Join us as we dive into the innovative world of scaffolding with the introduction of the Scafflex product, designed for both DIY enthusiasts and professional contractors. This episode features a captivating discussion on how Scafflex provides a safer, more efficient alternative to traditional scaffolding systems, allowing users to set up quickly and work comfortably at height. Eric and Guy explore the engineering behind Scafflex, emphasizing its lightweight, collapsible design that fits easily in vehicles while maintaining exceptional strength and stability. The conversation also highlights the importance of safety in construction and renovation, sharing insights on how to avoid common hazards associated with ladders. Tune in to discover how this cutting-edge scaffolding solution is revolutionizing home improvement projects and making high-altitude work safer and more accessible for everyone.

The latest installment of the Around the House Pro Insider podcast introduces a groundbreaking scaffolding product, the Scaflex, designed for both DIY enthusiasts and professional contractors. The hosts, Eric and Guy Williams, delve into the innovative features of Scaflex, explaining how it caters to the growing demand for quality scaffolding that is both portable and strong. With a focus on the engineering and design that went into creating this product, they highlight the lightweight, easy-to-assemble nature of Scaflex that allows users to set up scaffolding in just minutes, vastly improving safety and efficiency on job sites. This discussion also touches on the importance of safety in construction and renovation, particularly when working at heights, emphasizing how the right equipment can prevent serious injuries. The episode not only serves as a product showcase but also as an informative session on the practical implications of using advanced scaffolding solutions in today’s fast-paced construction environment, encouraging listeners to rethink their approach to safety and efficiency in their projects.

Takeaways:

• The Scafflex product is designed for both DIYers and contractors, providing safety and ease of use.
• Build Frames, the parent company, is North America's largest seller of scaffolding equipment.
• The Scafflex scaffolding can break down for easy transportation, fitting even in small vehicles.
• Safety is paramount when working at heights, and scaffolding greatly reduces injury risks compared to ladders.
• The scaffolding system integrates with traditional frames, offering high strength with lower weight.
• A major promotional discount on Scafflex products is available at Lowe's this November.

Links referenced in this episode:

• monumentgrills.com
• lowes.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Monument Grills
• Build Frames
• Lowe's

It's the around the house pro insider.

This podcast is for all of you in the trades.

From carpenters to contractors to interior designers, this show is for all of you crafting new homes or renovating them every day.

Now let's get to our host, Eric.

G.

Welcome to the Round the house show, the next generation of home improvement.

Thanks for joining me today.

This is episode is brought to you my friends over at Monument Grills.

If you're looking for a killer barbecue grill, you got to check it out@monument grills.com a handful of guys started this company back in Atlanta, Georgia, wanted to come up with a premium grill for under 900 bucks.

Check it out over there.

It's tailgate season.

You need to add a new barbecue grill to your holiday season.

Well, we got a great guest today.

We're not talking barbecues.

Well, we're going to talk about safety.

And one of my favorite things when I'm working up on my house, we're going to talk a little scaffolding.

Today we got Guy Williams from Build Frames.

Welcome to around the House.

Thank you, Eric.

Glad to see you, man.

Great to see you.

You guys have got such an amazing product out there that for inside outside the house and I think it's really built for that diyer to contractor that really needs to be doing stuff out there, doing it easily and of course safely.

That's right, Eric.

Right.

You're referring to our Scaflex product, correct?

You got it.

Yeah.

And the Scafflex, we came up with that idea about two years ago actually.

It was developed by our engineering team and our general manager, Kyle Muller.

And the idea was to take a lot of people don't know about build frames but we're our parent company is North America's largest seller of scaffolding equipment.

Primarily deal with the heavier duty commercial and industrial systems that you see in power plants or even around cities.

You've seen it, everybody see it.

You walk under it.

You just don't probably really look at it that closely.

And so our thought was as we're looking at this explosion and housing growth, both multifamily and single family will man, can we, can we take our quality that we have to in terms of the weld quality and the fit and finish and all that kind of thing and can we come to the retail market, to the smaller and medium sized contractor and give them that same kind of quality for a price?

