Last Updated on October 6, 2026 by Umar Farooq
The best extension ladder for gutter cleaning is one whose maker publishes a maximum extended length, because the number on the box is about three feet longer than the ladder will ever stand up — and across twenty-two listings at the serious end of this category, not one of them publishes that figure.
Here is the shape of the problem. A ladder has four different lengths and the listing tells you one of them. There is the total length, which is both sections laid end to end on the floor. There is the maximum extended length, which is shorter, because the two sections have to overlap. There is the working length, which is the distance along the ladder from its foot to wherever the top is leaning. And there is the height your feet actually reach, which is lower again, because you are not allowed to stand on the top of it.
Only the first of those appears in a title. Nine searches’ worth of listings later, I can tell you how often the other three appear, which is the audit this page exists to do. A live article on this site already works out that a twenty-foot eave needs *”roughly twenty-three feet of working length”* — see roof cleaning equipment for how that figure is built. What nobody has done is go and check whether any ladder for sale tells you how much working length it has.
Twenty-Four Feet of Ladder Is Sixteen and a Half Feet of Standing
Three separate parties take a bite out of that twenty-four, and all three bites are published. Stack them and the number changes character completely.
The maker takes the first three feet. Louisville’s own page for the AE2224 — the 24-foot aluminium ladder in the census below — publishes a specification table with twenty-five rows in it, and two of those rows are *Total Length (ft) 24* and *Max. Extended Length (ft) 21*. A third row says *Section Length (ft) 12*. Two twelve-foot sections that extend to twenty-one feet means the sections overlap by three, and the arithmetic closes exactly. Same pattern on its 28-footer: total 28, maximum extended 25, section length 14. The same page for the 20-foot AE3220 gives a maximum extended length of 17.
The angle takes the next three per cent. The federal portable-ladder rule, 29 CFR 1926.1053, puts a non-self-supporting ladder at an angle where the horizontal distance from the top support to the foot is about a quarter of the working length — and it then defines working length in its own parentheses as *the distance along the ladder between the foot and the top support*. That is a geometry you create on the day, not a dimension on a carton. At one out and four up, the vertical rise is 97 per cent of whatever length you have lying along the ladder. The rule itself, and the standoff and the firm level ground it implies, are already worked through in this site’s gutter maintenance guide; I am only borrowing the cosine.
Werner takes the last four feet. Its own ladder-sizing page states flatly that *”the highest standing level is four rungs down from the top. A person standing higher may lose their balance and fall”* (Werner, ladder height). Rungs on these ladders sit twelve inches apart — the step count on Louisville’s spec table equals the nominal footage, and the federal rule allows nothing closer than ten inches or wider than fourteen — so four rungs is four feet.
Now the sum, and the arithmetic is mine rather than anybody’s spec sheet. Twenty-one feet of extended ladder, minus four feet to the highest standing level, is seventeen feet of ladder below your boots. At the published angle that seventeen feet is sixteen feet six inches of height. A twenty-four-foot ladder is a sixteen-and-a-half-foot pair of feet, and the seven and a half feet that went missing were spent by a manufacturer, a regulator and a manufacturer again, each of whom published their share.
Run the same sum on the 28-footer and you get twenty feet four inches, which is a two-storey gutter. Run it on the 20-footer and you get twelve feet seven inches, which is a bungalow with a bit of margin.
The genuinely reassuring part is that Werner arrives at the same place by a completely different route. The same page says extension ladders *”should be 7 to 10 feet longer than the highest support or contact point, which may be the wall or roof line”*, and gives the reasons as setup, section overlap, standing-level restrictions and roof-line extension. Take seven to ten off twenty-four and you get a contact point of fourteen to seventeen feet. My arithmetic says sixteen and a half. The maker’s rule of thumb and the three published deductions agree to within inches, which is the first time on this site that a rule of thumb has survived being taken apart.
What does not agree is every page currently ranking for this query. One tested round-up states that *”a 20-foot extension ladder would allow you to clean gutters 19 feet above ground”*. Another says *”a 24-foot ladder gives you a working height of roughly 20 feet”* and advises adding three feet to your gutter height when shopping. The nineteen traces straight back to Werner’s own reach table, which gives nineteen feet for a twenty-foot ladder and footnotes it *”Assumes a 5’7″ person with a 12″ reach”* — that is a fingertip, not a working height, and you cannot scoop wet leaf out of a trough you can only just touch. The twenty comes from taking four rungs off the nominal length instead of off the extended length, and skipping the angle. Both errors run the same direction, and both are larger than the margin they are advising you to buy.
