I don't know about anyone else, but using an extension ladder to climb up on a roof has always made me nervous. A while back I knew I was going to have to be climbing up on one or more of the building roofs we have here. One day I stumbled on a product that attaches to the top of the ladder and allows you to just walk on up the ladder onto the roof without having to swing about the top of the ladder for the first step onto the roof. Coming down made me even more nervous from the looks of the process, having to swing over onto the ladder while facing the edge of the roof backwards.
Anyway, yesterday I had to climb up onto the roof of the house to check out an area that was leaking onto our porch. We have had a few companies come out to look things over, and also two of them gave us estimates for a new roof. We have a metal roof, and honestly the quotes to replace it were quite shocking.
So I decided to go on up on the roof to look things over for myself. I knew I had rusting based on what I saw from some drone flyovers I have done, but couldn't get real close to the actual problem area because of those low hanging oak tree branches. I had been very reluctant to climb up there because I didn't know if the roof over the side porch would hold my weight until two of the guys who came out here for estimates were BOTH standing on that roof without an issue. The roof to the house is kind of steep, and I REALLY didn't want to stand on that if I could help it. The roof over the porch is nearly flat, which honestly contributed to the problem by allowing leaves to be held up there a lot longer than was healthy for the roof. But anyway, what I had hoped was just staining on the metal from the leaves from the live oak tree over hanging the porch, just was not the case. Rust, and quite a bit of it. I know I should have gotten the leaves off a whole lot more frequently than I did, and them laying up there and getting wet during the rainstorms really played a number on the metal. Some good sized holes and quite a lot of small holes too. And of course, the metal remaining is quite thin. So yeah, looks like a new roof in our future. No way around that. I temporarily patched up the roof as best I could with caulk and duct tape, so just a matter of hoping that works till we can get scheduled for the actual replacement.
Anyway, about the ladder extension thing. Worth it's weight in steamed blue crabs to me. Made getting on and off the roof very easy and worry free. Heck, I think I would even feel comfortable climbing up onto the actual house roof using that thing.