Replacing fascia board? Choose the right scaffold.

For this job you hire the Altrex RS52, the model with a deck 135 cm wide. That extra room is not a luxury here but the reason the work moves: two people stand side by side, tools lie about and stripped out timber joins them that you do not throw straight down. On a deck of 75 cm somebody has to step aside for every one of those. The widths sit together on the page about hiring a mobile scaffold.

Add up what actually goes up the tower on this job. A cordless driver with a spare battery, a crowbar, a masonry chisel, a sealant gun, a box of screws, a small circular saw and the new lengths themselves. On top of that, replacing a fascia board rarely stays tidy: nails, old fixings and lumps of rotten timber come free and have to go somewhere before you can carry on. The wide model gives you that spare room, and per position it saves several climbs to fetch something left below.

A narrow 75 cm tower has only a small window of use here: on your own, on a short run of edge at a dormer for instance, with lengths already cut to size and waiting. For the full perimeter of the roof you take that choice back within half a day. Room scaffolds drop out entirely, since they exist for indoor work up to about four metres. You are outside, at height, on an edge that runs right round the house and along which materials have to travel.

You measure here not to the gutter but to the top edge of the fascia board itself, including the roof trim or lead that laps over it. And you do not just want to reach it: you have to see just over it to drive screws and run sealant from above. A house of two or three storeys puts the required working height at 8 to 12 metres. From the deck you stand on, close to 2 metres of reach is added on top.

Measure from street level or the garden where the wheels land, not from the doorstep. A drive falling away to the road costs you half a metre, and at the back the terrace sometimes sits higher instead. If you go right round the house, measure each side separately: on a sloping plot the build height needed differs between front and back. At a roof edge on the second floor you see what that means in practice.

Hiring too low takes its revenge the moment you start levering. Stand with your shoulders under the edge and you cannot move the crowbar downwards, so you pull the old lengths towards you instead of away. The same applies to putting timber back: screws driven at eye level go in askew and pull the board out of line. A build higher than strictly needed costs little, while a second round of building costs half a day. What an arrangement up to 10 metres reaches is on that page.

With a fascia board you walk the whole perimeter of the roof, so your standing place shifts every half day. That means you are not clearing one spot but a route: along the front over the pavement, round the corner past the side wall and along the back through the garden. Walk that route once with a tape before delivery and see where the tower will not fit, because you would rather find that out now than with an assembled build in the way.

The second demand on space is the skip or trailer for the stripped out timber. It sits best halfway along your route, so that from every position you walk about the same distance, but it must never lie in the plane where the four stabilisers reach out. On brick paving and slabs the tower stands well; watch mainly for a drain cover that tips under a stabiliser, a sunken kerb, or a strip of gravel in which a wheel sinks once weight arrives.

If part of the build ends up on the public road, check beforehand with your council what applies in your street, and always leave a way through for pedestrians and pushchairs. Warn the neighbours as well, because the moment an old fascia board comes free it rains dust, moss and rotted splinters, and that lands badly on a parked car or a freshly cleaned window. For a spot that is not level, the guidance on stabilising and tying in helps you on.

You count this job not in square metres but in running metres of roof edge, and per side you are soon busy for half a day. Stripping goes fast, closing up again does not: measuring, cutting, fitting, levelling, sinking screws and sealing the joints. For a terraced house you land on four to six rental days, and on a detached house with an edge all round that rises. Add the building day, because on the day the parts arrive you get no board off.

The biggest unknown sits underneath the old fascia board. Only once the lengths are off do you see how the roof boarding edges, the rafter feet and the gutter brackets are doing, and rot almost never comes alone. Reckon from the start on an overrun day for repairs you cannot see yet. The weather comes on top of that: you do not want an opened eaves standing out in the rain overnight, so you work side by side and close up the same day.

For your booking that means planning wide. Only the opening 24 hours count at the full rate, while every following day carries 95% off, so a spare day for setbacks costs you almost nothing. Book tight and you stand on collection day with half an edge open and still have to ring to extend. Put your end date a full day past the day you expect to finish. Making that estimate is easier with the guidance on how many days you need.

Here sits the real problem of this job. New fascia boards usually come in four metre lengths and the deck you stand on is 245 cm long. Such a length does not lie flat on your position, and it will not simply be turned up there either: you would have it overhanging past the guard rail and knocking into the wall or the gutter. You solve that below, not at height, and it starts with a cutting plan before you go up.

Measure the roof edge per side and divide it into pieces you can actually handle, with the joints where a rafter foot or a butt joint sits anyway. Cut those pieces to size on the ground and only then bring them up. A length of around two metres two of you can pass up along the outside and rest on the guard rail. Anything longer you would rather haul with a line than swing across the deck of the tower.

If it cannot be done otherwise and one long length has to go up whole, hang it first with two screws at the ends and move the position to fix the middle. Work out beforehand how often that makes you move, because every shift means brakes off, stabilisers in, wheeling and setting it all again. Three moves per side is normal, five means your cutting plan is wrong. Where rot shows under the old timber, repairing wet rot follows on directly.

Three piles have to fit on your drive at once: the counted set of scaffold parts we deliver, the new timber the merchant brings and the skip the old fascia board goes into. Divide those spots before anything arrives, because everything you move later costs working time you meant to spend on the roof edge. Keep the skip furthest from your front door and the scaffold parts nearest where you start. Settle the booking on a working day before 15:00 and your set is loaded for the following working day.

Which date the parts come and which date they leave you fill in yourself. Have them brought a day before your first stripping day, so the tower is ready before the first board comes free. Building it is not on our list: you do that, with the manual in the box and the instruction video alongside. Allow half a day for it at this height and put two people on it, because the longest tubes you would rather hand up than carry.

When the last length is fixed and the sealant has cured, we drive back to take the parts away. You dismantle the tower and stack the parts where a van can get to them, so not boxed in by the skip. Count as you take it down, because among lumps of stripped timber and sawdust a brace or a small clamp goes missing faster than on clean work. Costs for bringing and fetching are at delivery per province.

Our towers are made to EN 1004 and the decks carry 200 kg per square metre in load class 3. Replacing a fascia board brings you nearer that than painting does: two adults, a tool box, a circular saw, new timber and a stack of stripped lengths add up quickly. Clear that old timber away at the end of each position rather than letting it grow. More on this is at load and weight on a mobile scaffold.

What this job really turns on is everything that can fall. Levered off lengths are full of old nails, a piece of rotten timber snaps unexpectedly and a dropped screw arrives hard from that height. Cone off or tape the strip below you, keep children and parked cars out of that zone, and never work with somebody directly underneath. Have a second person watching from the ground for as long as you are stripping timber off.

Beyond that the ordinary rules apply, and long timber makes them bite. A four metre length catches wind like a sail, so stop in gusts instead of finishing it quickly. Brake the wheels before you climb on and move the tower empty, without tools and without boards on the deck. After every shift put the four stabilisers out again and check that they all touch the paving; one hovering a centimetre carries nothing, and you find that out while levering up top.