So four parties will tell you what a twenty-foot ladder reaches: nineteen feet, twenty feet, fourteen-to-seventeen feet, and twelve feet seven inches. The last two are the manufacturer and the arithmetic.
What Twenty-Two Extension Ladder Listings Will Commit To
Nine searches — the 24-foot phrasing, the fiberglass phrasing, 28- and 32-foot, the duty-type phrasing, multi-position and telescoping — returned forty-six distinct ladder listings. Twenty-three of them are true two-section extension ladders, and twenty-two of those are at the serious end of the category. I read the title and every feature bullet on each one as the marketplace’s own catalogue returns them, and counted what each was prepared to put in print.
| What the listing publishes | How many of 22 |
| A rail material | 22 |
| An ANSI A14 duty type (IAA, IA, I, II or III) | 18 |
| A foot or shoe design | 15 |
| A bare pound figure and no duty type | 1 |
| Neither a duty type nor a pound figure | 3 |
| A maximum extended length, or anything you could compute one from | 0 |
Eighteen of twenty-two naming a duty type is better than I expected, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than manufacturing a scandal. The duty rating is the one number this category does disclose, and the American Ladder Institute — secretariat for the A14 committee that writes these standards — puts the obligation in one sentence on its basic-safety page: the duty rating must be greater than the total weight of the climber, tools, supplies and other objects placed upon the ladder. A five-gallon jug of mixed solution is about forty-two pounds, and it counts, which is a point the roof-cleaning equipment guide already makes.
The zero in the bottom row is the finding. Not one listing publishes the figure the four-to-one rule and the three-foot roof-line extension are both computed from. The maker publishes it — Louisville’s own pages carry it, under the name *Max. Extended Length*, buried two-thirds of the way down a twenty-five-row table — and the listing you actually buy from does not reproduce it, does not link it, and puts the longer number in the title instead.
The foot is the row I expected to be empty and was not. Fifteen of twenty-two name a shoe or a levelling arrangement, and the commonest phrasing is a steel swivel safety shoe with a metal shield — which is two feet in one fitting. The pad swivels so that it stays flat as the ladder’s angle changes, and flipping it over presents a toothed plate for soft ground instead of a rubber face for hard. That is worth knowing because it is the only adjustable part of the ladder below the rungs, and a great many people never turn it over. Seven listings say nothing about the foot at all, and four of those seven are also the only four extension ladders in the census that name no duty type — so silence clusters. A listing either describes the ladder or it describes the experience of owning one.
One listing came closest, and the way it nearly made it is instructive. A Little Giant SumoStance 28-footer carries a genuine specification block — closed height 14 ft 7 in, section length 14 ft, rung spacing 12 in, ANSI type IAA, rail type non-conductive, shoe design named. Give me the section length and the closed height and I can derive the extended length myself. And that listing is the one the price filter silently dropped, because its price comes back empty from the catalogue, so a census run with a floor on it never sees the only ladder in the category with a spec table. I only found it by running the same searches again with no floor at all, which is now a standing habit on this site and has paid for itself twice.
Fourteen and a Half Feet of Ladder With Nowhere to Put It
There is a fifth length, and it is the one that decides whether you can own the thing at all. It is not in any title either.
Louisville’s table gives the AE2224 a closed height of 148.875 inches and the AE2228 a closed height of 172.875 inches. That is twelve feet five inches and fourteen feet five inches, collapsed, in a package about twenty inches wide and six and five-eighths of an inch deep. The 20-foot AE3220 closes to 124 inches, which is ten feet four inches. Note that the collapsed figure is a few inches longer than half the total length, because the fly section’s top fittings sit above the rail.
Fourteen and a half feet is longer than most single garages are deep, longer than any domestic roof rack is intended to carry, and considerably longer than the car you were planning to collect it with. The 28-footer is the right ladder for a two-storey gutter by every figure in the section above, and it is also an object that has to live somewhere for the three hundred and sixty-three days a year you are not using it. Hanging it flat along a garage wall on two brackets is the answer most people land on, and it works, but the wall has to be fifteen feet of clear run.
