to be progress!! Womanual handling regs!!

[jack]

Good weightlifting coaches will tell you that injuries happen more often in real life than in the gym, even though the real-world weights that do the damage are typically much lower than will be lifted safely at the gym. It's partly a lack of attention, partly a lack of respect given that you're used to moving massively heavier things around without injury at the gym, and partly the fact that the real world doesn't always have knurled grips at a convenient position.  

 

As an example, I tweaked my back last year lifting a not particularly heavy bit of aluminium extrusion for our balconies. It was probably less than 15kg, but my back was already tired from having moved things around for the previous three hours, and I didn't think before twisting and lifting. At the time, my deadlift in the controlled environment of the gym was well over 100kg more than the weight that got me... 

 

Perhaps rather than treating these as numbers never to exceed, think of them as numbers to have a think about, and guidelines for where we're relatively strong, positionally. 

[Jeremy Harris]

Guidance is great, it informs and educates, and with luck may well be followed.  Sadly regulation is not so good, as there are just far too many situations where a job would never get done if the regulations were followed to the letter.  There's also a massive variation between one person and another in terms of what is safe to lift.  One chap I've used a fair bit to do a lot of the landscaping can lift 900 x 600 sandstone slabs all day without breaking sweat - I struggle to move half a dozen before I'm knackered!

 

I worked alone on a lot of stuff, and had no choice but to shift things like a 60kg shower tray, or the 70kg MVHR, and similar mass Sunamp PV, up to the first floor on my own.  I did devise ways to do this relatively safely, with a block and tackle for the MVHR, and slings to help shift the other stuff.  H&S&W didn't apply, as it was me working on our own house, but it's interesting that the obviously risky stuff, like lifting heavy stuff, hasn't been the cause of any minor injuries.  Those have come from seemingly safe looking jobs, where I didn't think through how to tackle them properly beforehand.  I ended up with a persistent wrist injury from moving planks of left over larch, for example.  None were very heavy, but the twisting motion when shifting the pile from one side of the drive to the other managed to cause an injury to a tendon that took months to heal properly.

[Barney12]

2 hours ago, ProDave said:

So I cannot (as a man working on my own) pick up anything heavier than 10Kg off the floor.

 

 

No. You are misreading the diagram. It means don't lift more than 10kg with your foot

[ToughButterCup]

1 hour ago, Barney12 said:

 

[...] It means don't lift more than 10kg with your foot

 

2 feet, ergo 20Kg.... No?

Similarly 15Kg with your head : 10 with your forehead, 5 with your nose

[Construction Channel]

I think you are all (with exceptions) being a bit harsh to B52. I should think he has gone to the trouble of starting a brand new thread about this to try and be helpful, by sharing something he had to use in his professional life. shame on you all......

 

that said I am going to steal this picture for work tomorrow and generally tap it whenever I need to lift anything  

if all the lifters are twisting more than 45 deg a bag of cement on the floor becomes a 5 man lift.... or 7 if it's more than 8" away  

[Onoff]

From age 16 at work I would regularly carry two 25kg (56lb) test weights often over quite some distance. I'm now 50, and probably only in the last two years have I learnt NOT TO! Now I just carry one at a time and use a trolley whenever I can.

 

 I've slipped my disc badly twice and spent a fortune in the chiropractor.

 

HEED THE WARNINGS!

 

Or don't and when it feels like someone's running a Stanley up the back of your calf, you have "leakage" issues downstairs, you actually cry when you sneeze and can't crap for a week because the signals aren't getting through.....don't come running to me!

 

(Happened to a "mate" of mine... )

[Crofter]

I'd echo what others have said about sheer weight not being the biggest factor. I installed a 240kg sliding triple glazed door entirely singlehandedly without incident, but took a lot of time over it. In contrast, doing the roof on my own left me walking like John Wayne for a few days because the awkward positions in which I had to work took their toll on various joints.

 

Whilst we may laugh at H&S advice, I think it is valuable to have some numbers available to inform decisions about what we consider acceptable loads. Without this, all we have to rely on is bravado, and that generally won't end well.

[TerryE]

For my sins, I did a spell in Royal Engineers in my youth, and one earning that I retained from officer training was the correct way to lift weights.  Very few people that I've seen in the building trade seem to have been taught this and break some basic rules and as Clive mentions end up with spine an spinal muscle / tendon / ligament damage as a result. 

