Professional Builder has teamed up with Festool to support the health of tradespeople. In this instalment, Festool discusses the importance of tradespeople properly protecting their muscles and joints.
Speak to any tradesperson who’s just completed a full day’s work and they’ll tell you; it’s a physically demanding job. Working in the trade takes a toll on your whole body, with muscles and joints suffering the most from the strain of repetitive daily tasks. So, it’s no surprise that a high number of construction workers suffer from some form of muscle or joint pain. Long term, muscle and joint conditions can become very troublesome in later life, impeding people trying to lead active, healthy lives.
The industry has deemed muscle and joint pain as an unfortunate inevitability. Whilst most building tasks are strenuous and can’t be completed without physical exertion, improvements to methods and creating healthier ways to work needs to be addressed. In practice, this means identifying more innovative solutions and ensuring that tradespeople have access to them.
At Festool, we believe the answer lies in technology and work to include innovative solutions within our products to help tradespeople in the goal to working healthier. A great example is our ‘Carrying Harness TG-LHS 225’, which can be used to support our Planex 225 EQ Long-Reach Sanders. The ergonomic design of the harness enables continual working on sanding ceilings by spreading the weight of the long reach sander across several pressure points.
The ergonomics of tools are vital, at Festool our products are designed to make work as comfortable as possible. The ETSC 125 eccentric sander weighs just 1.4k (including the battery) and has been designed with perfectly balanced weight distribution and low height. This contributes to make sanding overhead as effortless as possible. Other solutions such as the ErgoFix height adjustment system, allows you to adapt the height of the Festool Mixers ensuring that you aren’t stooped over while mixing. This helps prevent the back pain that usually occurs when mixing.
Muscle and joint pain might be invisible, but that doesn’t mean it should go unnoticed by those in the construction sector. For tradespeople suffering from the condition, it’s a problem that causes discomfort on a day-to-day basis. Many joint and muscle conditions are easier to prevent than they are to correct, so it’s important to find preventative strategies that reduce the onset of problems.