That would be really something they'd be interested in.

And that's what the Scafflex idea came up with was people are telling us, look, I need something.

What's like the strength of a traditional 5 by 5 Mason frame.

But man, those things are hard to put in the back of my van or my truck here.

And so we're like, okay, so we're messing around.

And we came up with a way to have one that can break down and it can be both.

Kind of your standard five by five.

Made with the same kind of strength, like £7,400 per leg.

And can integrate with most V size frames.

But then you can take the inner rods out.

Right.

And there's some easy snap on.

There's no tools required to do it.

And then you can break it down to a 20 inch.

Almost like a baker unit.

Right.

That you can use interior.

Right.

It's.

It's a product we're really proud of.

You can tell by my.

My excitement and it's starting to catch on.

And even in stores like Lowe's which has the product retail wise exclusively, we're seeing them sell a lot more just.

I would guess you'd call it masonry type frame products and accessories because of this.

Because they're buying this and they're buying everything that goes with it.

So we're really excited about it.

You think about how many contractors out there, when you pull up in front of a home improvement store are driving around in vans.

Especially in my area on the west coast here where I'm.

Rain coming ahead.

Yeah.

And there's nobody running pickups out there without at least a tonneau cover on it.

Yes.

And something.

Trying to put a 5 by 5 frame in the back of that is against physics in many situations.

Yeah.

And it's not just one frame.

Usually they're going to have four or eight or depends on how high they're going or how many different areas on the building.

And if you're in California, that's what plast we kind of.

Isn't there a lot of like plaster on the outside of those buildings?

Right.

And so.

Yeah, there's a lot of that used in California and here in Texas.

In my neighborhood there's a lot of new homes.

Every home I look at has this masonry and it's all over the place.

Right.

And so the idea was to give them something that can break down and it's easy to put in the back of a picture.

We did just as a promo.

We took one of those little Cooper mini cars.

Have you seen those?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we, we fit four Cooper mini box or four scaffold X boxes in the back of a Cooper Mini.

Right.

And then we built.

We built.

Well, we were too lazy to build the fourth, so we just went three layers up just because we didn't want to have to go up that high.

But we built it and had it like standing on top of the Mini.

Right.

It was cool.

Just to make the point.

Look, you can put all this in this little Mini.

So.

Yeah.

That is so smart and something.

There is nothing more in working around a house that I hate is being 32ft up on an extension ladder.

Yes.

Trying to do something up there with two hands.

You're trying to do something up there.

And when you can sit there and put together scaffolding in a matter of minutes, safely, correctly have all your tools laid out, the products there.

Yep.

There is no comparison as far as.

Even if you're tied off just how easy it is and how good it is for your blood pressure.

Yeah.

And people will be shocked.

I don't have the details I should have brought.

I had that data.

But the number of serious injuries and even deaths, Eric.

Every year still from ladder injuries, it's unbelievable.

Like, it's almost.

I'm not smirching ladder companies.

They have their place.

But when you really get high up, you really should be on something safer.

More like a baker unit or a five by five kind of frame system.

Absolutely.

And what I think is so cool is how you guys have developed this to break down.

It stores in such a compact area and it goes together quickly and actually easier because I hate setting up the normal mason frame by myself out there.

Right.

Your arms aren't long enough.

You're trying to balance stuff.

And you can actually do it a little bit easier when you set it up this way.

Yeah.

We have these snap pins that are just.

They're.

They're easy, they're not really expensive.

And it literally, there's no tools required.

It's just pop them out and pop them back in.

And with.

With no loss in actual structural integrity.

That's the exciting part.

Yeah.

And when you get it up there, these things are tight.

I don't know about you guys out there that have.

In the audience that have rented like a 5 by 5 Mason frame.

You go to go down to your rental place, it's covered in about another additional 40 or 50 pounds of concrete.

When you get it all set up or more.

And so you're putting up.

