14:44 Sep 25, 2006 

Now there's an offer, Marc! ;-) I used to be H&S rep, and responsible for student safety...

14:12 Sep 25, 2006 

with ladder knowledge like that Tony, when are you coming round to do my upstairs windows?

13:58 Sep 25, 2006 

... a good rule-of-thumb method for achieving the correct angle

13:57 Sep 25, 2006 

It's of course refrring to the right-angle triangle formed by the ladder as the hypoteneuse, the ground and the wall, where the length of the 'ground' (= base) side needs to be 1 unit and the 'wall' (= height) needs to be 4 units, ...

13:55 Sep 25, 2006 

I don't know if that's your typo or in the original, but it should of course read 75° — it's referring to the safe angle at which to set a ladder (often quoted as 72°, but this is close enough!)