Hire a mobile scaffold in Utrecht

Three soil types in one small province

Utrecht is compact but divided underfoot. The Heuvelrug runs through the middle with sand and gravel, peat meadow stretches west towards the lakes, and in the south river clay sets the tone along the Lek and the Kromme Rijn. Those three subsoils react in completely different ways to the point loads a tower puts into the ground, and they lie only a short drive apart from one another.

On sand the adjustable feet stand firm as soon as you find a level spot. In the peat district you have to allow for sunken paving and gardens that give way after rain. River clay sits in between: solid enough when dry, sticky and much less dependable after a wet week. Anyone working at different addresses across this province learns that difference quickly and keeps base plates in the van as standard.

Villas and country houses on the Heuvelrug

Along the flank of the Heuvelrug runs a long line of villa villages with big plots, heavy roofs and a great deal of timber in the facade. These are houses where the ridge sits high and where dormers, turrets and overhangs make the work more involved than on a standard terraced house. The platform height needed is consistently greater than people estimate from the gutter line alone.

The rule of thumb helps: working height is platform height plus two metres. If you need to reach the ridge of such a villa, you count back from the highest point you want to touch, not from the gutter. The range runs up to 14.2 metres of working height, which covers virtually every building of this type, provided there is a level patch of ground to stand on.

New towns of the seventies and eighties

A large part of the housing stock here consists of planned estates from the seventies and eighties: family houses in terraces, with sheds, rear paths and one gutter height running the length of a street. Maintenance on such houses rarely calls for much height, and the set-up usually lands in the lower part of the range. The gutter sits at two storeys, with at most a dormer or a chimney above it.

What does cause trouble is reaching the rear elevation. Rear paths are narrow and gate openings tight, so the wide version will not pass. The slim RS51 at 75 centimetres was made for exactly that. If the work is indoors, at a tall stairwell or a ceiling, the room scaffold is the model to pick, because it goes into the house without anything having to come apart.

The peat meadows in the west

Towards the lakes and the Vecht lies open peat country, with ribbons of houses along watercourses and low dykes. The ground is soft, the water table is high and subsidence is a constant rather than an incident. Houses sometimes lean visibly in relation to their own plot, which means a tower placed hard against the facade will never come out level by itself.

In this area it is wise to pick a spot on paving that demonstrably carries the load, and otherwise to spread the weight with plates under all four feet. The equipment is built to EN 1004 in load class 3, which comes down to 200 kilos per square metre of platform. That load has to go somewhere, and on peat it matters more than anywhere else in the province.

The river country and the orchards in the south

South of the province the landscape gives way to river clay, with dyke villages, orchards and farms with substantial barns. Buildings are scattered and space is plentiful, which makes the wider RS52 with its 135 centimetre platform a more obvious choice here than in the crowded parts of the province. More room to stand simply saves time along long facades and big roof planes.

Small historic centres outside the city

The province counts a series of small old centres with church squares, remnants of town walls and houses that meet the street without a pavement. There the standing spot is the limiting factor, because almost nothing sits between carriageway and facade and there is rarely room to set a tower out fully without blocking the way through. In those cases it makes sense to arrange delivery for a quiet part of the day.

Work on these buildings tends to be detailed: repointing, painting shutters, repairing a gutter or replacing a window sill. These are jobs at limited height where accuracy matters more than reach, and where a stable platform with room for your tools is worth more than the last few metres of build height. With 245 centimetres of platform length you can finish a whole window bay without moving.

Central in the country, close to the warehouse

This province lies centrally and almost borders the area where our warehouse stands, which keeps the run short. In practice that means little risk of surprises in the planning: an order placed before three in the afternoon on a working day is delivered the next working day, wherever in the province the address happens to be. That holds equally for a village on the Heuvelrug and an address on the western edge by the lakes.

Because the distance to Amsterdam is modest, customers here regularly choose to collect the equipment themselves. That is free of charge by appointment at Zeeburgerpad 89. Collecting does carry a higher deposit than delivery, since the equipment then travels out of our sight, and the room scaffold is the one exception where it makes no difference at all. Whatever you choose, the deposit is repaid within one working day of the equipment coming back.

Recurring maintenance in this province

On the sandy ground the work is dominated by timber: frames, fascias, boarding and dormers on pre-war villas need a cycle you cannot postpone for long without rot setting in. In the peat district it is more often the consequences of subsidence, such as cracks in the pointing and gutters that no longer fall the right way and stand full of water. That last one comes back more often than owners expect, because it only shows itself in a heavy shower.

In the younger estates maintenance is mostly a fixed painting cycle plus everything being added to roofs. All of it is carried out from a set-up you build yourself: we drive the equipment there and back, but assembly and dismantling stay with the user. For a standard build that mainly comes down to laying the parts out in order and following the steps in the instructions.