Replacing a gutter? Choose the right scaffold.

For this work you usually take the Altrex RS51, the narrow tower listed in the brochure as the RS TOWER 51. It is 75 cm wide and builds from 4.2 to 14.2 metres of working height, of which you need only the lowest settings for a low gutter. The slim measure helps with getting there: you generally have to go round the back with it, past a garage or along a path down which the old gutter also has to come. The range sits on the page about mobile scaffold hire.

Up top you handle material longer than the tower itself. The deck measures 245 cm, and that is just enough to lay a gutter section down while you slide it into the brackets. It stays a make do, because the end of such a section always overhangs and has to rest somewhere. So keep the deck clear and put screws, sealant and tools in a tub on the rail instead of loose beside your feet on the platform.

Because you nearly always work in a pair, the wider RS52 with its 135 cm deck is a serious option here. Two people side by side with a gutter section between them is cramped on a narrow deck. Tackling short lengths of plastic gutter on your own, the narrow version does. Think about the way through to the back garden as well, because a wide tower does not pass everywhere. The difference between the two is in the comparison of sizes.

This job asks for a lower build than most wall jobs. You do not have to look over the gutter but hold it, press it into the brackets and screw it in place, and that goes best with the channel bottom somewhere between your waist and your chest. Stand higher and you work bent forward with a four metre section in your hands, which nobody keeps up for an hour without feeling it in their back.

The sum stays simple. Take the height of the deck you will stand on, add around 2 metres for what your arms add, and you have the working height you enter when you hire the tower. For this job that deck therefore sits strikingly low. For the gutter of an extension, a garage or a low back wall at some three to four metres you land on 4.2 to 6.2 metres. On the page about working at six metres you see what that build looks like.

Choose too tight and you stand pushing with your arms stretched out, unable to get the gutter tight into the brackets, which shows up later as a pool of water at one point. Choose too generously and you stand above your work and have to stoop at every screw. So measure beforehand exactly how high the gutter line sits, counted from the ground the wheels will rest on. For an extension or a store on the ground floor you stay near the lowest setting.

On a replacement you need room not only under the scaffold but beside it. The old channel you take out has to go somewhere, and the new sections, the brackets and the stop ends have to lie somewhere until you pass them up. Reserve a strip along the wall or a piece of drive for that, and bear in mind that a gutter length of five metres does not simply fit between two shrubs. The four stabilisers ask for their own space as well.

The ground has to be flat and firm, because you move the tower regularly with tools about and you lift heavy material up it. Gravel, a soft border or loose slabs are harder here than on light work. Where the garden falls away, level the base before you build on, since a build out of true shows up straight away in your bracket line on this job. The approach for that is in the piece on stabilising and anchoring.

Mind the place where the downpipe sits as well, because on a replacement that often comes partly out. You need room there to work and to lay the lower length of pipe down with its clips. If the tower stands on the street side, keep a way through free for pedestrians and do not put the old zinc on the pavement, but straight into a trailer or a skip you have standing ready for it beside the house.

A gutter replacement is no morning's work. A repair at one point is finished in a day; here the whole length comes out. On the first day you build and take the old channel off, and then it often turns out that the brackets or the timber behind them are past it too. After that comes setting out the new bracket line, laying the gutter in, connecting the outlet and finishing the corners and stop ends. For a single wall hold two to three days, and for a whole house more.

Waiting times sit in the material and in the weather. Glued joints in plastic and soldered work in zinc want dry weather and time, and a wall you have lying open you do not want to leave out in the rain. So do not plan the breaking out day just before a wet spell. Count as well on fetching a replacement piece of fascia board or an extra bracket costing you half a day, certainly if you start on a Saturday.

For the rental price that works out well. Over the first 24 hours you settle the full rate; from every day you stick behind it, 95% comes off the amount, so a spare day adds almost nothing to the total. On a job that depends this much on what you find behind the old channel, that is the cheapest insurance there is, and it saves you a second delivery. More on that is at estimating the hire duration.

The length of your deck decides how far you get per position, and that is a good two metres. A gutter is usually a fair bit longer, so you work in stages along a line that has to be right over the whole wall. Set the fall out first, therefore, before you start fitting: run a line from the highest point to the outlet, mark where every bracket goes and check that line from the ground. Only then do you start screwing.

Getting the sections up is the second thing to watch. Pass a long piece of gutter up from the ground rather than carrying it with you over the ladder, and let the second person stay below until the section lies on the brackets. Never lift anything while you are moving the tower, and lay a section you are not using flat on the ground instead of leaning it against the rail, where the first gust takes it away.

Where people go wrong here is the number of moves. With ten metres of gutter you shift four or five times, and each time the brakes have to come off, the stabilisers up and everything back again afterwards. Count those minutes into your day plan, because four moves a day soon make an hour. If the outlet is due for renewal too, take replacing the rainwater downpipe along in the same rental period now the tower is there.

You get the scaffold delivered as loose parts, complete and counted, and you put them together yourself. We do not build and we hand over nothing assembled; with the manual and the instruction video that works fine with two people, and on this job you need that second person anyway. Look carefully at where you drop that stack, because the space beside the wall is already badly needed for the gutter material you are about to fit.

The ordering deadline is 15:00; whatever is in before that on a working day stands ready the next working day. Handy if you only ordered the gutter after taking the measurements. You pin the delivery date and the collection date yourself, so let the tower come a day before demolition day. Fetching it yourself is free and by appointment at our collection address. What you pay for delivery depends on your province and is in the overview of transport charges.

When you have finished, the mobile scaffold comes apart and you set all the parts together for the driver, who takes them away again. Plan that collection day preferably after the first decent shower, so you can still see whether the new gutter really runs off and does not come over the rim anywhere. If a bracket turns out to be needed, you are back at height within a quarter of an hour instead of having to book again.

The decks carry an EN 1004 rating, load class 3, which works out at 200 kg per square metre. On a replacement that is no theoretical figure: two people, a box of screws, a cordless drill and a section of gutter or an old zinc channel mount up nicely. Spread that weight over the deck and do not leave the material you have broken out lying on it, but pass it straight down to somebody who takes it and puts it away.

The ordinary rules matter here more than usual. Brake the wheels before anybody climbs on, move the tower only when nothing and nobody is left on it, and stop work when it starts to blow. That last one weighs heavily on this job: a five metre gutter section catches wind like a sail, and you notice that only once you already have hold of it. Check the four stabilisers at every new position and see that they all press on the ground.

Sharp material is the other risk. Old zinc has cutting edges, brackets pulled loose are full of rusty screws and a falling piece of gutter lands hard below. Work with gloves, keep the zone under you clear and warn anyone nearby before you lower something. Never lay broken out pieces on the rail and do not leave screws rolling about the deck. A hard hat below the working deck is no luxury on this job. The rest of the rules you read at safe work at height.