You're putting up aluminum planks up there that have literally another inch of mud on them.

And you're up there trying to make this Stuff go together.

It's been up a little bit.

Have your own stuff.

Have it where you can take care of it.

Have it where you know where it is.

And you're not wasting two hours trying to go down to the rental store to get something picked up.

That's.

That's a great point.

And a lot of folks are maybe there.

It's just them and one or two employees.

And they're operating out of a garage.

Right.

Or a really small area, or you don't have to have that much space in your storage area for this thing.

You can actually, a lot of customers we talk to, they'll.

They'll break it down and then take the piece that's the main portion of the frame that's that squared.

And they'll just hang that up on the wall on some.

On some frame.

So it's not really taking any floor space.

And it's easy for one person to handle.

Whereas a five by five frame, you could do it.

But it's like jerks your shoulders and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, it's just awkward to deal with.

Just super awkward to deal with.

And then you guys came out with all the accessories that work with this.

So you've got the rollers, you've got the feet, you've got the safety bars, You've got all the stuff that you need to make this a easily workable and safe set of scaffolding.

Yeah.

If you think about it being North America's largest seller of scaffolding equipment in the industrial and large commercial space, that's what we do.

Right.

So we have all of that.

So this was like, okay, we just need to make a version that's maybe a little bit lighter and easier to carry around, which we have.

We've got the outriggers if you want to go up really high.

So you have those.

And then just, you know, the heavy duty casters that you would need for this kind of system.

And of course, your safety railing and all that.

So it's a complete masonry frame.

People use different frame embrace it depends on what part of country you're from.

But it's a complete system that's available.

And you can get it right here.

It's available today.

You can buy it online or you can go right to your low store and pull it right out to Shell.

Yeah, I was in Lowe's probably last month walking through there, and there's a contractor kind of poking around at it.

And I just looked at him And I go, we just put it in your truck.

I did.

And it's.

It's awesome.

You'll love it.

And he's really.

I'm like, just do it, man.

Just do it.

And he was loading up as I walked away.

But it's, it's.

It's just such a great system and it's something I definitely believe in.

And it makes kind of those tall projects fun again for me, tackling projects here for my TV show and stuff, because for me, it's great because I can set up two sections next to each other.

My camera guy has got a place that's safe to work on.

Yep.

And I've got something there to work on.

And if I'm working on the roof, I can set up multiple sections there.

So I have just a work area.

Yes.

Across the whole thing right there.

And I can set it up in 20 minutes.

All of that, it's so fast.

There's a reason I, and I challenge everyone that listens to this.

If you drive around because there's so much building going on everywhere, Eric, where you just drive around and see almost every home, that there's basic five by five masonry frames of different types, walkthroughs, the typicals.

And they're everywhere.

Right.

And so the idea here was to.

Okay, let's.

Let's come up something that's.

That's affordable, that's super strong with tight tolerances, can break down going to small places and then give all the extra stuff that needs to go with it.

And I'm hoping three, four years from now, you're going to see entire fleets for some of these contractors where they just convert over because it's so much, so much less space, so much less space in their vans and their trucks that it wants everybody that sees it, you try to explain it, it's a little hard.

But when you show it to them and they put their hands on it.

Oh, this is.

This makes perfect sense, right?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And you're.

You guys have just so many great systems in here, and then you have that.

I forget what you guys call it, but that interior set that breaks down so easily that you can just put anywhere inside the house.

Yeah.

And so the.

Well, the scaffolds will break down to be the size of what we call a baker.

You talk.

You're referring to a baker scaffold, right?

Yeah, it'll break down.

But we also sell the traditional baker scaffold, which we're very proud of.

Right.

It's your traditional.

We also have a.

We were one of the first ones to have a climb through hatch on the inside.

Yeah, I saw that and I was blown away.

I was like, wow, this is easy.

Yeah.

And then we're also an anti slip deck, which a lot of people copy that.

And then also the rungs on ours.

A lot of our competition use that.

Basically tubes, tube steel.

