Painting a roof overhang? Choose the right scaffold.

On an overhang at two storeys the choice falls on the Altrex RS TOWER 52, the wide model with a deck 135 cm across. You use that extra room differently here than on ordinary wall work: you do nearly everything with your head tipped back, your feet apart, and you want to move half a step sideways without walking into a guard rail. Narrower is possible, but then you give up exactly what makes this job heavy. Every model we let out sits side by side on the page about mobile scaffold hire.

On a narrow 75 cm deck you are forced to stand in a straight line under the overhang, and you notice that within the first hour. On this job your paint kettle, brush, sanding block and cloth belong on the deck and not in your hand, because everything you hold you hold above you. The platform length of 245 cm decides how many metres of overhang you take per set up, and the width decides whether you can turn comfortably beneath it while looking up.

A 75 cm build only comes into view when the only route to the back is a gate or a path under a metre wide. Then you trade working room for passage, and on overhead work that feels like a concession. The MiTower stops at 6.2 metres and is too low for two storeys, while the RS44 room scaffold with its 3 to 4 metres of reach was made for indoor work. Weigh narrow against wide with the guidance on picking a scaffold for wall painting.

On this job your highest point is not the ridge and not the gutter, but the line where the overhang meets the brickwork. That is where the surface you have to paint begins, so that is what you measure to. For a house of two storeys you come out at 8 to 12 metres, depending on the storey height and on how far the roof projects. What such a reach means in frames is set out on the page for ten metres of working height.

The figure that goes into your booking is not the height of the deck you end up standing on. There is roughly two metres of reach between the two, and on an overhang that works in your favour: set your reach equal to the height of the eaves line and the timber hangs about an arm's length above your head. Measure up from the ground where the castors land. If your back garden lies lower than the pavement, the build differs per side of the house.

Choose too tight and you paint the top corner with your arm stretched, the topcoat runs down your sleeve and the strip where the roof overhang meets the wall stays untreated. Choose too generously and the timber sits straight in your face, so you can no longer angle the brush. Both cost you an extra set up. If in doubt, measure your eaves height with a long straightedge. If the wall of the second floor follows later, take the height that suits both.

Under a roof overhang you rarely find a tidy terrace. What is usually there is a gravel strip, a narrow border or a row of slabs along the wall, precisely where rainwater off the overhang has been landing for years. Gravel sinks away under the castors and wet earth faster still, so lay stout planks or setting plates beneath them. On this job the ground decides more than on most whether your build stays upright and whether you can still move it later. Check too that no drain cover sits under a castor.

Then comes the question of how close you can get. An overhang projects thirty to sixty centimetres easily, and that projection has to fall above your platform and not against it. So push the foot of the tower up to the plinth and keep the top guard rail just under the fascia. Reckon at the same time with the four stabilisers splaying outwards; on the wall side they land in the border and outside them on the lawn or the path. Setting them is covered in the piece on stabilising a tower.

Along a wall there is always something in the way, and on this job those things are fixed. The downpipe runs exactly where you do not want it, there is an outside tap, a cellar window or a meter cupboard hatch, and against the brick stands a hedge you cannot simply move. Walk the route round the house before you hire the scaffold and count how many positions can genuinely be cleared. That number governs your planning more than the length of the overhang does.

Putting a roof overhang in paint is more than laying on the topcoat. You start by wiping down and degreasing, because years of dust and cobweb hang under that edge. Then you sand, prime the bare patches, seal the joint between the board and the wall, and only then come the two coats of paint. Around an average terraced house you hire a mobile scaffold for three to five days for that, partly because at every new position you begin all over again.

There are waiting times in it you cannot shorten. The underside of an overhang never catches sun and therefore stays damp longer than a south facing wall, so let a coat stand overnight rather than a few hours. If rain drives against the house, water blows under the edge and you are working on wet timber. So plan through to the day you are certain to finish, and add a morning behind it for taking the tower apart.

Booking generously happily costs you little. You are charged the full rate for the opening twenty four hours alone; each further rental day carries a discount of 95 per cent, so a day of slack hardly registers in your rental price. Set the end date too tight and you stand beside a half finished overhang waiting for a new booking. Per model and working height every amount including VAT sits on the page listing hire prices, so you know beforehand where you stand.

Per set up you take a 245 cm strip of overhang, the length of the deck. On a straight wall that is quickly done, but above your head the pace drops. You work in short strokes, you have to stop more often to rest your neck, and you keep checking at an angle whether the surface still covers. Sanding, priming and painting one strip easily fills half a day in practice, and that number of half days decides how long you hire the tower.

Take up only what you can put down on the deck: a small kettle, a brush, a small roller on a short pole, abrasive paper and a cloth. Leave a full tin of paint on the ground, because as soon as you work upwards everything you spill lands back on you. A cap and safety glasses are no luxury here; paint and sanding dust find your face and neck by themselves. Anything you forget means climbing down, so run through the list before you step on.

What people misjudge are the corners. At a corner the roof overhang runs round the house, and to take that last forty centimetres you have to move the tower and stabilise it again. Every corner therefore costs you an extra position, and a dormer or an extension breaks the run once more. Count those points beforehand and include them all in the number of rental days you book. If you take in the fascia boards along the roof edge in the same period, you finish everything per position.

The scaffold arrives as loose parts, complete and counted in advance. Decide beforehand where that stack ends up, because you keep the strip under the roof overhang free for the build itself and you would rather not trample the border beside it. A driveway or a piece of lawn further along works better. The latest order time for delivery on the next working day is 15:00, so planning far ahead is not needed as long as you book on a weekday and have cleared the spot.

The date the set arrives and the date it is collected you fill in yourself, and on outdoor painting you let both move with the forecast. Preferably have the parts brought a day before your first working day, so the build can go calmly and you start cleaning the next morning. Erecting it remains your part of the work, using the instructions and the video that come with the set, ideally with two people. Watch the projection above you: it sits exactly at the height at which you lift a frame.

When you are finished you take the tower apart and put the parts together; we come and collect them afterwards. Count along while you dismantle, so you know for certain no brace or coupling has been left behind in the shrubbery. Check as well that no masking film has stuck between the deck boards. The charge for bringing and taking back differs per province and stands including VAT with the costs of delivery and collection, so you budget for it in time.

Every mobile scaffold in our hire fleet is built to EN 1004 and sits in load class 3: 200 kg is allowed on each square metre of deck. When painting a roof overhang you are yourself by far the heaviest thing that goes on, so that limit is a long way off. If two of you work a long edge with tins and a sander beside you, add it up all the same. That classification is explained further in the article on this scaffold standard.

The fixed rules do not change with the job. Put every castor on the brake before you climb on, shift the tower only when the deck is empty and nobody is on it, and stop painting as soon as the wind picks up properly. Under an overhang you notice that wind late, because the edge shelters you, while at the top of the build you certainly feel movement. After every move go round the four stabilisers and set them down firmly again.

The risk that belongs to this job comes from above. You are looking up and therefore cannot see where your feet are, so keep the deck clear and put tools back in the kettle. Drips of paint and sanding dust fall straight down into your eyes, and a brush you let go above your head comes back onto the platform or past it. Keep the zone under the tower clear and set a cone or a bucket there if children are playing. The rest is at working safely at height.