 Little Giant ladders may be a slight contradiction in terms but Roger Bisby proves them to be very aptly named.
I am not a great fan of ladders that claim to do everything. They are the sort of thing you might see on a shopping channel – if you are brain dead enough to be watching in the first place. They may work well enough in the studio, but once they have knocked around a bit and the catches corrode or get filled with paint you find yourself fighting the beast and there is always the feeling that you might lose a finger or two. There must be thousands of those old tubular steel death traps rotting away in the garages all over the country.
So the Little Giant had some work to do if it was to win me over, not least because ‘Little Giant’ is the sort of contradiction in terms that triggers the grumpy old man in me. How can it be both little and a giant? Make up your mind.
That said, I knew immediately when I took this ladder out of the box that it was a cut above the usual DIY quality. The word ‘Pro’ might have given me a clue because ‘Trade’ ladders are tested to a much more stringent limit. The weight alone tells you that you are dealing with something a lot more substantial and the locking catches are engineered for a war zone. The slide-out sections on each leg are released by pulling out a pair of large spring loaded plated handles on either side. This is such a welcome change from fiddly little buttons that go rusty in no time and often fail to engage. You can drop the inner legs down unequally to use the ladder on a slope or stairway, or you can drop them equally to use the ladder as a pair of steps.
If you want to use the ladder in the fully extended mode you release the top locks and open it out. The strong springs will snap into place as they find the holes and that is the ladder well and truly locked. The wheels seem like a bit of overkill on a ladder of this length because you can place it rather than run it up the wall. They are however made of some nice grippy synthetic rubber that resists sideways slip and combined with the spread on the top of the stiles they are a lot more stable than most ladders.
So having played around on these heavy-duty aluminium ladders I have to admit that, for multi purpose ladders, they have a lot going for them. If you need a pair of steps that will also serve as a ladder to get you up to first floor window height then these are well worth a look. And yes O.K. I begrudgingly admit that Little Giant is not such a bad name when you see how they fold up to go in the back of a van or even the boot of a car, but they aren’t enough of a giant to get you up to gutter height, so Giant is a relative term. For the maintenance man or plumber who only needs to reach to the height of a flue terminal these are ideal.
For further information on Little Giant see:
www.little-giant.co.uk
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