If you need to purchase an electric hoist, it's important to pick the right one for the job - using an insufficient or inappropriate hoist could have dire consequences for you and the people around you.

With this in mind, here is a short, helpful guide to SafetyLiftinGear's assorted electric hoist products:

• Weight Limit - Perhaps the most important thing to look at when buying an electric hoist is that hoist's weight capacity. Some heavy-duty hoists can lift loads of a tonne or more, while other electric hoists are only capable of managing 2-300kgs at a time. Be sure to check the weight limit before reaching the checkout.
  
  
• Voltage - Different places will use different operating voltages. For example, American power outlets usually operate at 110 volts, and so you would need a 110 volt hoist in this circumstances. Elsewhere, you may have to use a 240 volt outlet, in which case you'll need a 240 volt hoist (a 110 volt hoist would be damaged by any voltage above 110).
  
  
• Motor - Most of our electric hoists use a single phase motor. This is sufficient for most applications, although we do also supply three phase hoists for particularly demanding jobs.

If you have any further questions about our electric hoist range, give SafetyLiftinGear a call on 0808 123 69 69 or email sales@safetyliftingear.com.

Health and safety regulations can sometimes seem like they were designed just to inconvenience people, rather than to save their lives. This impression isn't helped by the journalists who seem to take great pleasure in writing about absurd 'elf and safety' stories that make the whole practice look like a joke - trees being cut down for no good reason, people being ordered to remove their Christmas decorations, and so forth.

But, in spite of all this, health and safety is there for a crucial purpose: to keep people safe from harm. It isn't hard to quantify the importance of this; for every cringeworthy story about 'health and safety gone mad', there are half a dozen about somebody who was seriously injured or even killed by H&S oversights. If, for example, you were to Google height safety (something of a speciality for the SafetyLiftinGear team), you'd be rewarded with the following horror stories (all of which are from the last week or so):

• A man in Kettering punctured a lung and broke several bones after falling more than 13 feet from a recycling cabin onto a concrete floor. His employers were fined £9,000.
  
  
• A construction firm in Berkshire was recently fined £10,000 after a local resident photographed the firm's employees working on a roof without anything standing between them and a fall of almost 20 feet.
  
  
• Another £10,000 fine was handed out to a Cheshire-based homebuilder last week after a plasterer fell through an unguarded opening and fell nearly 10 feet to the floor below, cracking two vertebrae.

As you can see, poor health and safety practices really are everywhere, and it's high time for businesses like those mentioned above to sort it out.

For starters, then: if you or your employees are ever carrying out any work at height, ensure that the correct height safety equipment is in place. As we've seen, this could prevent some serious injuries, not to mention some major fines.

We sell a variety of lifting slings here at SafetyLiftinGear, but our polyester webbing slings are certainly the most popular. Webbing slings are lightweight and versatile, but no less strong for it; they can bear extremely large loads and help you to lift these loads in a safe, secure manner.

Now, as with most of the items in SLG's Lifting Equipment section, each of our polyester webbing slings has a different weight limit. This is obviously a very important factor - if the sling you purchase is insufficient for the loads you are lifting, your safety and that of people around you cannot be guaranteed. Maximum weight is clearly identified in the name of each sling (e.g. 5 Tonne Webbing Sling), so be sure to check this before purchasing.

Did you know that we also sell hooks for our lifting slings? We do, and as with the slings themselves, each hook has a different weight capacity. For your convenience, the hooks and the slings are colour-coded, so it's easy to buy a hook and a sling with the same weight limit; for example, our 3 Tonne Sling is coloured yellow, as is the 3 Tonne Sling Hook.

Once again, the consequences of using the wrong hook can be disastrous, so please ensure that you are buying a hook that matches your webbing sling. It's the safest way to go!

We sell a variety of lifting slings here at SafetyLiftinGear, but our polyester webbing slings are certainly the most popular. Webbing slings are lightweight and versatile, but no less strong for it; they can bear extremely large loads and help you to lift these loads in a safe, secure manner.

Now, as with most of the items in SLG's Lifting Equipment section, each of our polyester webbing slings has a different weight limit. This is obviously a very important factor - if the sling you purchase is insufficient for the loads you are lifting, your safety and that of people around you cannot be guaranteed. Maximum weight is clearly identified in the name of each sling (e.g. 5 Tonne Webbing Sling), so be sure to check this before purchasing.

Did you know that we also sell hooks for our lifting slings? We do, and as with the slings themselves, each hook has a different weight capacity. For your convenience, the hooks and the slings are colour-coded, so it's easy to buy a hook and a sling with the same weight limit; for example, our 3 Tonne Sling is coloured yellow, as is the 3 Tonne Sling Hook.

Once again, the consequences of using the wrong hook can be disastrous, so please ensure that you are buying a hook that matches your webbing sling. It's the safest way to go!