This is, I suspect, the real reason the 24-footer outsells everything: twelve feet five inches fits where fourteen feet five does not, and the title says twenty-four, which sounds like plenty. The storage dimension quietly selects the ladder, and then the ladder quietly fails to reach the gutter. If your only wall is twelve feet, the honest options are a 24-footer for the gutters you can reach and a contractor for the ones you cannot — not a 24-footer leaned harder.
Louisville Says the Top Rung, Werner Says Four Rungs Down
Two manufacturers publish answers to “how high can I stand on this” and the answers are four feet apart. Both are on the record, so both go on the page.
Werner’s position is quoted above: four rungs down from the top, with the consequence of ignoring it spelled out. Louisville’s spec table for the AE2224 has a row headed *Maximum Standing Height (in)* and the value in it is 21′. Twenty-one feet is that ladder’s maximum extended length. By its own table, the highest you can stand is the top of the ladder. The 28-footer repeats the trick: maximum extended length 25 feet, maximum standing height 25 feet.
I do not think Louisville believes you should stand on the top rung, and the clue is in the heading of its own column — the field is labelled in inches and the value is written in feet. That is a database field doing double duty, not a figure somebody measured. But it is published, it is the only standing-height number on the page, and a buyer comparing two ladders on their manufacturers’ own specifications gets handed four extra feet of ladder that nobody will stand on.
Where the two disagree, follow Werner, and not because Werner is Werner. The federal rule requires a ladder used for access to an upper landing to extend at least three feet above it, which already rules out standing on the top; the American Ladder Institute’s basic safety guidance says the ladder’s length must be sufficient that the climber does not have to stand on the top rung or step; and the practical version is that a gutter is at chest height when you are working on it, not at your ankles. Four rungs down is also the figure that makes a maker’s own seven-to-ten-feet rule come out right, which is a decent sign it is the one Werner actually uses.
One precision worth drawing, because it separates this page from the one next door. The three-feet-above-the-landing requirement applies when the ladder is how you get onto the roof. Cleaning a gutter is not that job — you stay on the ladder — so the limit that governs a gutter afternoon is the standing level, not the extension above the eave. Different constraint, different sum, and it is the reason a ladder sized for roof access is longer than one sized for the trough.
330 Pounds Is a Metric Limit Under an American Duty Type
The telescoping and multi-position ladders are a separate class and I had intended to audit them separately. Having read them, they belong here, because they fail the same test harder and the reason is one number.
Twenty-three of those listings turned up, nineteen of them above the floor. Nineteen of nineteen publish a load capacity of 330 pounds. Fourteen publish that and no duty type at all. And 330 pounds is not an ANSI A14 duty class — the classes run 200, 225, 250, 300 and 375, which is the set Werner’s own performance-system page lists as its four load tiers and which every extension ladder in the census above files itself under. There is no 330 rung on that ladder.
There is, however, a 150-kilogram one. Werner’s UK technical FAQ says its range moved to *”the latest EN131 standards, where applicable, with ladders having a load capacity of 150kg”*, and that commercial use requires ladders *”tested for Professional Use with a load capacity of 150kg”* (Werner UK, ladders and access equipment FAQ). One hundred and fifty kilograms is 330.7 pounds. The number the entire telescoping category prints is a European standard’s load limit, converted, rounded down and sold into a market that classifies ladders a different way.
Five listings dress it up. Four of them — same brand, four different lengths — carry a byte-identical bullet reading *”ANSI CERTIFIED: This telescoping ladder is ANSI A14.2 certified, built to support up to 330 lbs, it is rated as Type IA Heavy Duty”*. Type IA is the 300-pound class. The sentence files a 150-kilogram rating under an American duty type that means something else, and it does it four times. Two more listings from that same brand, at lengths in between, drop the ANSI claim entirely and print *”EN131 CE CERTIFIED”* with the identical 330 pounds. One brand, one number, two standards, depending on the listing.
The headline length is worse in this class than in the extension ladders, because at least a carton length is a fixed quantity. One 22-foot multi-position listing describes its own product in a feature bullet as having *”a maximum height of 20 feet”*. Another, at the same nominal length, closes with *”Note: Standing height is about 22-26FT (depends on the height of the person)”* — a published reach with a four-foot range in it that varies by who is standing on it. I have read a lot of specifications for this site and that is the first one whose value is a function of the reader.
