Coating a roof? Choose the right scaffold.

For roof coating you take the wide Altrex build, the RS TOWER 52. That frame measures 135 cm between the uprights and carries a platform length of 245 cm, and you choose those dimensions here for what has to fit on the deck. Two buckets of coating, a stirrer, a roller or a lance, and then room to get past all of it towards the ladder hatch. On a cramped deck everything is in the way after the second bucket, exactly when you want to squeeze by with wet hands.

A narrow 75 cm model stays thinkable when the only way to the back of the house is a path a metre wide. You give up deck space, and on this job you feel that at once: every bucket you cannot put down sits where your foot belongs. So measure the tightest passage to the roof edge before anything else. The widths available in our mobile scaffold hire range are listed per model together with their reach.

Do not pick the model on the roof surface. The coating itself happens walking over the tiles with the proper roof gear, while the tower stays at the edge to step off and to hand material across. What you hire is about supply and access, not about how far you reach across the roof. To lay the sizes beside each other before you commit to a width, use the overview of scaffold dimensions, because swapping on the working day itself is not possible.

The highest point on this job is not the ridge but the edge or the gutter where you step across. You want your hips above it, otherwise you are scrambling at the moment somebody hands you a bucket. On a house of two storeys that edge sits around 6 to 8 metres, so you hire a working height of 8 to 12 metres. Add roughly 2 metres of reach to your platform height, which puts your deck somewhere between 6 and 10 metres.

The measuring point below is the ground under the castors, not the doorstep at your front door. If the garden lies half a metre lower than the terrace, that half metre counts in full towards what you book. Check as well whether an overhang projects past the gutter, because that decides how close your deck can come to the edge and whether the step across stays comfortable. The page on mobile scaffolds with 10 metres of working height shows which build belongs to that reach.

Hiring too low bites quickly here. One platform short and the buckets go over your head and across the gutter, which is exactly when coating runs over the edge. The step onto the roof surface becomes needlessly awkward as well. One level extra adds little to the rental price and saves you a whole week of fiddling about. If your gutter hangs at the height of a second floor, hold the top of the range.

You stand the tower along the elevation that gets you nearest the roof edge, usually the side with the lowest gutter and the most room beside it. At the base you need more space than the frame itself takes, because the stabilisers splay outwards and you want to walk between them with full buckets. Keep a flat patch free as well for the stock of coating, out of the sun and covered against a shower, so you are not dragging buckets through the garden halfway through the day.

Look at the ground before the van arrives. Paving and a driveway are fine, a border that sinks after a wet night is not. If the terrain falls away, take that up in the build and not with a plank under one castor. Count on the obstacles that stand along a roof edge anyway: a downpipe, an extension with a small flat roof, a shed against the wall, a hedge that has run away with itself. For a sloping surface, the explanation on uneven ground helps.

Think about what happens below you while you are busy above. Coating dripping off a roller or a lance lands on the paving, so put sheeting or cardboard under your access point and along the wall. If part of the scaffold ends up on the pavement, leave room for people passing and check with the council what is allowed in your street. Something like that is better arranged a week before delivery than on the morning you want to begin.

A roof coating is not an afternoon job. You begin with cleaning and drying, then usually a primer or a thinned first coat, and only after that the finish. Between those coats sits waiting time that nothing can shorten, and it is exactly that waiting time which decides how long you hire a mobile scaffold. For an average pitched roof on a terraced house you land on three to five rental days, while the application itself fills only part of them.

The weather counts for more on this job than on most other maintenance. The roof surface has to be dry before you begin, it must not turn too cold while the coat cures, and a shower on fresh material means starting again. So do not look at the first day it could be done, but at a run of days that are usable back to back. Add the build day to that, plus the morning when you clear up and clean the deck.

The way the hire is priced means planning generously costs little. You are charged the whole rate for one 24 hour period, and any day you hang behind it carries a 95 per cent discount. A spare day for disappointing weather barely shows on your invoice, while booking tight means standing beside a half coated roof waiting for the collection van. Working out such a period is set out in this piece on rental days, with rules of thumb per job.

From the platform you do three things on this job: step across to the roof, take material in and hand it on, and bring everything back down at the end of the day. That 245 cm of platform length gives you room for two buckets and your tools with space to stand beside them. Put the bucket you are working from on the ladder side, so you are never shuffling past your own stock with wet hands and a loaded roller.

How often you reposition depends on how far up the roof you work from the edge. Most people pick out the spot where the step across is calmest and then leave the tower standing there until that roof surface is finished, rather than shunting it along behind the work. If you do move it, clear the whole deck first. A scaffold with buckets on it does not get pushed forward, not even across two metres of paving.

What people misjudge is the quantity of material. A roof surface is bigger than it looks from below and the coating goes on in several layers, so you go up and down more often than you expected. Work out beforehand how many buckets one coat costs and set them ready at the foot of the tower. That saves an unplanned trip to the builders merchant halfway through a coating day. If it is specifically about coating roof tiles, the cleaning beforehand comes on top of that.

The scaffold arrives as a set of loose parts, complete and counted, laid down on the spot you point out. Decide that spot in advance, because on a roof coating job the strip along the wall is already taken by buckets and sheeting. A corner of the driveway works better than the path you walk with material all week. An order placed before 15:00 on a working day leaves the depot the following working day.

The arrival day and the day it leaves again are both fixed by you when you reserve. Let that choice follow the forecast: have it delivered the day before your first coating day, so you build calmly and can get onto the roof the next morning. If a cleaning round comes before the coating, simply count those days in as well. The rates for delivery and collection are listed per province, so you can put that item in your budget straight away.

Once the final coat is on we come and take the lot away again. You make sure the scaffold is dismantled and complete on the same spot where it was dropped, so the driver can load it in one go without you needing to be there. Do not break it down until the roof is dry and walkable, otherwise a spattered set stands on the pavement. Check the parts off as you dismantle and nothing stays behind the fence.

Every platform in the hire fleet is approved to 200 kg per square metre, the limit of load class 3 within EN 1004. On roof coating you come closer to it than on other maintenance, because two full buckets plus yourself plus somebody handing up adds together fast. Spread the weight over the full platform length instead of piling it all at the access point, and send empty buckets straight back down. The explanation of loading and weight sets out the figures.

The fixed rules apply now as well. Lock all four castors before you start climbing, never push the tower forward with anyone or anything on it, and stop work as soon as it begins to blow hard. On this job the step across to the roof surface is added: that is a separate moment with its own risk and you do not take it with a bucket in your hand. Only set foot on the roof surface itself with the equipment that is meant for the job.

The risk that belongs to coating is a slippery deck. Spilt material dries to a glassy film you notice only when you slide on it. Lay cardboard down, sweep spatters away the moment they land, and keep the zone under the tower clear of people, because a falling bucket brings its lid and its whole contents down with it. What else is agreed while you are working at this height is written out in the rules for working at height.