The high-pressure water spray proves a success after minute one. The wood deck, laid in 2000 and cleaned over the years by nothing but the weather, reveals itself in pale brown strips merging together as the dead algal murk is swept away.
The difference is remarkable after only a few sweeps of the nozzle and I am seized with the need to clean. I blast away the green-stained dirt from the fence posts. Scour the wood upstand around the deck. Scatter green slate chippings from their beds and thrash the dry leaves of a Hosta before stopping to consider.
Calmer, I decide to continue with a promise to eradicate the weeds from every inch of my concrete paving joints. I shall re-grout for England. I am Pressure Man. A chemical-free Lord of Hygiene. The modern deluge falling on my unclean world. Man and Power Tool is a fearsome combination. It is modern medieval weaponry, all physical force but with less effort and no bloodshed.
I calm a little more as I remember my entry into family power tool folklore as the man who managed to inflict a long transverse cut on his right forearm with a hedge trimmer, whilst holding it properly with two hands. It was easy, but I don’t seem able to explain how. I am intrinsically careless, a bit clumsy and definitely non-safe by default. Without realising it I depend on good fortune but am a great learner after the event, using a lifetime of research for my impending doctorate in hindsight.
Not the best skill and mind set for a Health and Safety Professional. The P-word was appended by practitioners in the seventies, when “public health” (old-fashioned, a bit too associated with sanitation) morphed to “environmental health” (modern, trendy, eclectic, clean) on local government reorganisation in 1974. The same year saw the birth of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act and the modernisation of health and safety law, to be enforced by the newly professionalised corps of local government Environmental Health Officers and the higher-status, grim-faced, government-controlled Factory Inspectors. It is from these two groups that a small core of health and safety specialists evolved to become one of the nation’s service industry success stories . . . despite its unlikely provenance.
After ten minutes I am spattered with grit and my front is soaked from water recoil and spray mist, but I do not care. The day is warm and I am outdoorsie wet, one of my favourite states. The grit irritates a bit so I consider washing my sandaled feet. Sense prevails so I experiment on fingertips. After retrieving them from a neighbour’s garden I realise that “high pressure” is an apt description and I resolve to take more care. No impromptu washing down of my torso after I finish. I consider my outfit, attitude and working practice and decide, as an ex-H&S Pro that I should compare these with what most good employers – including my last one – would have their pressure-washing staff doing.
Following a suitable and sufficient risk assessment . . . Nobody, even my closest family and friends, can go close to appreciating how I shudder at these words. They contain a world of meaning and when combined with other general terms from the H&S lexicon (including, “adequate”, “reasonable” and the chief horror: “reasonably practicable”) into an instructive or advisory sentence the only people jumping for joy at the resultant hedging of meaning are the interpreters of the jargon.
Anyway, following a suitable and sufficient risk assessment the hierarchy of risk controls will be applied, as follows:
Option 1.
Do not do the work! No activity = no risk = Health and Safety Heaven.
Option 2.
Get some poor sap of a contractor to do the work instead. This is unfair and a cheap shot, as employers have a similar duty of care to third parties as they do their own people. In short, they must make sure that other employers’ employees and the self-employed enjoy the same levels of protection as their own.
It has to be said that many poor contractors promise H&S Heaven at the lowest bid, don’t always comply with their contractual vows and those commissioning the work don’t or can’t properly police it. However, if done fairly and properly, it is in many ways easier to have somebody else worry about the details.
Option 3.
This is where is gets complicated. (Yes, so far it is simplicity itself). Option three, entitled “Reduce the Risk”, has a sub-hierarchy typically running to five stages starting with a level of separation and protection between users and used that could not in theory be breached under any conceivable, and at least one fanciful, circumstance from natural disaster to a grunt having a bad day.
I won’t list these sub-options, but they are progressively less safe as we drop down the list and pass from “hardware” (fences and gates and barriers and things) to “software” (people knowing what to do and always doing it right) and finally to the one labelled THE LAST RESORT.