Right.

As you're stepping up.

So we, we changed to a square tube that actually has.

It's actually an antislip perforated metal.

You've seen it like a grating.

Right.

Industrial grading.

And so I think that's been very, very popular.

And.

But the thing that's different about our interior baker is the tight tolerances.

I challenge anybody to go get ours, set it up, get our competitions.

Werner Metal tech, whoever it is, and get on top of each one and just shake it around, move around on to be safe.

I see.

Sure.

Just.

And I think you're going to find the tolerance and ours are considerably tighter.

I tell you what, it passed my test here because again, I was putting up a, putting up some very cool acrylic.

Acrylic panels.

And I had my camera guy up on that, that baker rack on there.

And he's.

That's going to be too.

They're always too flimsy.

I'm like, not this one.

No, it's not.

And he shot up there, no problem.

And you got to have something that's stable.

And if you guys built that any closer intolerance, you'd actually fight it to go together.

It goes together super well.

But yes, it does not move.

If it's moving, it's the, it's the substrate you're on.

It's not the, it's not the rock.

Well, we don't.

We have in our engineering team.

They're wonderful people.

And so we are always this, this.

We're.

We're fighting perfect versus it works in the field.

Right.

And believe it or not, there was that back and forth of okay, this is.

Man, this is perfect, Kevin.

But gosh, I can't get this thing apart.

And there's that.

It's.

It's a little bit.

It's science, but it's an art there.

And what's going to work with it can talking to different contractors.

Yeah.

Glad you noticed that because that, that actually is very important.

Very important.

Yeah.

You guys really thread the needle with that.

And again, what I like about it is I can carry it through a doorway without worrying about banging stuff up, you know what I mean?

Yes.

And that's the cool thing with that.

Yeah.

Standard door frame.

And people have seen those for years too.

And that I think a lot of, A lot of homeowners, we make you probably.

I don't know if we sent you one of those, but we make a four and five foot mini.

Right.

There's a mini version.

Right.

And those are nice to have around the house as well.

Not like an industrial contractor related, but just homeowners, you know, for little, little projects.

They're great to have around the house as well.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

No, they're great.

And it's after using scaffolding in the commercial world where I was working, that really moved early into my own DIY projects because I'm like, why am I out here struggling with step ladders, extension ladders.

My extension ladder hasn't came out in probably a year because I'd much rather set up a set of scaffolding and get the dang ladder out because it's just.

Why am I going to go out there and put myself into a bad position?

Yeah.

About the only thing I use the ladder really consistently is putting the star on top of the Christmas tree.

Exactly.

Yeah, that works.

Other than that, I don't like to be that ladder.

And how, how tall can you get this stuff when you're putting it up the, the build frames, when you're working outside out there, it seems, boy, you get up four sections, no problem with that.

Yeah, four sections, no problem.

Same as industrial scaffolding.

We can.

Okay, there's.

There's a safety OSHA ratio of how big the base is to the up as far as higher you go.

So that's the limiting factor.

But typically for the B side frames can go.

You can get seriously high with those.

You've seen those in the city, probably ten stories up.

Right.

It's like crazy.

People are typically going 3, probably 3, 4 max with the baker.

Typically.

Yeah, yeah, that's.

Yeah.

Bakers.

I don't know.

The bakers are great, but I don't like to get too tall on those just because the footprint on those, it just Physics.

Physics rules the world there.

Rules the world at that point.

Exactly.

That's so funny.

I love the safety that we have for all of these.

And then you look at some of the job sites over in Southeast Asia and stuff where they're using.

They're using bamboo and tying it together.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm like, you could not catch me on that stuff.

And they don't think.

You think about it.

Right.

It's a yes.

Right.

But no, we think, thank goodness here in this country there, they do have a lot of good rules.

And it wasn't like that all the time 100 years ago.

And that's that a lot of people are much safer today.

And again, we.

We pride ourselves on quality and taking care of our customers because we realize that there are people up every single day on making a living, getting done with or doing some things around the house with this.

