Installing a camera? Choose the right scaffold.

For a camera going onto a wall at four to five metres you hire the Altrex MiTower, a tower of 75 cm wide that is meant for a single user. Camera brackets rarely sit on an open stretch of brickwork. They go on a corner, above a door or beside a garage, and there is often barely a metre of room. Those 75 cm are then the difference between fitting and shuffling. What else the model copes with is set out on the page about hiring a MiTower.

The range of this model runs from 4.2 to 6.2 metres of working height, and for a camera you sit at the bottom of that range. That is exactly why it suits the job. You build only a couple of frames, you are up quickly, and you can wheel the tower along on your own. That counts for a lot here, because you go up and down several times per camera and you would rather not have to call in a second pair of hands for it.

The ceiling of this model is that it carries one person. If two of you want to be up there looking at the picture together, or a drill, a reel and a coil of cable have to come along, it is better to hire a mobile scaffold of the wide sort, with its platform of 245 cm. For one camera with a bracket that is overkill, though along a row of units the extra floor earns its keep. The two sit side by side in this comparison of the models.

On this job you measure to the bracket and not to the gutter. A camera that has to give an overview usually hangs just under the roof edge of a single storey house, or on the corner of a two storey house at first floor level. If that puts you at four to five metres, you hire a working height of 4.2 to 5.2 metres. The page about a working height of 5 metres shows which build belongs with that figure.

That working height is not the height of your platform. You stand on a floor roughly two metres below the highest point you can still reach and handle, and those last two metres are your own arms and shoulders. At 5.2 metres of working height the floor you stand on sits at about 3.2 metres. Measure from the ground under the wheels rather than from the doorstep, because if the driveway lies lower than the terrace your distance to the camera grows.

Hiring too tight costs you more than half a metre on camera work. Go too low and you end up fiddling overhead at a bracket that has to come right within tenths of a degree, which does not work. You can no longer hold your phone squarely in front of you either. So pick the height that puts the camera at eye level or just below. If the mounting point sits above five metres, look at a bracket on the second floor and hire a taller build.

Do not park the tower squarely under the mounting point but half a metre to one side. Stand directly beneath it and you are looking at the underside of the housing with no idea which way the lens points. From the side you sight along the axis of the picture and can aim the camera while you hold it. There is a bonus too: the build is then not standing in the middle of the frame, so the person below sees on the phone what the camera will really record.

The four wheels want a level surface that will not sink, with enough slack around them to swing the stabilisers out. Block paving, slabs or tarmac are fine, a planting bed or loose gravel is not. Cameras like to hang above a driveway or a back door, and that is where the bins and the downpipe are. Clear that strip before the parts arrive, because shifting a built tower halfway through takes longer than tidying up now. A sloping path is covered in this guide to stabilising a tower.

When you choose the standing spot, think about where the cable comes from as well. If it runs through the crawl space to the consumer unit, you want the scaffold on the side of the gland so you are not dragging half a reel across the paving. Have a look at where the camera will see over the boundary, too. It saves an awkward conversation later if the neighbours can watch the picture while you set it, and that conversation is easier while the set-up is still standing.

Hanging the thing takes an hour: drill the holes, fix the bracket, land the cable, clip the camera on. The aiming takes the rest. You set the angle, walk the sight line below, look at the screen, and climb again to turn it a few degrees. That repeats itself two or three times, and with a camera that also has to work in the dark you wait for dusk on top of that. Two hire days is the honest minimum for a job that looks like a morning.

Add the time the tower itself asks for. Building up to a shade under five metres costs you half an hour to an hour, taking it down slightly less, and in those hours you touch nothing on the camera. Hang more than one, front and back for instance, and each extra unit brings a move with it, so the third hire day arrives on its own. Better to book three days from the start than to face collection with a half aimed picture.

Booking generously costs little here. The full rate applies to the opening 24 hours alone, and each further day you tack on behind it carries 95 per cent off. An extra day to test in peace is therefore cheaper than a second booking once the picture turns out to be wrong. So put your end date on the day after your last test evening, not on the evening itself. What a longer period does to your booking is explained in this piece on daily and weekly hire.

From a single set-up you reach the mounting point and roughly half a metre either side of it. That sounds like nothing, but for this job it is plenty: the bracket, the gland and usually the trunking as well sit inside that patch. What you do have to plan is the order. Drill first, hang the bracket, pull the cable through, and only then clip the camera on, so you are not drilling with a lens in your hand and dust settling on the dome.

Take everything you need above with you in one climb. Installing a camera nearly always trips over the forgotten item: the right plugs, a second drill bit, a ferrule, tape, or the phone you check the picture on. Hang a tool bag on the guard rail and run through the list before you step on, because every missing screw is a trip down and back up. With one person at a time on the platform there is nobody up there to pass you anything either.

Aiming is a two person task, but not with both of you on the tower. You stand up top with a hand on the camera, the other stands below with the picture in front of them and says what needs to happen. That way you do in minutes what otherwise costs three climbs. Working alone, open the app on your own phone and hold it beside the lens. If you are also fitting an outside light on the same wall, do it from this set-up.

What turns up is not a finished tower but a counted, complete set of loose parts: uprights, braces, a platform and the stabilisers. On this job that takes a moment to get used to, because for one small housing there will be a fair stack of aluminium next to the driveway. Pick a spot in advance where that stack lies dry and blocks nobody. Place your order on a working day before 15:00 and the van is out the next working day, so a failed camera gets replaced inside two days.

Both dates, the drop off and the pick up, you enter yourself, and on this job you want the parts here a day ahead of the mounting. The build is then standing and you can drill first thing the following morning. Putting it up is your part: the manual plus the instruction video take you step by step past frames, braces and stabilisers, and it costs half an hour to an hour. Do not start once the light is going. There is more in the step by step on building a tower.

Collection is ours again, on the date you gave us. Your part is the dismantling and stacking of every part in the same place the van dropped them, so the driver can get at them with a sack truck. Count the parts back as you strike the tower; a single brace left in the grass costs you more time later than that counting does. The fixed amounts for bringing and fetching vary by province and you see them beforehand under the delivery rates.

The platform is allowed 200 kg per square metre, the load class 3 that EN 1004 grants a build of this type. With a camera, a cordless drill and a tool bag you are nowhere near it. The real limit lies elsewhere: this model is made for one person, so somebody climbing up for a quick look at the picture does not belong there. Let whoever judges the image stand on the ground. The standard itself is explained in this article on the scaffold norm.

Even on an hour long job the basics hold. Brake the wheels before you step on, never wheel the build along while anyone or any tool is on it, and come down as soon as the wind gets up. Electrics come on top of that here: switch the circuit off before you land a supply cable, and do not work on a connection at four metres with wet hands. A voltage tester weighs nothing, fits in a breast pocket and takes the guesswork out of that check.

The risk that belongs to this job is small and irritating at once: dropped tools. You are handling little screws, a drill bit and a lens, and you are often above a path that people use. Leave nothing loose on the guard rail, use a bag that stays shut, and cordon off the zone below if children are playing or the route to the front door runs underneath. The rest of the rules are in the guidance on working at height.