Painting fascia boards? Choose the right scaffold.

For this paintwork you take the Altrex RS52, the wide model with a working deck of 135 cm. That width is no luxury here. Opaque paint comes out of a tin that stands open beside you, and around it lie a roller, two brushes, a scraper and a roll of tape. On a cramped deck you push that lot ahead of you all day and set the tin down somewhere new each time. What else stands ready is set out on the page about mobile scaffolds you can hire.

The deck is 245 cm long, and you use that length along the roof edge, exactly the direction a fascia board runs in. The extra width you use the other way round: a step backwards to judge whether your coat really covers. On 135 cm you have that step and on 75 cm you do not. With two of you up there, one working the end grain and the other rolling the face, the room is taken up straight away.

If you still pick the narrow 75 cm version, it is because the way round the back forces it: a gate, a path between two fences, a hinge that will not give. You give up working room and the tin ends up between your feet. Where both models fit past the house, paint in coats favours the wide deck, if only because you stand on it for three rounds. All the sizes sit together in this overview of mobile scaffold dimensions.

The top edge of the fascia board is the highest thing you have to reach, up where the timber closes against the tiles or the zinc capping. That sits above the gutter hanging in front of it, and you need to see over it to judge whether the top few centimetres are covered. Across two or three storeys that edge lands somewhere between 8 and 12 metres of working height. What that means for the build is shown on the page about ten metres of working height.

Your tape does not start at the front door step but at the point where the wheels will stand. A drive falling away towards the street, a sunken terrace at the back or a garden half a metre below the path all push that starting point down. Then work the stated figure back to your feet, because between platform height and the number you book sits roughly two metres of reach, so twelve metres at the top means standing at about ten.

Choosing too tight punishes you harder with opaque paint than with other work. Half a metre too low and you brush the top band with your arm raised, the paint runs back down the handle and the coat stays thinner there than on the rest of the board. You only notice once everything is dry, and then that band has to come along in the next round anyway. Over three rounds you pay for a wrong height three times.

What is unusual about this job is that you work out your standing positions once and then come back to them two or three more times. So walk the whole roof before delivery and chalk on the paving where the tower goes each time. Number those spots from left to right. In round two you then drive the scaffold to number four without thinking about it, and your fresh coats fall in with the joins of the previous ones.

Where you put those spots depends on the ground. Block paving, slabs and a solid drive carry the load fine; grass that sinks under the wheels after a wet night does not, and over a job of several days that goes wrong more often than over one morning of work. The four stabilisers stick out at an angle, so every side needs more room than the tower itself takes up. A falling stretch you level as described in working on uneven ground.

Around a roof edge the obstacles nearly always sit in the same places. A hedge grown against the wall, a shed roof in the corner, a flat roofed extension you cannot get round, a downpipe on the corner and the neighbours' boundary fence. If a position lands on the pavement, ask the council whether that is allowed in your street, and let the neighbours know that the hired tower stays there for a number of days.

Count your rounds first and your days second. A terraced house with fascia boards front and back easily takes six to eight setups per round, and you repeat that round for the primer, the undercoat and the topcoat. In practice a complete roof therefore comes out at four to six hire days. On a detached house where the timber also carries round both corners, add two days, certainly if the side elevations have to be set out separately.

Inside that period sit hours in which nothing happens. A covering coat has to be hard enough before the next one goes on, and the tin in your hand decides that time, not your diary. Then there is the weather: in full afternoon sun paint skins over too quickly on a warm wall, and after a cold night you are looking at damp timber until gone ten. So plan the painting itself in blocks of half a day.

The way the rate is built up helps here. Over the first 24 hours you pay the full amount; every hire day you stick behind that carries 95 per cent off, so a waiting day between two coats hardly registers. Book too tight and a half finished roof edge is left standing while the collection day has already arrived. Set your end date well past the day the topcoat has to go on. What a long job means for planning is in this explanation of hire days.

Per standing position you treat a stretch of roof edge of 245 cm, the length of your deck. That sounds little for a roof of twelve metres, but it is exactly the distance you bridge left to right without stretching. Finish that stretch completely in one go: the end joint first, then the underside you never see from the ground, then the face. Stop halfway along a board and the next round starts with a lap mark in the middle of the timber.

Always put your transition on a joint between two boards or on a corner piece. Then the place where one setup stops coincides with a line that was there anyway, and after three coats you still see nothing. Within a setup you work from top to bottom, so drips land on untreated timber and not on a coat that has just gone on. If the same visit also covers painting the gutter with a brush, do that setup by setup.

Before you shift along, take everything off the deck. Close the tin, lift roller and brushes off the guard rail and carry them down before you move the tower. That feels laborious for a move of two metres, but a toppled tin of opaque paint on the block paving costs you half a day. Take up only what that particular round uses, too: the primer round needs no topcoat, and on the last round the abrasive paper can stay below.

What arrives is not an assembled tower but a stack of parts counted out beforehand. Decide in advance where that stack may lie, because the strip along the wall you would rather keep free for your painting kit. The drive, a corner of the front garden or the piece of pavement you are not using all do the job. Put the booking through before 15:00 on a working day and everything is there the day after, provided that is a working day as well.

Which day it turns up and which day it goes back are yours to name, and with paintwork you hang that choice on the forecast. Find a dry, not too cold day for putting it up, and you can carry straight on with sanding and dusting. Raising it is your part of the job: two people spend a half day on it, manual and instruction video propped up nearby. Count that half day in, because little paint reaches the timber then.

On the agreed date we come to collect the mobile scaffold. Taking it apart and stacking it is yours to do, somewhere reachable from the road. Only start on that once the topcoat feels genuinely hard, otherwise you press fresh paint against the tubes while you are carrying. Count the parts as you dismantle and you know the set is right before it goes on transport. What delivery and collection come to in your province is in the overview of delivery charges.

You stand on a working deck rated at two hundred kilos per square metre, which the EN 1004 standard calls load class 3, and with coats in rounds you creep closer to that than you would think. Two people, a full tin of opaque paint, a bucket with brushes and water and a box of sanding kit all add up. Do not put the heavy items in one and the same corner either. How that class is laid down is in the article on the standard for mobile scaffolds.

The fixed rules apply again every round, even when you shift the tower a metre for the tenth time. Brake all the wheels before you put a foot on the ladder, never leave anyone or anything on the deck while you move along, and come down as soon as it starts to blow hard. Wind is doubly awkward with opaque paint, because it drives dust and seed into a wet coat that will never come smooth again.

What actually goes wrong with this paintwork happens on your own deck. After three rounds a film of spatter has built up that you slip on, so lay cardboard down and change it as soon as it shines. Keep the zone under the roof edge clear as well, because a brush you let go of at ten metres arrives below at some speed. Tell the household not to walk underneath. The rest of the rules sit at working safely at height.