About Us
It is our honor to serve, protect, and help your business grow.
Flent Ballantyne, President - Ballantyne Gear
We make temporary, portable, sloped roof fall protection systems that are your best choice, when factoring safety, cost, ease of use, and efficiency. We exceed OSHA, Cal/OSHA (and more) enforced standards for installation and use. When used as instructed, the Eveook engineered systems are also ANSI and CSA certified. Some of the benefits of the Eveook systems:
- UP TO EIGHT USERS PROTECTED ON ONE SYSTEM!
- Installer is protected from falls.
- Eveooks are built for fall arrest, but continuous anchor points across the entire roof are designed for fall restraint, to keep the user from being able to fall from the roof.
- Designed and certified for up to eight users.
- A two-person installation can be done in less than ten minutes.
- An experienced user will likely save more time on a job than the time required to install the system, increasing production.
I’m Flent Ballantyne,
inventor of the Eveook anchorage connector and system, and owner of Ballantyne Gear, Inc., with patents and patents pending throughout the world. I am also the primary author, illustrator, photographer, videographer, and editor of the Eveook technical manual and website. The technical manual has been certified as an integral part of the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) Z359.6 and CSA (Canadian Standards Association) Z259.16 certifications of the Eveook Engineered Non-Penetrating Fall Protection System for Residential Style Sloped Roofs.
My formal education includes six years studying music composition and theory, mostly at Brigham Young University and The University of North Texas. Asked how I was able to create the Eveook fall protection system, our Professional Engineer, Greg Small responded, “Because he works really hard!” I work 70 to 80 hours a week, sometimes much more, leading a team of safety professionals that is making the world safer.
Building a business from the ground up is not new for me. Since 2001, I am the owner and operator of Jurassic Lawn Care and Jurassic Lights, a seasonal Christmas lights installation business. Installing Christmas lights, I saw the need for solid sloped roof fall protection, that wouldn’t damage your roof—there was none! I began a journey of creating my third business. In 2006, Ballantyne Gear was incorporated, continuing the research and development on sloped roof fall protection that had begun two years prior.
Many personal and financial sacrifices have been made in creating and doing whatever was necessary to produce the absolute best fall protection system available. I was SPRAT certified for rope access, certified in pitched roof access and more. I found and worked with top-tier professionals in the safety industry and have tested and retested, on-site and at ISO labs, until we not only met but exceeded requirements from OSHA, Cal/OSHA, ANSI, CSA and more.
At Ballantyne Gear, we feel the responsibility of not only providing a truly revolutionary fall protection systems to the sloped roof industry but also the heavy responsibility of helping professional roof workers return home safely to their loved ones at the end of the day.
There is much to do, and it needs to be done now.
Ballantyne Gear is a voting member of the ANSI Z359 Fall Protection Committee. We are also members of the ANSI Z359.6 Subcommittee on Engineered Fall Protection Systems and the ANSI Z359.18 Subcommittee on Anchorage Connectors, helping create standards to protect workers at heights.
My son, Steven Ballantyne, engineering graduate from Brigham Young University, is our lead engineer. He has assisted me since 2004, when he was only 14 years old. Steven has been integral in helping me with product design, technical writing and is the primary instructor, showing how to use the Eveook system, live, within our videos and in our technical manual.
My wife, Amy Ballantyne, graduated magna cum laude from the University of Houston in communications. She is the final editor and is responsible for making sure that communications, through documents, illustrations, video, photography, and more, are clear and easily understood. She also has an integral role in managing the image of the company.
By the way, women are great on sloped roofs, with a lower center of gravity for balance and greater flexibility.
In the technical manual, you can see images of Amy installing an Eveook fall protection system. The Eveooks will hold over 9,000 pounds, and may look heavy, but they only weigh 22 pounds.
In July of 2021, preparing for a Christmas trade show, Steven and I worked four days straight, with only three hours of sleep in a bed, and another three hours in a pickup truck. 
They deserved our best efforts in demonstrating how the Eveooks would help them be safe! Christmas lights is just one of the industries we serve; but, working on the edge of some very steep slopes, they need the very best.
