Staining fascia boards? Choose the right scaffold.

For this job take the Altrex RS52, with its deck 135 cm wide. Staining fascia boards is work in which you look upwards almost the whole time and sweep along the edge with your arm out, and then you do not want the guard rail against your heels. On the wide deck your tin stands beside you rather than between your feet, and you step sideways without moving anything first. The range of mobile scaffolds to hire shows the widths together.

What has to travel up is modest on stain work, yet a little more than people reckon: a tin with a lid, a wide brush, a narrow brush for the seam between fascia board and gutter, abrasive paper or a scraper for loose fibre, a cloth and tape. Anything you leave below costs a climb of ten metres there and back, and on an edge that circles the whole house that goes wrong a few times a day.

You hire the narrow 75 cm version here only when the way through to your back garden truly allows nothing else. Measure that tightest point before you commit to anything, because a gate of 80 cm forces the choice for you. If the wide tower passes everywhere, take it: on long work along a roof edge, deck room wins over nimbleness. A tight passage decides more here than any specification sheet does. In doubt about sizes, look at the dimensions per model.

The point you have to reach is the top edge of the fascia board, and it sits higher than the gutter: the board usually runs on behind and above it up against the roof trim. If you stain the end grain and the top as well, you have to be able to look over it. On a house of two or three storeys you arrive at eight to twelve metres that way. On top of your deck height, count roughly two more metres of reach.

Your tape starts on the paving or garden where the wheels come to rest, and not on the threshold. Round a house that often differs per side: on the street front everything is flat, at the back the terrace falls away towards the fence. Measure per elevation and hold the highest of the four results when you book your build. What build you need for a roof edge at this height you see at working on the second floor.

Choosing tight punishes you at once with stain. Stand too low and you cannot see the top edge, so you work by feel, saturating one board and leaving the next half dry. On top of that, stain applied from underneath runs down your brush and into your sleeve. So hire a build that puts the top edge of the fascia board at eye level or just below. The heights in a row are on the page with working heights.

Unlike a flat piece of wall, your tower never stands still for long on this job. You are in effect laying out a route round the house: along the front, round the corner, past the side and out to the back of the garden. Pace that route with a tape before you order anything, and mind the corners above all. An extension, a bay or a low outbuilding decides whether the build turns the corner in one piece or has to come down in between.

The ground varies along such a route as well. At the front the brick paving is flat, at the side there is a gravel path and at the back the grass gives way. Lay boards or slabs under the wheels on soft stretches and check at each new position that the four stabilisers genuinely make contact. Underneath a roof edge you tend to find exactly the things that get in the way: a water butt, an outside tap with a hose reel, or a shed built hard against the wall.

Think about what hangs above you too. A roof overhang projecting half a metre, a satellite dish, a low telephone line or the branches of a tree decide how far you can build on that spot. Under an overhang you also have to stand further off the wall, which shortens your reach again and makes you shift more often than along a straight run. So walk the route overhead as well before ordering. For awkward ground, the guidance on uneven surfaces helps.

The state of the timber steers your whole plan here. Fascia boards that have stood out for years are grey and weathered, split open in places, and drink the first coat away as though nothing had gone on. Such timber takes two coats, sometimes three on the south side. Timber still in reasonable shape takes up evenly and manages with one refreshing coat. That difference between the two starting points soon means a day or two more hire.

Between coats there is waiting time you cannot make up anywhere. The first coat has to have gone fully into the grain before the second may follow, and how fast that goes depends on your product and on how warm it is outside. For an ordinary terraced house reckon on three to four rental days, and on more where the edge runs round the whole house. Never start before the dew is off, either, because then the stain stays sticky instead of sinking.

Booking wide works out well at the reservation stage. Only day one counts in full, and on every following day 95% comes off the rate, so a day of slack for a shower costs you next to nothing. Put your collection date a full day behind the day your second coat is planned, certainly while you still have to see how much the timber takes. Handing back early is always possible. How to judge such a period is at setting your rental period.

Your deck is 245 cm long, so per position you take a good two metres of roof edge. That sounds little for a house with fifteen metres of fascia board, but it is exactly the unit to think in. Always stain to a natural end point: a corner, a joint between two boards, a gutter bracket or an external corner trim. Stop halfway along a board and a dark line stands there once the timber has dried.

Work lengthways per position and not in height. Begin at the top against the roof trim, go over the face next, and finish with the underside and the end grain, so that every drop that falls still lands on untreated timber. Keep the narrow brush to hand for the gap between fascia board and gutter: that is where rainwater runs and where weathering always starts. Per position that detail costs a few extra minutes and saves you years.

Every move happens with an empty deck. Close your tin, take it down, release the brakes, fold the stabilisers in, wheel to the next stretch and set it all again before you climb back. Anyone doing that four or five times a day sees at once why you hire a mobile scaffold for a roof edge longer than for a closed wall of the same area. If painting the gutter follows later, plan it inside the same period.

We drop the tower off as loose, counted parts and not as something already standing. So choose beforehand where those tubes and platforms may lie for a few days without you having to walk round them: a drive, a carport or the strip along the fence. Do not put them on the stretch where you want to build first, or you begin by moving them. Complete the booking before 15:00 on a working day, and your set stands at the door the next working day.

You decide yourself which day the set arrives and which day it goes, and on stain work that choice hangs on the forecast. Let the parts turn up on the eve of your first run of dry days, so you build while you still can and start staining the next morning. Building is yours, guided by the paper instruction in the box and the film that shows the order; delivering a standing tower is not in our range and we send no fitter with it.

Once the second coat is on and has sunk away, we come by to load the dismantled set back in. Taking it apart is your work, and you put the parts ready at a point the driver can reach with the van, so not behind a closed gate and not spread over three corners of the garden. Count as you dismantle, because a clamp disappears into grass in no time. Bringing and fetching is priced at the delivery charges per province.

In load class 3 there may be 200 kg on every square metre of deck, and that is the class our towers fall into under EN 1004. For stain work that is generous, but at a roof edge there are often two of you up there: one staining and one touching in the end grain and the seams. Add the tin, the tools and the box of cloths. More is at fall protection on a mobile scaffold.

On this job you look upwards for hours, and that is exactly why the standing rules weigh heavier here. You cannot see your feet, you step back without looking and you lean over the rail with your arm out. Put the brakes on before you climb, move only with an empty deck without tin or person aboard, and stop as soon as the wind gets up. Ten metres up along a roof edge you feel gusts that hardly register below.

The risk that belongs to stain is the spilt drop. Stain stays on aluminium and makes a deck slippery within a minute, so lay card under your tin and wipe up whatever lands beside it at once. Be careful with the gutter as a support as well: it is fixed for water, not for your weight. Keep the strip below your position free of people and parked cars, because a tin tipping over the edge sprays far into the garden.