When you plan to have ladders to help you with several things, you can opt to various kinds of ladders. The most popular ones are aluminum. They very handy and useful especially they come in various shapes and sizes. Aluminum ladders can’t be affected moisture and don’t need protective finish that needs periodic maintenance.
However, there are numerous ladders which are suitable for daily repairing. One of them is step ladders. Easily folded for storage, these are suitable for jobs in and around your house. These are shorter and when opened they have an ‘A-shaped’ design. The steps of these are wider and hence it is much safer and comfortable to use.
If it’s attached permanently to a structure—can be a building or a piece of equipment—it is called a ‘Fixed Ladder’. When the length exceeds certain height, it will be equipped with cages or rest platforms or ladder landings for safety. If you want to work at more than one height, try extension ladder. These have at least two to three different extensions. Most of them have a sliding mechanism for the extensions. They are very versatile. The big advantage of this is that you can extend them and adjust the length according to the job you are doing.
To make it easy for you working on roof, there is a roof ladder. This is basically an extension ladder with some added security built in. A normal extension ladder might lean against a wall or a tree and hence its ends may be squared off a bit. On the other hand these extend a few feet past the roof. These usually have hand grips or special hooks on their top ends for additional security.
There is also telescopic ladder in which each of its level slides down to stack on the level below. They are quite handy for work in and around the house. These ones basically collapse on itself and hence are quite compact and portable. Most of these can be extended to different heights thus making it quite versatile.