Interior painting? Choose the right scaffold.

For paintwork inside the house the Altrex RS44 room scaffold is the model you go and hire. It comes to a working height of 3 to 4 metres and covers just about any ceiling in a home with that. For a void you look further, but for ordinary rooms this is the size. More telling still is the build: it is made so you can take it through an interior door from roughly 70 cm. What there is to choose in this format is shown with the room scaffolds available to hire.

Measure your doors before booking, and not only the door of the room itself. The route runs from the front door along the hall, sometimes past a stair rail and then into a room, and the narrowest point on that route governs everything. A handle sticking out, a threshold or a door that only opens halfway will each swallow ten centimetres. Note straight away whether the hall has a turn the longest tube will not go round. Whether that works is covered in the piece on a tower through the doorway.

An outdoor model such as the RS51 or RS52 is a poor swap for this job. Those start at 4.2 metres of working height, weigh more to carry inside and have a footprint you cannot place anywhere in a living room. If you are carrying on outside with the facade, hire a mobile scaffold for that separately and leave the room scaffold standing indoors. Keep the two bookings apart, because each model has its own build sequence and its own place to stand.

The highest point on this job is the ceiling itself, or the top edge of a wall just below it. In many homes that sits at 2.6 metres and in an older front room at 3.5 metres. That brings you to a working height of 3 to 4 metres, with your platform between 1 and 2 metres. The rest of the height you supply yourself: from the deck you stand on, an adult with a roller still reaches a good two metres higher. You enter that figure when you book your hire period.

Indoors, always measure from the floor the wheels will rest on up to the ceiling. That sounds obvious, but in a house with a raised floor, a thick underlay or a step up into the conservatory the figure differs from room to room. So walk your rooms one by one, write down the largest measurement and hire on that, and you will not have to improvise indoors. Which build belongs to such a size is shown at a working height of 4 metres.

Choosing too tight is something your shoulders notice at once. Half a metre short and you push the roller against the ceiling with straight arms, lose sight of the wet edge and see the bands come back as stripes once they dry. On top of that you end up working with a pole too long for the room. Take the build above instead and you paint under a ceiling standing upright. It also removes the temptation to climb onto the top rail.

Indoors you do not choose your surface, you inherit it. Laminate, parquet, vinyl or tiles: everything in a living room is flat but vulnerable, and the weight of a tower comes down on four small wheels. So lay hardboard sheets, thin plywood or a stout tarpaulin under the foot, and rather than sliding over it, lift the sheet along when you move. Grit under a wheel makes a two metre score in one pass, so sweep the floor and check the wheels are clean before they enter.

The furniture is the second half of the puzzle. Push what you can towards the middle, cover it and keep a clear metre all round, because you have not only the tower but yourself and a paint tray to fit in. Anything too heavy stays put and gets sheeting over it. A room that is half empty works faster than one where you are constantly squeezing past. Think of the pendant light or the downlighters too: those come off before the tower rolls underneath.

Then watch the things that only crop up inside. A threshold between hall and room is not one to take with an assembled tower, a radiator under the window costs you half a metre, and a rug left down will ruck up under the wheels. Look at where the light falls as well, since you want to see the wet edge of your band; stand a lamp in the corner if need be. Setting a tower up inside is covered in the guidance on indoor use.

Work in rooms, not in square metres. An average living room means the ceiling in two coats, the walls with it and the cutting in along skirtings and frames. With preparing, shifting furniture and masking, that is a day and a half before you have hit a single snag. Add the hall and a bedroom straight away and you are on two to three hire days, and you genuinely need the tower on each of them because you build and position it afresh in every room.

The waiting on this job sits between the coats. Emulsion on a ceiling has to lay off and dry before the second coat can go on, and in a closed room with little ventilation that takes longer than the tin promises. Open the windows, keep the room warm and put the second coat calmly on the following morning. Rushing a day gets you a ceiling you redo later anyway. Count this work in mornings rather than in loose hours.

It helps your planning that the rental price sits heavily at the front. Over the first twenty four hours you settle the whole rate, and after that each day counts for only a twentieth, since 95 per cent is taken off. An extra day to finish at leisure therefore costs little, whereas a booking cut too fine means leaving a ceiling half done. Build a day of margin into your reservation. Otherwise have a look at what a realistic hire period is.

Your platform is 245 cm long, and that is what you divide the ceiling with. A room of four by four metres takes two or three positions, and from each one you finish a strip across the full width. Work in bands that overlap while the edge is still wet, because a dried join stays visible in raking light. So put the division between two positions at a beam, a line or the edge of the ceiling. Split the room up on paper before you start rolling.

Take up in one go what you need. That is more than you think: the tray, the roller with its pole, a brush for the corners, a cloth and tape. Do not stand the tray loose on the deck but clamp it or hang it from the rail, because a tipped tray above a wooden floor is a bigger problem than one out on the pavement. Anything that will not fit stays below. Run through that list before you climb, since every descent costs you the wet edge.

Repositioning goes differently inside than out. First you take your materials off, then the protective sheet from under the wheels, roll the tower along and put the sheet back before setting the brakes. That is two minutes each time, and precisely why you finish as much as you can from each position. In an average living room you move three or four times. If you go on to paint high walls afterwards, extra positions come with it.

The room scaffold is delivered as a full, counted set of separate parts. For work inside that is an advantage, because you carry the pieces one by one along the hall and only assemble them in the room. Point the driver to a spot where the set can go, usually the pavement, the drive or just inside the front door. Book on a working day before the clock passes 15:00 and your set travels to your address the very next working day, so prop the porch or the gate open in good time.

Which day the parts turn up, and which day they go, is yours to set. Feel free to have them brought a day before your first painting day: building is your own task, with the manual and the video beside you, and indoors it takes a little extra time because everything is hauled to the right room first. Lay a strip of cardboard down the hall so the tubes miss your floor and your skirtings while you carry. That way you begin the next morning with a tower already standing.

When you have finished we come and collect the parts. You strike the tower, carry the pieces back out through the hall and stack them complete on the pavement, so the driver can reach them without a detour. Count them as you dismantle and you will spot a forgotten brace before the van pulls up. Set the parts down dry, since they go straight back into the load. What collection and delivery come to in your province is listed with the transport rates.

The deck you stand your roller on is tested to EN 1004 and belongs to load class 3, meaning 200 kg is allowed per square metre. On paintwork indoors you seldom get near it, but do add up when a second person comes along and a full tub of emulsion is standing there. What matters more is not concentrating the weight at one end, for instance by putting all your material in one corner of the deck. A tub by the rail and the rest in the middle keeps the load even.

Inside the house the same basics apply as outside. Lock the wheels before you climb, and bear in mind that a brake on a poured floor or on laminate grips less than it does on block paving. Move the tower with a bare deck, no tools and nobody aboard. Strong wind is no worry indoors, but a draughty door slamming shut startles you just as badly, so wedge it. Check the brakes again once you have put the protective sheet back.

The hazards that truly belong to this work sit in the things around you. Emulsion spatter makes a deck slippery, a dropped roller hits a wooden floor or a cabinet, and above your head there may still be a light or a smoke alarm. Keep the area under the deck clear and send children and pets out of the room while you work. Park tools you are not using in the middle of the deck. The full set of rules is at safe work at height.