Every organization that does production eventually ends up with the same problem. At some point in time they will have to hang equipment of some type.
As a lighting guy that does a lot of work in churches, I have been privileged to see some really great professional rigging installs, some workable do-it-yourself installs and I have also seen some horrible do-it-yourself installs that were on the verge of failure.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that the only people that know how to rig safely are professionals, although that's usually the case, however I am trying to say that regardless of who does your rigging, it needs to be safe and you have to use the correct equipment.
In churches one piece of equipment that I often see used and misused are winches. Typically they are being used to raise and lower pipes and truss from which are hung things like scenic pieces, lights, and video screens.
Having some winches in your church rigging installation can be a great asset as once they are installed it makes it easy to hang things or work on what you already have hanging. When you need to work on that hang position you just bring the position to the floor to work on it. With the winch the job becomes faster and safer as you are doing the bulk of the work on the floor, not on a ladder or lift.
While I like the idea of using winches, most of the installs that I see are dangerous because the winch being used is not rated for overhead lifting.
A winch in its most basic form is a drum that spools in and out steel cable as the crank is turned or the motor is engaged lifting or lowering the load attached to the cable. You see them all of the time on boat trailers or in motorized form on the front of trucks and jeeps.
You can buy a hand cranked winch for less then thirty bucks at your neighborhood hardware store and just last week I received a coupon for a motorized unit for under a hundred dollars. However, those hardware store winches are not made for raising and lowering things or even holding a load over people's heads. And therein lies the problem.
A typical hardware store winch is made to pull a boat, an ATV, or lawn tractor onto a trailer, or maybe lift something heavy from the ground into a truck or trailer. Sometimes they are used in a garage to lift an engine and while these winches have pretty high weight ratings, the problem lies in that they were designed for uses where the people using them would not be in danger if they failed.
While your day goes from good to bad if you break the winch while loading your ATV on a trailer, it goes from good to deadly if the winch breaks while holding equipment over people's heads.
While your ATV winch might have a load rating of 1,000 pounds, that's probably about all it can take before it fails. There is no safety factor built into the system because the designer never meant for people to be in harm's way while it is being used.
This means that if you hang 900 pounds of equipment you are within 100 pounds of its breaking point. If anything goes wrong, you miscalculate your weights, the load shifts, the youth guy hangs another 200 pounds of gear that you didn't know was going to be added, you are instantly at the breaking point.
So what can you do? First find a reputable company that can sell you equipment rated for overhead lifting. Thern, J.R. Clancy and Columbus-McKinnon (CM) are a few of the major manufacturers of hand cranked winches as well as motorized products in the United States. Contacting one of their dealers would be a good place to start.
Understand that equipment that is rated for overhead lifting has several built in safety systems to help the “unexpected” from causing a catastrophic failure. One feature is redundant brakes that hold the load in place. Also rated gear has a working load rating and then a safety factor on top of the working load. This means that when you load the winch to capacity it still is not close to its breaking point. Also rated equipment has very strict manufacturing quality control and testing, thus guaranteeing that the equipment will hold what it is rated for.
While the cost of overhead rated equipment is more then what you can pick up at the hardware store, it is worth it for the safety that it provides. And in the end it really isn't that much more. Also it's a one time initial investment that properly maintained will work well for years to come. Remember that the ease-of-use, timesavings, and the safety will be worth the investment in the long run.
