GB 7059-2007Safety requirements for portable wood ladders (English PDF)

1 Scope

This standard specifies the terms and definitions, the classification, the requirements, the test methods, the inspection rules and the marking for portable wooden ladders.

It applies to the portable wooden ladders used at work and in the home.

Why the material clause comes first

Wood is not a controlled material the way steel is. Its strength depends on the species, on the direction of the grain, on the knots and on the moisture content, and two ladders that look identical can be far apart in what they will carry. The safety of a wooden ladder is therefore decided before it is assembled.

The requirements accordingly begin with the species that may be used, the moisture content, the slope of grain, and the knots, splits and other defects permitted in a stile and in a rung, held to limits far tighter than those of ordinary sawn timber.

Geometry, hardware and testing

On top of the material are set the dimensions and the geometry - the width, the rung spacing, the angle of a stepladder and the limits on length - the joints between rung and stile, the metal hardware, the spreaders and locking devices that stop a stepladder opening under load, and the feet and their slip resistance.

The test clause is the substance of the document: the static load tests on the ladder as a whole and on the individual rung, the deflection under load, the twisting and racking tests, the stability of a stepladder, the durability of the joints and the slip resistance of the feet, each with its loads, its supports and its acceptance criteria. Clause 7 gives the inspection rules and clause 8 the marking the user has to be able to read on the ladder itself.

About this edition

GB 7059-2007 is the current edition. It was issued on 26 June 2007 and has been in force since 1 February 2008, replacing GB 7059.1-1986.

GB 7059.1-1986 has been superseded: a specification that still cites it is citing a withdrawn edition.

The interval between issue and effect is the transition period. It exists so that producers, laboratories and buyers can requalify products, revise procedures and use up documentation before the new text becomes the one that applies. The date on this page is the official one from the record of the Standardization Administration.

Classification and status

GB 7059-2007 is classified under ICS 13.100. ICS is the International Classification for Standards, the same scheme used by ISO and by the national bodies of most countries, which is what allows a Chinese standard to be placed beside its foreign counterparts on subject rather than on number.

Its Chinese Standard Classification code is CCS C 68. CCS is the domestic scheme, a letter for the sector and two digits for the subject within it, and it is the code by which the standard is filed and searched in China.

The GB prefix marks a mandatory national standard. Compliance is required by law within China: it applies to what is made, sold or imported there, and an inspection body will judge a product against it whether or not a contract names it.

How a Chinese national standard is set out

Chinese national standards are drafted to the rules of GB/T 1.1, which fixes the order in which a standard is set out. The document opens with a foreword recording the issuing bodies, the relationship to any previous edition and the technical committee responsible for it. Clause 1 is the scope. Clause 2 lists the normative references — the other standards that have to be applied together with this one, and without which its requirements cannot be met. Clause 3 gives the terms and definitions. The technical clauses follow: the requirements themselves, the test or measurement methods by which conformity is established, the inspection rules that say how a lot is sampled and judged, and, for a product standard, the provisions on marking, packaging, transport and storage. Annexes, normative or informative, come last.

GB 7059-2007 runs to 15 pages in the English translation. What is delivered is the complete document in that order: every clause, every table, every figure and every annex of the Chinese original, with the same numbering, so that a reference to a clause number in a contract or a test report points to the same place in both languages.

About this English translation

The English edition of GB 7059-2007 is a full translation of the official Chinese text, not a summary, an abstract or a machine rendering left unchecked. Clause and subclause numbers, table and figure numbers and annex letters are those of the original, because they are what a specification, a purchase order or a test report cites.

Technical terms are translated against the vocabulary standards of the same field, so that a term used in GB 7059-2007 reads the same way as in the other Chinese standards it is used beside. Where a term has an established English form in an ISO or IEC document on the same subject, that form is used; where China's term has no foreign counterpart, it is translated literally and the Chinese is kept alongside it rather than replaced by an approximation.

Quantities, units and symbols are carried over unchanged. Chinese standards use SI, so a value in the translation is the value in the original document, not a conversion, and a limit read from the English text is the limit that will be applied by a Chinese inspection body reading the Chinese one.

This page is compiled from the official publication record: the standard number and both titles, the issuing bodies, the dates of issue and effect, the edition it replaces, the ICS and CCS classification. The requirements, limits, tables and test conditions are in the document itself.