How-To Build a Custom Safety Climb Assembly

AF Towers’ Safety Climb Assemblies offer the industry’s premier vertical lifeline system for towers, poles and other permanent structures to maximize safety, climbing mobility and productivity.

Whether your structure falls into the ladder mount, pole mount or leg mount category or your structure requires a custom design, each structure requires a specific style of safety climb assembly built for longevity.

To help educate our customers on the easiest and most efficient way to select components for a safety climb system, we have laid out this informative guide to help you through the process.

GAINING INFORMATION

Before starting the design of your safety climb assembly, make sure to have the existing structure details – such as tower type, height and leg member sizes. Having this information will help to guide your selections throughout the entire process.

SELECTING THE WIRE ROPE

The first step in designing a safety climb system is to select the wire rope finish. Our wire rope comes in stainless steel and galvanized finishes.

Pro tip: many of the safety climb systems offered on our safetyclimb.com website are supplied to replace rusted galvanized wire rope in the field. To avoid corrosion, stainless steel wire rope is the best choice. Or for a more cost effective solution, galvanized is the best.

Wire rope should be calculated for the required length of your structure. If the length of your structure is in doubt, we recommend rounding up to the next 10’ increment.

CHOOSING THE CORRECT BRACKETS

For the cable to run the length of your structure, you’ll require different brackets – head, intermediate and bottom – to be placed along the structure as a guide.

Head Bracket

Starting at the top of the structure, the head bracket and head bracket attachment should be selected first. In most cases, the energy absorber connector plate has 4” hole spacings for a universal fit on existing welded brackets on monopoles – thus eliminating the need for an attachment bracket.

For leg mount kits, the round climb leg attachment bracket – available in VB0, VB1 and VB2 sizes for larger diameter poles – attaches to the same head bracket as the monopole kit.

Finally, if you require a head bracket for a ladder mount structure then you'll require a square tube attachment bracket. The important thing to remember about the ladder mount option is that it requires three points of contact. 

Additional details on the attachment brackets can be found in the components section of the Safety Climb section.

Intermediate Bracket

Intermediate brackets are available in a few different options – all with the ability to attached to welded tabs along the towers structure. Quantity will default to 25’ spacing and can be modified or allow for multiple options to be selected.

Bottom Bracket 

The standard bottom tensioner bracket has 4” hole spacing for a universal fit on many towers. If your structure does not have an existing bracket suitable for this, select a bottom attachment bracket that is compatible with your bottom bracket instead. It is good to note the round leg attachment bracket is engineered to be used interchangeably at both the top and bottom of the safety climb system.

The bottom bracket of a ladder mount structure is also a square tube bracket with U-bolt attachments with square U-bolt backing plate. 

ADDITIONAL COMPONENTS

If your structure requires a custom piece our range of individual components can be swapped in for a current piece to complete your assembly.

If an individual piece does not suit your structure, our custom fabrication and manufacturing services can produce the piece you need.

Require More Information

If questions remain or you want to become more familiar with the safety climb systems offered through AFT Safetyclimb.com, feel free to contact our tower experts at AF Tower by calling 888.859.6060 or via email.