Coating a facade? Choose the right scaffold.

For coating you take the wide version: the Altrex RS TOWER 52, 135 cm between the uprights. You genuinely use that extra width here, because beside yourself there stand two buckets, a roller bucket with a grid, a brush for the joins and usually a second pair of hands as well. On a deck of only 75 cm you spend the whole day with your feet among your own material. What other widths and heights stand ready is shown in the mobile scaffolds the hire fleet holds.

The platform is 245 cm long and that measure sets your working strip. Per position you therefore coat a little under two and a half metres of facade over the full height of that level, and then the whole setup goes sideways again. The wider the deck you hire, the more material you have with you once you are standing there, and the fewer trips you make down the ladder with a full bucket on your arm.

You hire the narrow RS51 only when a wide setup simply cannot get past, in an alley or on a path a metre across. You then give up working room and go down more often for fresh material, which mounts up over a whole facade. If you have the choice, take the wide version; the price difference between the two is small against the time you win. Which size fits where is set out in the overview of the dimensions of both mobile scaffolds.

When coating you finish a facade completely, from the plinth to the edge under the gutter, so you measure to that highest point. A two storey house with a pitched roof comes out at around eight metres, while three storeys are quickly close to twelve. Ask yourself whether the gable and the strip under the overhang go with the job, because those few metres make the difference between two build heights at the moment you book.

Then count back to the height of your deck. What you give when hiring is working height, and that is the platform height with roughly 2 metres of reach on top. If you want to get to twelve metres with a roller on a pole, your top deck stands around ten metres and you build up to it in stages. What such a build asks in parts and intermediate decks is set out where a twelve metre working height is explained.

Ordering too low is expensive in this work. A coating goes on in continuous passes, and if the top metre does not come with it you have to return for it later with a fresh setup while the rest of the surface has long been closed. You always see that join back in raking light, however neatly you work. Happily the RS52 runs on to 14.2 metres working height, so even a tall facade with a gable above it fits into one rental period.

Coating a whole facade means letting the setup walk along the house, and every spot has to be sound for it. On a front elevation that is usually the pavement, sometimes a parking bay or a front garden. Look for where the slabs sit hollow, where a gully lies and where the threshold to the drive runs. A tall tower is more sensitive to a crooked foot than a low one, so level the wheels afresh at each new position.

Around the base you want more room than the setup itself occupies, because at this height the stabilisers stand far out. On a narrow pavement that runs over the carriageway or the cycle path, and then a word to the council is in order before you hire the mobile scaffold. Reckon with the parked cars too, because they are back every morning during your rental days, unless you tell the street in advance what is coming.

Walk the whole facade before the first bucket is opened. Downpipes, meter box vents, an extension, a bay window, low shrubs and a shed decide together where your positions come and where you skip one. If somewhere the full width will not pass, plan that strip for another moment with the tower turned a quarter. Such a round costs a quarter of an hour and stops you finding out halfway through your rental period that a corner is unreachable. Taking up ground that is not flat is dealt with in the explanation of stabilising.

Count your positions first. A front elevation ten metres wide already gives four positions per level with a platform of two and a half metres, and with a coating you visit each of them twice: once for the base or first coat and once for the finish. On top of that comes the preparation: cleaning, letting it dry out, closing cracks and making good loose parts. For an average house you land at five to eight days that you need the mobile scaffold.

The waits in that schedule cannot be made up. A coating has to cure before the next layer may go on, a wet facade takes nothing and in full sun the layer closes too fast. So do not reckon with workable hours alone but with the calendar: two coats over a whole facade spread in practice across the best part of a week, even working hard with two people. That calendar sets how long you hire the mobile scaffold, not your working pace.

For the shape of your booking that works in your favour. The first 24 hours carries the full tariff, and each further day is charged with 95 per cent off. On a job that hangs on drying times that is welcome: you set the collection date generously straight away instead of having to ring halfway through to extend. What the wide version costs per build height is shown with VAT on the page with the rates, so you can work the whole rental period out beforehand.

Work each position from top to bottom and finish the level completely before you move. That way you avoid having to pass under a fresh layer, and you keep the joins on the vertical seams where they show least. Put the bucket in the middle of the platform and not against the guard rail, because that is where you turn past all the time. With 245 cm of platform under your feet there is room enough to keep everything to hand.

You only reposition once the platform is completely empty. That sounds obvious, but with coating work the temptation to leave that half full bucket standing is great, and it is not allowed: material and tools come off first. Reckon on ten minutes per move including drawing in the stabilisers, rolling, levelling again and carrying the things back up. Four times per coat is therefore a good hour a day spent on logistics rather than on the wall.

Few people allow for how many ladder trips this job takes. A bucket of coating is heavy and you need several of them per position, so the climbing adds up to the most tiring part of the day. Take two smaller buckets rather than one large one, and hoist the rest up on a rope down the outside of the setup. With impregnating a facade that hardly plays, but with coating the number of buckets you get up decides how many metres you finish per rental day.

A build of ten or twelve metres is a considerable stack: uprights, diagonals, platforms, guard rails and stabilisers arrive as a complete, counted set. Point out a place beforehand where that may lie without blocking the pavement, and keep it dry and reachable. We hold 15:00 as the limit: whatever is ordered before that on a working day goes out with the van the next working day. Which day that becomes and when it may all go again you decide when booking.

The building is your part of the work. An assembly manual belongs with the set, and in the video you see the order per lift; at this height you work from the bottom upwards and fold the stabilisers out in good time. Allow half a day for a tall setup and do it with two people. Plan that time separately, so not on the morning the first bucket of coating is opened, because your whole schedule is then already behind.

You may fetch the set yourself at Zeeburgerpad in Amsterdam, free of charge and by appointment, but bear in mind that a build for twelve metres does not fit in an ordinary van. For most facade jobs delivery is therefore more practical, certainly if you have to drive the parts back at the end as well. Afterwards we come and fetch everything on the day you chose when hiring. For the bringing and the collecting together a fixed rate applies that differs by province; you find those amounts on the page about delivery charges.

The deck may carry 200 kg per square metre; that is what load class 3 within EN 1004 amounts to. When you are coating a facade that is no theoretical figure, because two people, a few full buckets and a box of tools add up considerably together. So spread that weight over the length of the platform instead of putting everything in one corner, and leave no buckets standing on a level where you no longer work.

The wheels go on the brake before the first person climbs up, and you never move it with somebody on the deck or with material still standing on it. On a tall tower the wind counts heavily: above eight metres you feel every gust, and in a stiff wind you stop coating. A bucket that falls from ten metres is besides a good reason to fence off the pavement under your working strip with tape or cones.

Work with a clean deck as well. Spilt coating turns slippery and cures to a film you slide straight off, so wipe up at once whatever lands beside the bucket and keep a cloth to hand. Always climb up on the inside through the built in ladder, and never up the outside of the frame with a bucket in your hand. Hoist material up on a rope, and you keep both hands free for the rungs while you climb.