Walking on slate roofs?

In my area there are alot of old houses with the original slate roofs. Occasionally there will be a porch roof in front of one of the upstairs windows. The windows on these houses are usually the original cut ups with storms. How safe is it (for me and the roof) to get on the slate roof? Any suggestions?

ive always been told never to walk on a slate roof, dangerous for someone to be on and could damage the slate.

once slate has a sprinkling of rain on it its slippy as hell. if its green its slippy even when its dry . ive walked a few but Usually regret doing it. if i feel my feet losing grip i quickly kneel down and let my knees take a grip. trousers with a high cotton content grip well but polyester/synthetic has no grip

if its hot and sunny ive also discovered it makes slate slippy similar to a polished floor !

Are you able to pole it? I would not walk on them. 1 you could fall hurt yourself and 2 damage the roof or both. I would try to find some other way. Not sure without seeing it. Got a pic?

Thanks

K & T Window Cleaning
614-915-5400

We recently did a house with a new slate roof and the homeowner and roofing contractor both told us to keep off of it. We needed to walk it to install Rain Flow so we lost the sale. The roofing contractor said that it was super easy to break and they use some kind of sandbag system when they have to work on it to make a repair. Also the slate was $1000 a square, so a $100,000 roof. Of course it’s the home of a famous actress and supermodel, so that figures, right? Bottom line: stay off it.

I did the CCU on this house. The roof was over 300K and I had to rent a boom lift to clean the dormers…no one was allowed on the roof



A couple more pics of this house…





I’ve heard that korkers make it safer, but like the others said you should try to stay off it. We don’t really have those here in San Antonio

We regularly do one of James Camerons homes which has a slate roof. The caretaker handed me a pair of shoes glued to pieces of plywood , which were then glued to foam padding about 3 inches thick. The plywood and foam were both cut about 2 ft by 2ft in an octagon shape.

Worked great! Bad for the knees if you try and squat in them though.

The caretaker handed me a pair of shoes glued to pieces of plywood , which were then glued to foam padding about 3 inches thick. The plywood and foam were both cut about 2 ft by 2ft in an octagon shape.

I almost spit out my coffee reading this! That is so strange and so funny, but it makes sense. What if the shoes don’t fit you?

The shoes were a little small but just big enough. Pretty genius.