This is personal protective clothing (PPE in the jargon). The health and safety irony is a system designed to operate from the principal of prevention and risk management at source is so often by-passed straight to PPE. Or is that TLR?
Anyway, to shortcut this homily back to my own situation, I have considered and dismissed Options 1. and 2. as I want the work doing and I’m not paying someone else to do it. Option 3.
I have to hold the pressure lance so can’t hide behind a wall and the software stuff I take pretty much for granted – Mick showed me how to use the washer (thus I am trained in its use) and I trust him that the man he got it from (his father-in-law) would not give him equipment that was mechanically or electrically unsafe.
My last – and many other – employers would have thrown a seizure at the idea of such an informal arrangement. Equipment hired in must be accompanied by full history, including evidence that it was electrically tested before arrival at the premises and has a full service record in accordance with the manufacturer’s recommendations.
I know the TLR/PPE standard for this sort of kit. First, I must wear overalls to protect my own clothes and keep light soiling and wetting away from me and my possessions. A waterproof apron and/or overtrousers might be needed if the risk assessment shows that the overalls may become wet.
Wellington boots, with slip-resistant soles and a safety toecap protect the feet. On the hands go water-resistant gloves capable of retaining the pressure lance in a firm hold. A hard hat is not needed – unless work is in an area with low headroom – but face protection against flying debris and water spray (a Perspex shield covering eyes and face is normal) and ear protectors against the noise finish off the outfit.
A droplet-proof face mask should also be worn to restrict the inhalation of Leptospira (the source is rat urine, said to be ubiquitous) and Legionella bacteria (also ubiquitous). An additional safeguard against Legionella is to ensure the spray head is descaled and disinfected before use.
I wore a tee-shirt, shorts and sandals. After a while I put on the safety wellies issued to me by an employer in 1987. I knew they would come in useful one day. I tried the pressure spray on them (you knew I would, didn’t you?) and felt barely a thing, but I think the boots leak a bit now.
Two hours of light-to moderate, wet and noisy graft with a piece of macho kit whilst dressed for the beach (except the wellies) leaves the deck clean and me happy, looking thoughtfully at my little paved paths. A quick blast and dull, blotched grey becomes the silver grey of the original Portland Cement concrete. Tomorrow, I think. I’ve had enough excitement for one day, but I won’t stop after the above swipe at ex-profession before giving the necessary evidence for Health and Safety.
Consider the above activity, but with a few significant differences.
It is not a DIY job of mine, it is a job-of-work for an employee of a small company just about holding its own in the recession and desperate for work. Dirty jobs involving physical effort, little skill and the wearing of much PPE tend to be done by the workers with the least influence on what they do.
They can’t delegate, wait until the weather’s fine, get better equipment or even ask for help. They just get it done asap, take the minimum wage and on to the next job. Such a worker won’t do the one job just for himself or a friend or a family member, but may have to do four such jobs in a working day in all conditions for people who think he is a lesser life form.
If I were that worker, I think I would hate to be wet all day – especially in cold weather – wouldn’t want to spoil my own clothes or buy my own wellies, gloves and such. I might even wonder if my hearing could be affected if I do this sort of job for long, or what might happen if I hurt myself when working alone out of sight and earshot of everyone. I would probably feel resentment at the way I was treated and this may be compounded by my being a graduate with the £30K of student debt Tony Blair urged me to take on as a great investment in my future.
The good news for now is on c.£12,500 a year I am below the pay back threshold and if my life is truly, abysmally shit from now on the repayments of the original stake plus a similar amount in accrued interest, will be waived when I retire at the projected age of 75.
Is that fair? Is it even reasonable? No to both, I suggest. Is it also fair for the lad’s employer to win contracts against less-competitive employers who kit out their people properly and look after their welfare at the cost of a higher quote? No again.
But alas, it is how it is.