So the honest page covers both classes, and the reason is that the buying decision is identical: how high can I stand, and who told me. On an extension ladder the answer is buried in the maker’s table. On a telescoping ladder the answer is a converted metric limit and a figure that depends on your inside leg. Pole tools stop being the answer somewhere around eighteen to twenty feet of reach for reasons manual gutter cleaning tool works through in full, and this is where the decision lands instead.
One limit on all of this, stated rather than glossed. ANSI/ALI A14.2 is a paywalled document and I have not read it. What I have done is cite the existence of its duty classes and the load figures that manufacturers publish for them on free pages, and quote nothing from inside the standard. The absence of 330 from that set is an absence in what the makers publish, which is the same place the listings are claiming to draw it from.
Picking a Ladder by the Figure It Was Willing to Print
Five things earned a recommendation here, and the test each had to pass is narrow: somewhere in the maker’s own documents there is a maximum extended length, so the sum in the first section can be run before you buy rather than discovered on the lawn. Each one is wrong for somebody, and I have said who.
Louisville AE2224, the 24-foot aluminium. Type IA, 300 pounds, D-rungs, modified I-beam rails from three-inch extrusions, and a steel swivel safety shoe with a metal shield — which is the part that decides whether the ladder stays put on a lawn, and which fifteen of twenty-two listings describe. Its maker publishes 24 total, 21 extended, 12-foot sections and 42 pounds, so you can do the whole calculation from the maker’s page. By that calculation it is a single-storey and one-and-a-half-storey ladder: feet at sixteen and a half feet, foot of the ladder a little over four feet out from the wall. The limitation is the material, and it is not about strength. An aluminium ladder is a conductive object being raised near the service drop that feeds your house, and that is the one hazard on a gutter afternoon with no second chance in it. If the cable crosses the elevation you need, this is the wrong ladder and possibly the wrong day.
Louisville AE2228, the 28-foot aluminium. Same family, same shoe, same rails, Type IA. The maker publishes 28 total, 25 extended, 14-foot sections, 55 pounds, and the sum comes out at twenty feet four inches of standing height with the foot about five feet three inches from the wall. That is a two-storey gutter, and the 24-footer is not, whatever its title suggests. The limitation is the fifty-five pounds and the fourteen feet five inches it closes to, and specifically the arc it travels through on the way up: raising a 28-foot ladder alone is the part of this purchase people underestimate, and the last third of the lift is where it gets away from you. It also wants about five and a half feet of firm, level ground at the foot, which at the gable end of most houses is a flower bed.
Little Giant SumoStance M28, the 28-foot fiberglass. Type IA, 300 pounds, non-conductive rails, a double pulley, and the only listing in the whole extension census that publishes adjustable, wide-flared leg levelers. Levellers matter more than the brochures imply, because the ground beside a downspout slopes almost everywhere, and the same maker’s listing for its lighter range supplies the reason in a sentence worth keeping: *”Just one inch off at the base can cause a nine-inch lean at the top of a 19 ft ladder.”* That is the clearest single figure in this category and it came from a product I am not recommending. The limitation is that fiberglass buys you rails, not a rated tool — nothing in this category publishes an insulating rating for any voltage, and the rungs and hardware are metal. It is the better choice near a service drop and it is not permission to go near one.
Lift Ladders 18-foot multi-position. The one listing in nineteen that gets the paperwork right: *”With an ANSI Type 1A duty rating, it supports up to 300 pounds”* — the correct class with the correct load against it, rather than 150 kilograms wearing an American label. It also publishes a folded size and a weight, which nothing else in that class does. Two limitations. Eighteen feet of multi-position ladder in its extension configuration is a single-storey gutter and the honest end of one; and like every ladder here it publishes no extended length, so the overlap between its sections is still something you measure after it arrives. Buy it because it is the only one in its class that files its rating honestly, not because it is eighteen feet.
The Ladder-Max standoff. This is the purchase I would make first, ahead of any ladder upgrade, and it is the only accessory in the census that publishes a dimension: *”19 inches of safe work area”*, four non-marring contact points, and a plain note that it *”Does not come with a ladder”*. The reason a standoff earns its money — a K-style gutter’s front bead being the thinnest, least supported part of the whole system — is argued properly in gutter cleaning and maintenance, and I am not going to re-run it. The limitation is geometric and nobody prints it: a nineteen-inch standoff holds the top of the ladder nineteen inches off the wall, so the foot has to go nineteen inches further out to keep the same angle. Fit one to the 28-footer and you need about six feet nine inches of level ground instead of five feet three. It costs you no height. It costs you a flower bed.
