Through the winter a large part of our work at Highlife Rope Access is maintenance and small scale repairs on churches all over Wales and the Northwest of England. Rope access is highly suited to this task, given that we can access all high level areas on a church quickly, providing a suitable solution to issues that are often pushed aside until there is the budget to perform large scale restorations. Whether this means emptying clerestory gutters, replacing hard to reach slipped slates, or investigating leaks, we have a well established set of methods for getting to problem areas, and can generally repair most small issues on any given church within a single visit of a day or two. If we do find any larger scale issues within that visit we can report on them and arrange a return visit if this is appropriate, the important thing being that we have found the issues. Often churches do not know about the possibility of using rope access for such tasks, and small issues are left undiscovered until they cause major issues, often requiring a significant outlay of cash to repair what might have just started as a minor and fairly insignificant leak.
Recently we were called in to a church in Greater Manchester to provide a general inspection of the high level areas. We were there for a day, and as well as doing a tactile inspection of the tower, repairing a broken slate, and removing some small spalled stones from the window tracery on the aisles, we discovered an enormous loose block sitting on top of a pinnacle. This pinnacle was located above a busy pathway on the side of the graveyard, and could easily have been blown off by a heavy gust of wind. Had rope access not been an option, this could have sat undiscovered for a long time. Fortunately, rope access is a quick, and therefore cost effective option for having a good look around high level areas, and this meant that a potentially killer issue was discovered and removed before someone got hurt.