And it's gotta be safe.

Right?

It's gotta be.

It's gotta be spot on.

And that's.

That drives us.

We.

Our little saying at our company is that we're driven by service, but we're defined by quality.

We really try to keep that in mind with every product.

No question.

Yeah.

When that stuff showed up and I started putting together, I just had this big smile on my face going, wow, this was so well thought out.

Well, thank you.

You guys have done a great job.

And those spring clips.

Oh, my gosh.

That makes it easy.

Yeah, they do.

They do.

I can't take it.

Again, the engineering team here is just fantast.

Fantastic.

And they.

They love challenges.

Right?

Okay.

You want to do what you know, and then first they'll.

They'll him and ha.

And they're like, well, and then, like, next thing you know, they come back to you two days later.

We got to figure it out.

Look at this.

And.

And 3D PR.

3D printing has changed the world.

Like, they'll.

They can just.

Look.

Look at this.

We actually printed it up, and it'll.

And yeah, I always just smile at them.

Like, how'd you think of that?

My mind doesn't work that way.

Right?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, that's.

That's that engine.

The crack engineering and design team that comes out and pulls the rabbit out of the hat for you.

Exactly, Exactly.

So what's the best place for people to find these?

Because I know Lowe's is such a great place.

I see it in mine all the time.

But this is definitely something that people should be looking at out there.

Even if you're a homeowner and you're like, hey, I gotta do siding and a bunch of restoration work on the side of my house.

This should be going in the garage.

Someplace for build frames.

Right now, we're focused on supporting Lowe's, and I think you can go to our build frames website.

But the best place is to either go to the Lowe's store, your local Lowe's store, or just go online to lowe's.com and look at.

Look up scaffolding and you'll find us.

Look up the name build frames, and you'll see our full product line there.

That is great.

Coming up in November, Eric, because I got to make sure I don't forget this or my marketing team will kill me.

We have a promo going on for Scafflex.

It's a hundred dollars off.

Yeah.

And so we're really excited to do that in partnership with Lowe's, and they're expecting quite a bit of volume.

They really stocked up.

So don't worry, there'll be plenty of units on the show.

And the cool thing is, is that you're stocked.

If some contractor comes in there and loads up a couple trucks with this stuff, a couple days later, it'll be back on the shelf again.

So it's not that big a deal.

Yeah, that's the great thing about Lowe's.

They're a machine, buddy.

They know how to do that.

So it's been very impressive to work with them.

Yep.

So, guys, there anything we missed here?

Because I tell you what, I just love what you guys are doing, and that promo is going to be killer for everybody out there trying to save a little bit of money, because who's not right now?

Yeah, exactly.

The cost of things just going up and up.

It's great to see something actually on sale for once.

No, I just.

I just have people stress be very careful about what you buy.

Look at weld quality, look at fit and finish.

Right.

Because those things, when you start getting up on top of it, if things aren't tightly done and made and you start having some wiggle, it can get dangerous.

Right.

And always be careful how you're setting your scaffolding.

And if you're on uneven ground, you've got to have your leveling jacks.

Right.

And you're being very careful about that as well.

And always follow your OSHA regulations.

But we're very excited.

Eric, I want to.

I want to thank you for doing this.

We're not really, really all that great yet at the whole podcast thing because we're more of an industrial company, but we're very excited about this.

We love to see our name and our product out there in the stores, and it's really a rush for us, man.

I can personally test this stuff, guys.

Is solid quality.

It is better than anything else that I've ever used, and it is something that is used on my projects around here all the time.

And I've got a personal set myself, so you guys gotta check these things out and head down to your local Lowe's and throw them on a cart, get them out in your truck and get them to your job site.

Guy.

Thanks for taking the time, brother, today.

I really appreciate it.

You guys are killing it out there.

Thanks, Eric.

Appreciate it, buddy.

Thanks for listening to the all new around the House Pro Insider.

Make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast player and find us at aroundthehouse online.com we will see you next time.

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