Three Model Numbers a Regulator Has Already Named
A recall is the one product fact that post-dates every spec sheet, so I checked all of these before writing a word of the section above. Three listings came back carrying model numbers a safety regulator has published, and all three are reviewed here without a link.
The Little Giant Velocity, 18 ft reach, model 15417-001. This is one of the three extension-class listings publishing neither a duty type nor a load capacity, which would have been enough on its own. It is also, model number for model number, in a recall. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, 23 March 2017, recall 17-113: about 37,000 Velocity, LT and Liberty multipurpose ladders, because *”the multipurpose ladder’s locking pins/rung fasteners can fail, posing a fall hazard to consumers on the ladder”*, with the instruction that *”Consumers should immediately stop using recalled ladders and contact Wing Enterprises for a free repair kit”* (CPSC, 23 March 2017). Velocity 17 is listed as models 15417-001 and 15417-161. Two reports of pins failing, no injuries, and the affected units carry date codes 10161P through 11264P or 10361S through 11264S stamped on the outer rail below the red locking pin. Current stock is almost certainly outside those codes, which is exactly why this is a rule on this site rather than a judgement made afresh each time: a listing whose model number sits inside a published recall does not get a buying button, it gets the date-code check and the link to the notice.
Two Louisville fiberglass listings, models FE3224 and L-3022-24PT. Both model numbers appear in the Commission’s February 2008 recall of about 25,000 Louisville, Davidson and Michigan brand fiberglass extension ladders, where *”the extension or ‘fly’ section can fail to lock, posing a fall hazard”*. That recall is narrow and old: it covers ladders manufactured in September and October 2007, no injuries were reported, and units already inspected or repaired carry two green dots near the bottom of the rail. A ladder bought new today is not from that batch. I still did not link either listing, because the model numbers are unchanged and the same rule applies — and it cost me nothing, since the aluminium AE-series ladders above are not in that list and neither is the 20-foot FE3220.
And a recall worth knowing about that touches none of this. On 6 August 2026 Louisville recalled about 1,770,000 attic stairway ladders, plus roughly 13,054 in Canada, because *”the bolts on the attic stairway ladders can break while in use, posing a risk of serious injury or death from fall hazard”* — eleven reports of a bolt breaking, one injury to the neck, head and back, and the instruction to *”stop using the recalled ladders immediately”* (CPSC, 6 August 2026). It covers gas-strut attic stairs only, not extension ladders, so it does not touch the recommendations above. It is here for two reasons. If you have pull-down attic stairs, go and look at them. And the notice names the brands covered as Louisville, Featherlite, Lite and Century — which is how I know that the two “LITE” branded fiberglass extension ladders in the census are Louisville products, and not three badges on one contract-built ladder as I first suspected.
That brand identification explains the oddest thing in the census, which is that six fiberglass listings share a byte-identical capacity bullet ending *”you won’t find a more durable, reliable N-foot Extension Ladder”* — and on three of the six, N is not the ladder’s length. A 24-foot ladder describes itself as a reliable 16-foot ladder. A 20-footer does the same. A 28-foot LITE describes itself as a 24-footer. Half the fiberglass range gets the length wrong in its own marketing copy, on the single number this entire page is about. Two more listings, both from one well-known power-tool brand, manage something similar from the other direction: one is titled *”DeWalt 16-Foot Fiberglass Extension Ladder”* while its model number and its only feature bullet both say 28 feet, and the other’s three bullets include *”The product is 16′ fbg ia ext ladder”* and *”The product is manufactured in china”*. Neither is linked. I cannot audit a length on a listing that cannot hold one still.
A Five-Thousand-Pound Anchor Your House Does Not Have
There is one more product in this lane and it is the clearest do-not-buy I have written. Searching roof safety harness kits and fall-protection anchor kits returned seventeen listings; two kits reach the serious end of the category, and both bundle a full-body harness, fifty feet of lifeline, a rope grab and a *”reusable roof anchor”* with sixteen-penny nails included. The listings quote a minimum breaking strength of 5,000 pounds against the anchor and the hooks.
