"I am very grateful for this review. Angie's List worked well for us all. I do important work with excellence and have always relied on reviews from my customers as my only form of "advertising." I have never advertised otherwise. I am readily found by word search anywhere on Earth, "attic ladder portland oregon". Members in metro Portland find me a bit easier at Angie's List, with the important reports of customer experience. Finding me anywhere by simple search, see that I volunteer a large internet presence, describing what I do. In all such contractor quest, what I have done for this customer, safer attic access, is not seen for its importance. At Angie's List, despite much asking, a suitable Category has not been offered. What is attic access? "Doors" might work, but there especially, I am lost in a sea of competitors who could not serve you. Again, I'm glad I was found. This customer has a powerful attic fan where the thermostat was set at 70F, and it was running, and running the cool morning I arrived. Beating itself up with fan imbalance, and starting to have motor noise. We raised the setting to 90F, and the commotion stopped, perhaps never to start again. We can't get the fan to start now, lowering the thermostat. We agreed to put solution off to next Summer, where I offer to have the motor replaced, with fan balancing. This, though I believe a powered attic fan is generally a bad idea. Have one only if it pulls air from all around the attic floor through ample low roof vents or soffit vents. In this home there are only high roof vents that pull air through-roof in a wasteful loop, even if the attic ladder is down The nearby static roof high vents are populated with wasp nets that are unusual. Such nests rely on cool air being drawn into an attic, not deathly-hot air being exhausted. Real life is complicated, but fun eyes-open. The safety pole may be understood by looking it up with this search; " "safety pole" attic access door" . Playing with the search, I find there are many safety poles with similar purpose. At my safety pole, at the first (lowest) hand grip, I like to have a light switch. Anything that can avoid a fall, imagined, to me becomes requisite. I hope I am called back here, and may move the light switch. There is further adventure to be had with the roof fan. Perhaps the thermostat is defective."

"With an additional 1/16" grab of the latch plate, I am confident this won't happen again. The sudden drop of the untenting ladder was arrested by some empty cardboard boxes mainly. Two screws attaching the LH limit arm to the door pulled out violently, I believe in two-part epoxy, PC-7, so pressed that in with a thin stainless steel plate drilled to match and clamped strongly to the door employing a spare limit arm end bracket. I let the epoxy cure 24 hrs before reassembling the door. So much good is possible when working with a well-engineered European ladder having intelligent very strong hardware. When ever will USA manufacturers stop using tinny hardware? I so badly miss Karel Konecny's Calvert USA, eastshore Chesapeake Bay, where ladders soon after this Calvert of Czech Republic, were built best-in-USA. We didn't buy enough of them for the business to survive. Karel's best innovation was use of best-quality birch plywood instead of ordinary wood that sometimes splits."

"As a volunteer-bidder, I have no obligation to a home owner. Where I invest six to eight hours here and in most bid efforts, I am instead owed patience and kindness. This home is a child-care facility occupied at all workman hours by thirty quite-wonderful four and five year olds. During half of my 45-minute visit, children were at risk, playing at and upon a ladder to a poor attic access over the living room, their space. The work to be accomplished in the attic would be impossible, and the home owner should have known this. I dutifully wrote a complex bid, citing a provided album of 45 photos. I could see that the home owner could not afford the work needed, that he had been betrayed by realtors, bankers, perhaps a home inspector, and by society at-large. In the home only three months, he had rushed to create the supporting business. Now in October, he was thinking of economies in Winter. I expressed my feeling of pain in this, blaming ugly processes in USA to pass weatherization problems on to new owners, then too poor in maximized mortgages, to do the fixing. Pain was mainly over decrepit steel round-ducts in the crawl space and attic that quite-evidently were leaking half of the furnace heat, and we could not discuss the very large, overwhelming total needs. I was unable and unwilling to do more for this home owner. I maximized bid amounts for attic access and insulation, not offering any compromises. I volunteered a rebid, only fixing a math error. At top of bid was a new attic ladder in a hallway, which might keep children out of harm’s way. Just might, for the hallway could not accommodate my tools and materials. The home owner did respond, much to my surprise, suggesting compromise to only control heat losses, via the awful and distant hole over bthe living room. No new ladder. Maybe later. No understanding of my dilemma. It was not my job to further discuss reality with the home owner. I did not argue. I did not criticize. I did not respond to demand of compromise. Where most home owners treat contractor bidding as play, and never even respond to my large bid effort, I feel entitled to no-bid by silence. Angie’s List is again a villain, acting as a hammer. A home-owner member is corrupted with the power to demand the impossible, the illegal and the dangerous, or else."

"I think people are supposed to be nice to each other. My bid was a gift, competed at the soonest possible arrangement with a renter. I had no obligation to offer any work, and certainly none that would retain very dangerous conditions intended to be passed on to an unsuspecting new owner, where the home is to be sold. The renter knew, where a heavy new garage door would not operate correctly from the inadequate supports, 2x6 at 48" spacing and carrying storage loads brought up via an extension ladder tied onto a long-ago broken drop-down ladder. I only stood on the extension ladder, so did not feel the springiness in the overloaded framing. The day after the bid visit, and with more time top consider what I had seen, I gained resolve, and reported the dangerous condition to the home owner, suggesting that framing could be added to bring safety, but not offering to do the work. I was told that the only expense would be the ladder replacement. It took another hour to absorb my dilemma, and to respond with the firm no-bid. Brusqueness in my response is the consequence of seeing again and again that in the present condition of greed in the housing market, problems being passed on to new owners are not caught by inspectors. Sellers are coached by realtors, to not care about the buyer. Yet sales occur at extremely high prices, above those in 2008. Naive new home owners with these onerous mortgages, in decrepit homes soon to be underwater, are in a really hard place. The best I can do is to not have any role in deceitful sales."

"Wow! This describes me, so well."