 

Avoid using your back as a cantilever, especially for weights  over 10kg, so knees bent, arse in and back straight is best, and use the leg muscles in preference to the arm muscles to move the load. Lifting aids can make all of the difference, especially when working alone: levers, block and tackle, dolly cart, and I have a length of timber on some of my son's recycled skateboard wheels that I can also trundle heavy stuff around on.

 

 

[SteamyTea]

Back in 1991 we were building a new workshop inside our factor unit.  I was holding up one end of an small RSJ while standing in the window opening, probably 4 foot off the ground.  I started to feel unbalanced (still am) and decided to jump down while still holding the RSJ (which was not too heavy).

That night I slipped m disc in bed, took me 4 hours to crawl out of bed and down the stairs to the phone.

Got taken to hospital and they gave me pain killers that made the sky go pink and suspended reality.  All very strange.

Was the most painful thing I have had, and that includes my serious car accident that left me in hospital for weeks.  And that curious incident with the camera earlier this year.

 

I still have trouble now in my lower back, neck and shoulders 26 years on

[Onoff]

I started chucking steel around as a kid fitting crane / gantry rails and the only manual handling advice I think was "bend your knees". Tbh it was almost a point of pride to be lifting the heavy stuff. All our RSJs came in "6m" lengths, generally up to 203x102x23 was the biggest we'd fit. It stemmed from 10'/3m fixing centres. A beam would bolt down to two "holding down units" then overhang one by 450mm and be short the other end by the same. (We'd tee joint the bottom flanges and sometimes fish plate). If we were lucky the crane would drop them off around the site / roof. If not we would have to "distribute" them by hand. The last big job I did was 254x146x37kg UB.  We had the sense to design this in 3m lengths but still well over a 100kg a pop. Used a barrow on that where we could.

[daiking]

I've always understood these as guidance, not maximums but I shouldn't be designing kit or processes that exceed them without very good reason. 

 

Something I read recently in a toolbox talk type LFE was that guys in their 50s are 4 times more likely to have an accident than those in their 20s and 30s. The particular chap who was the focus of the TBT was a 50-something American chippie who fell down a lift shaft. 

[Jeremy Harris]

I'd agree with older people being more at risk.  I think the main reason is just complacence, as we get older and gain experience we probably tend to focus more on getting the job done, rather than on how to do it safely.  When you've been up and down ladders hundreds of times in your life you're probably less likely to be focussed on the bit you've done many times, i.e. putting up the ladder properly, and more likely to be focussed on whatever it is you have to do when you're up there.

 

I remember years ago seeing some statistics of aircraft accidents that someone had compiled, that plotted out experience versus accident rate.  Newly trained pilots tended to have minor incidents, through lack of experience.  Then the accident rate dropped for a few years, probably as a consequence of experience gained.  After a few more years the accident rate increased again, as complacency set in.  IIRC, the person that compiled the data had accounted for age, and the pattern was much the same no matter what age the pilot was first granted a licence.

 

I strongly suspect the same is true for accidents at work, too.  I don't think we ever did any detailed analysis, but my recollection is that the few major workplace accidents I knew of were all older people, with many years experience.

[B52s]

On 01/06/2017 at 08:14, JSHarris said:

I'd agree with older people being more at risk.  I think the main reason is just complacence, as we get older and gain experience we probably tend to focus more on getting the job done, rather than on how to do it safely.  When you've been up and down ladders hundreds of times in your life you're probably less likely to be focussed on the bit you've done many times, i.e. putting up the ladder properly, and more likely to be focussed on whatever it is you have to do when you're up there.

 

I remember years ago seeing some statistics of aircraft accidents that someone had compiled, that plotted out experience versus accident rate.  Newly trained pilots tended to have minor incidents, through lack of experience.  Then the accident rate dropped for a few years, probably as a consequence of experience gained.  After a few more years the accident rate increased again, as complacency set in.  IIRC, the person that compiled the data had accounted for age, and the pattern was much the same no matter what age the pilot was first granted a licence.

 

I strongly suspect the same is true for accidents at work, too.  I don't think we ever did any detailed analysis, but my recollection is that the few major workplace accidents I knew of were all older people, with many years experience.

 

Just read an interesting article on US workforce fatalities. To para-quote; "The report also showed that 35% of all workers killed in 2015 were aged 55 or older. The largest federation of trade unions in the US said that over-65s were 2.5 times more likely to die at work than their colleagues".

Edited June 2, 2017 by B52s