Our History
In 2002, I started a Christmas lights business. It took just a few minutes on the first job to realize that this was very dangerous, and I had a "rational" fear of hitting the ground, after a fall. Steven my son, Bill my brother, and I did all the installations that year. Steven, who later got a degree in engineering and is now our lead engineer, was 14, and was a natural on a roof. Because of my fear, I decided I would never install lights again. The next year, I hired people. But I knew that if someone fell and was killed or injured, that was on me! Two years later, an off-duty fireman that was installing Christmas lights, from our hometown of McKinney, fell and died.
Falls are the number one cause of construction-worker fatalities, accounting for one-third of all on-the-job deaths in the industry. In 2019, there were 401 fall fatalities out of 1,102 total fatalities in construction (BLS data). https://www.osha.gov/stop-falls
Total costs in 2019 ------------------- $171.0 billion
Per Worker ----------------------------- $1,100
Per death ------------------------------- $1,220,000
Per medically consulted injury ---- $42,000
According to Roofing Contractor, December 2021, in 2019 there were 6,010 OSHA Fall Protection violations, ranging from $4,700 to $159,118. Some businesses had multiple violations.
In 2006, a worker was awarded $10.64 Million because the employer did not enforce fall protection.
Nothing was available to protect our professionals on the rooftops.
We could not find good fall protection. Everything required nails or screws, damaging the homeowner’s roof; and they all used single point anchorages. Working on roof edges, with single point anchorages, means that most of the time we would still be subject to dangerous and illegal swing falls.
We had to find a better way.
Steven and I trained and became Rock Climbing Instructors, and learned how to ascend, descend, and move laterally on suspended ropes, like window cleaners on skyscrapers.
We trained in rope access, and learned how to ascend, descend, and move laterally on suspended ropes, like window cleaners on skyscrapers.
With the knowledge we had gained, we were able to protect our people, but jobs were taking 30 minutes longer than before. When you’re working a 10-hour day, adding another 2 hours for fall protection, won’t happen. We needed something better.
The Eveooks, Safer and More Efficient.
Evolution of the Eveooks.
In 2005 we made our first prototype Eveook. In 2006 we incorporated Ballantyne Gear, with a mission to create a fall protection system for sloped roofs that would save lives, livelihoods, and businesses; would not damage the roof, would not decrease production, and would make the job easier.
In 2010 I started attending the ANSI Z359 committee meetings (American National Standards Institute committee for Fall Protection) and joined the anchorage connector subcommittee and the engineered fall protection subcommittee. In 2012, we hired the chairman of the anchorage connector committee, Greg Small, a Professional Engineer, that, like us, demanded quality and put safety first.
Supporting the safety industry, we are also members of the National Safety Congress and the American Society of Safety Professionals.
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We hired an extraordinary structural engineer, Mark Bliss, to help us redesign the Eveook. Mark is the son-in-law of Randy Oehrlein, chief engineer at Carley Foundry, Blaine, MN; one of the most respected foundries in the United States. 
Mark, with his many connections to the industry, allowed us access to the most cutting-edge technology. Carley foundry works primarily in aerospace and medical, frequently contracting to the U.S. Navy, Army, and the Air Force. The photo is a multi-sense radar housing that they build for the Army.
Carley Foundry makes our Eveooks.
Eveooks Nominated Best Innovation at the American Foundry Society
As distributors, we have partnered with CAMP Safety, one of the largest and most innovative manufacturers of fall protection in the world. Their technical manuals are in 22 languages.
Safety can be very profitable!
In 2018 we required use of the Eveooks for fall protection with our lights business. Since then, our Christmas lights volume is up 29%.
Tell everyone that you exceed OSHA requirements!
Advertising our compliance to OSHA, with our Christmas lights business, our sales closing ratio has doubled what it used to be. Your customers want you to be safe!
How hard is it to use the Eveooks? I would compare it to driving a car. You have to learn how to use them. If you do, you will be completing jobs in the same amount of time as before, or better.
Let’s look at a two-person installation of the Ballantyne Gear Eveook non-penetrating fall protection system, completed in less than seven minutes.
Thank you!
Flent Ballantyne
President
July 7, 2022