Installing outdoor lighting? Choose the right scaffold.

With a series of fittings you choose not on deck area but on how easily the thing moves, and that lands you at the RS51: 75 cm wide and light enough to reposition alone. You take it out a few times a day, from the front wall to the drive and from the drive round the back. Every centimetre narrower saves you trouble at the gate. What else stands ready is on the page about mobile scaffolds in the fleet.

Up top you need little room. A drill, a roll of cable, glands, sealant and the fitting itself lie loose on the deck of 245 cm, and that is enough. Hiring the wide 135 cm version has a drawback on this work: it is heavier to push along and will not pass everywhere, while going round the house is exactly what you do. Only when somebody comes with you to feed cable and hold fittings does that width win.

If every point stays under six metres and you work without help, the MiTower is a real option, since it is made for one person. With points under a roof overhang or high on an upper wall you will not reach with that, and you take the RS51 for the whole series anyway. Booking a separate hire period for two low lamps is a waste. Compare the heights at the one person tower for hire before you commit.

You do not hire a different height per lamp, so the highest point on your whole list settles the build. Usually that is a spot under the overhang or a fitting on the upper wall, not the lamp beside the front door you could nearly reach off a step. On an ordinary family house you end at 6 to 8 metres of working height. Per height the page on eight metres of reach shows which sections go into the tower.

Walk your list with a tape and note per point how high it sits and where the wheels will come. That last part differs from place to place: at the front door you stand on slabs, at the back on grass lying lower, and on the drive perhaps on a slope. The working height you give is the platform height plus about two metres of reach, so work your highest point back that way and pick your build to suit.

Hiring too tight only shows at the last fitting, and that is precisely the point at which you have already moved the mobile scaffold three times. Half a metre short and you drill into brickwork with your arms up, the hole runs crooked and the lamp hangs out of line with the others. With one point on the first floor, hire the taller build for the whole series at once, even if it stands high at most of the fittings.

Unlike a single lamp, here you plan a route. Put every point where something is to hang on a sketch of the house and number them in the order you work, so you never push the tower down the same path twice. Usually you start at the street side, go by the drive to the side wall and finish at the shed round the back. That keeps the number of moves down to four or five in total.

The ground changes as you go, and on this job that is the awkward part. At the front you are on slabs, on the drive on block paving with a fall, and at the back on grass or gravel that sinks under the wheels after rain. So take base plates for the places off the paving and level again at every standing position, even when the last one was two metres away. What to do on such ground is at setting up on uneven ground.

Every standing position brings its own obstacles. At the front it is the hedge or the bike rack, on the drive the car that has to move, at the yard a border, a pergola or a low garden wall, and everywhere the stabilisers stick out at an angle. So walk your route in advance and clear what is in the way in one pass. Look out along the way for the places where the cables have to enter the wall.

Here lies the biggest difference from a single outdoor lamp. For one fitting a hire day is enough, but with four to six points round the house you are soon two days busy with moving, levelling and cabling. Add digging work or a separate circuit and a day comes on top. For a normal round along wall and yard, reckon on two to four hire days, depending on how many points your sketch shows and how far apart they lie.

There is a waiting moment in it that other work does not have: only after sunset can you see whether the light does what you want. A spot that looks well aimed by day turns out to shine straight into the neighbours' bedroom, while a fitting by the shed leaves the path dark. You do that adjusting the next morning from the same standing position, so you want the hired mobile scaffold still standing then.

That extra day costs you next to nothing, because only the opening twenty four hours run at the full rate and every day after that comes with 95 per cent off. So plan your collection date at least one day after the evening you first switched everything on, and not on that day itself. Otherwise you are looking at a crooked spot while the van is already at the door. How to judge such a period is in the explanation of hire days.

Finish one point completely per standing position before you move on. Drill the hole, plug it, bore the sleeve, pull the cable through, wire the fitting, hang it level and seal the edge: that is the full round. Come back later because you forgot the sealant and you get to level and brake the tower again for two minutes of work. With a deck length of 245 cm you usually catch two spots close together from the same place.

Take up per standing position only what that point needs. Drill, masonry bit, spirit level, gland, sealant gun, the fitting and a length of cable is enough; the rest of your material stays below at the van or in the shed. Hang the small things in a bucket on the guard rail, because a plug that drops out of your hand at seven metres is not found again in the border underneath. With five positions in a day that happens by itself.

Moving is done with an empty deck, and with the circuit off as long as cables hang loose anywhere. Roll a spare cable up and do not leave it over the guard rail, or it comes along the moment you set the tower going and ends up dangling a metre further down the wall. If a switch or a sensor belongs in the scheme as well, look at fitting a movement sensor for the way you set the timing and the range.

You get a set of loose parts delivered, checked for number beforehand, not an erected tower. Pick a place for that stack where it may lie a few days without you having to carry things past it, and preferably central on your route: the drive or a corner of the front garden. With the order in on a working day before 15:00, the whole set arrives on the following working day, which lets you begin building the morning after.

The delivery date and the collection date you give yourself. Have it brought the day before you start, because raising it takes about half a day with two people and you do not want to be drilling as well that day. Putting it up is your own job; the manual supplied and the instruction film give the order of work. Bear in mind that you then move it alone, so set it straight on the first standing position of your route.

On the day you have chosen we come for the mobile scaffold. Taking it apart and laying it ready is yours, somewhere the van can reach, and after a round of the house that is often not where it was dropped off. Count the parts while you dismantle, because after five moves along the route something is more easily left behind somewhere. Which amount applies in your province for bringing and fetching is at the rates for delivery.

Load class 3 in the EN 1004 standard means the working deck takes 200 kg on every square metre. With a drill, a roll of cable and one person you stay far under that, so weight is not the problem on this job. The real risk here is routine: at the fourth point of the day you skip a check you still did neatly at the first. What the standard lays down is in the explanation of this scaffold standard.

So run the same list at every new standing position: wheels braked, all four stabilisers out, deck level and nothing loose left on it before you move. Never shift the tower with a person or with tools on it, not even over that single metre to the next spot. If it blows hard you stop, because drilling into a wall takes force and you push the tower away from you. At seven metres you feel that sooner than below.

Two things belong specifically to outdoor lighting. Never work on wiring with the power on: the circuit goes off and you check that up top with a voltage tester, at every point again. And do not keep working as dusk falls, however tempting it is to see whether the light sits right. Looking can be done in the dark, screwing cannot. Take a torch for that evening round and stay on the ground. All the rules are at working safely at height.