The short length of this blog is a direct result of the topic. Micki and I spent Saturday building with Atlanta Habitat for Humanity. We worked on a crew constructing one of five Habitat for Humanity homes at the annual Clark Howard Build.

Consumer guru/radio-TV-Web personality/newspaper columnist (and really nice guy), Clark Howard, sponsored these homes — the 52^nd through 55^th Habitat for Humanity homes he has sponsored over the years.

While the work our crew did was framing, two of the adjacent homes were being decked and dried in. These homes are simple enough in design that (with some professional guidance) volunteers can nail on the shingles. With OSHA standards calling for full fall protection on such projects, how do you put six to eight volunteers on each side of a small roof? Atlanta Habitat just Hugs them.

After the trusses are set and secured, the Hugs fall prevention system is installed and kept in place during all decking and roofing operations. This is the type of system that I believe forms the most practical solution to fall protection on many new-construction and retrofit roofing projects.

A guardrail system such as this is simple, fast, cost efficient, and since it is a passive system it does not require a high level of training for the roofers it is designed to protect. Of course it must be installed, inspected and tested by a competent person, but not the entire crew. Learn more about this particular system (there are many others) online at www.hugsafety.com.    

So why is this blog so short, and what does this have to do with the Habitat project? The sore muscles that followed a Saturday of framing wiped out most planned activities on Sunday, and a nap took up much of the writing time. But no regrets since it was a good day of building and we were able to check out this unique solution to a vexing problem facing the roofing industry.