That figure is about the bracket. The requirement is about the building. Fall arrest needs an anchorage capable of supporting 5,000 pounds per attached person, and the anchorage is your roof structure, which has never been tested and is not in the box — the point the roof-cleaning equipment guide makes by noting that almost no house has one fitted, and which diy roof cleaning puts more memorably: buying the harness without the anchor gets you a very expensive high-visibility waistcoat. Add the clearance problem on a domestic house, where a single-storey eave does not leave enough air underneath the anchor for an arrest system to finish working, and the kit in the bucket is solving a problem it cannot reach.
So there is no link in this section, and the reason is not squeamishness about the category. It is that the part which decides whether the system works is a structural connection to your rafters, and nobody sells you that. If your gutter plan requires fall arrest, the plan is wrong for a different reason: a correctly sized ladder and a standoff mean you never leave the ladder, and the whole fall-arrest conversation belongs to people walking the slope. That is also why no pressure washer appears anywhere on this page. A charged wand up a ladder is a named hazard with its own article — telescoping pressure washer wand carries the lever arithmetic, and the only operator’s manual in that category says in writing not to use one from a ladder or elevating device of any kind.
FAQ
What is the best extension ladder for gutter cleaning?
The one whose maximum extended length, minus four feet, times 0.97, comes out above your gutter height — which in practice means a 28-foot ladder for a two-storey gutter and a 20- or 24-foot for anything lower. The quick version is the manufacturer’s: buy seven to ten feet longer than the point the ladder will lean on. Of the twenty-two listings audited here, none publishes the extended length, so the figure has to come from the maker’s own specification page.
What size ladder do I need to clean second-storey gutters?
A 28-footer, usually. A two-storey gutter sits around nineteen to twenty-two feet up, and a 28-foot extension ladder extends to twenty-five feet, which puts your feet at about twenty feet four inches at the correct angle. A 24-foot ladder tops out at sixteen and a half feet of standing height and is a one-and-a-half-storey tool, regardless of the number in the title.
Why is an extension ladder shorter than its advertised length?
Because the two sections have to overlap, and the overlap is three feet on the sizes most homeowners buy. Louisville publishes total length and maximum extended length as separate rows: 24 becomes 21, 28 becomes 25, 20 becomes 17. The advertised figure is both sections laid end to end, which is a shipping dimension rather than a working one.
Does an ANSI Type I ladder hold enough for gutter work?
Type I is the 250-pound class and Type IA is 300. The rating covers you fully clothed plus everything you carry, so a 200-pound person with a five-gallon jug of solution at around forty-two pounds, a scoop, a bucket of wet leaf and a phone is already inside Type I’s margin rather than comfortably below it. Type IA costs little more in this category and most of the listings here are IA anyway.
Is 330 pounds a ladder duty rating?
Not an American one. The ANSI A14 duty classes are 200, 225, 250, 300 and 375 pounds, and 330 appears in none of them. It is 150 kilograms, which is the load limit in the European EN 131 standard, converted. Nineteen of nineteen telescoping and multi-position listings above the price floor publish 330 pounds, and four of them file it under ANSI Type IA, which is the 300-pound class.
Do I need a ladder standoff for gutter cleaning?
It is the best-value purchase in this category and I would buy one before buying a longer ladder. Resting the ladder on the gutter’s front bead deforms it, and a standoff moves the load onto the fascia or the roof while giving you room to work. The trade-off nobody prints is that a nineteen-inch standoff pushes the foot of the ladder nineteen inches further from the wall, so check you have the ground for it.
Is a telescoping ladder good enough for gutters?
For a single-storey gutter, with reservations. The class publishes a converted European load limit rather than an ANSI duty type, the headline figure is a reach rather than a length, and one listing states outright that its standing height varies with the height of the person using it. If you want the compact storage badly enough to accept that, buy the one that gets its duty rating right rather than the one with the biggest number on the box.
Measure the Gutter First, Then Add Ten Feet of Ladder
Go outside with a tape and a helper and get the actual height of the front edge of your gutter. Not the eaves, not the ridge, not “it is a two-storey house” — the trough, because that is where the top of the ladder is going to lean. Then buy seven to ten feet more ladder than that number, and before you click anything, find the maker’s own specification page and check that its maximum extended length, minus four feet of standing-level allowance, still clears what you measured.
Every listing in this category will sell you the longest of a ladder’s four lengths and leave you to discover the other three in the garden. The three feet the sections overlap, the three per cent the angle costs and the four feet you are not allowed to stand on are all published, by three separate parties, none of whom is the seller. Add them up before you buy and the only surprise left on the day is the weight.
