Rope Life Factors For Your Safety
Know you Knots or Hitches
Discard Point - when to retire your rope
Knots Can Reduce Rope Strength
Use Rope Properly
Storage of Rope

Rope Life Factors
There are basically three steps to consider in providing the longest possible service life for ropes, the safest conditions and long range economy: Selection, Usage, and Retirement.

Selection: Selecting a rope involves evaluating a combination of factors. Some of these factors are straight forward like comparing rope specifications. Others are less qualitative, like a preference for a specific, color or how a rope feels in your hand. Cutting corner, reducing application factors, sizes or strengths on an initial purchase creates unnecessary replacements, potentially dangerous conditions and increases long term costs. Fiber and construction being equal, a larger rope will outlast a smaller rope - because of the greater surface wear distribution. By the same token, a stronger rope will outlast a weaker one - because it will be used at a lower percentage of its break strength with less chance of over stressing.

Strength: When given a choice between ropes, select the strongest of any given size. The weaker rope is having to work harder and as a result will have to be retired sooner. Braided ropes are stronger than twisted ropes that are the same size and fiber type and therefore are the most popular climbing lines.

Elongation: It is well accepted that ropes with lower elongation under load will give you better load control, a big help a complicated job sites, However, ropes with lower elongation that are shock loaded, like a lowering line, can fail without warning even though it appears to be in good shape.

Rope Storage Keep your ropes as clean and dry as possible and store them in a coil away from heat sources. Many climbers keep their ropes in special rope bags which keeps them clean and makes them easy to identify at the job site.

Shock Loads: Shock loads are simply a sudden change in tension - from a state of relaxation or low load to one of high load, Any sudden load that exceeds the work load by more than 10% is considered a shock load. The further an object falls, the greater the impact. Synthetic fibers have a memory and retain the effects of being overloaded or shock loaded and can fail at a later time even though loaded within the work load range.