Inspecting a façade? Choose the right scaffold.

The Altrex RS TOWER 51 and 52 are the two outdoor models we hire out, and for a facade inspection the RS52 wins. It is the wide one at 135 cm, and as a model it carries on to 14.2 metres of working height, though for three storeys you set it somewhere between 8 and 12. The extra width is not comfort. An inspection is rarely a solo affair, and two people edging past each other on a narrow deck spend their time watching their feet instead of the brickwork.

More lands on the platform than you would guess. A camera with a flash, a torch, a card for reading crack widths, a moisture meter, a screwdriver to pick at a joint and a tablet where you log what you find on each strip. All of it has to sit somewhere without rolling over the edge. With a deck 245 cm long and the full width beneath it, one corner stays a store and the rest stays walkway. Anyone who piles kit round their own feet loses the point of hiring the wide version.

You only hire the slim RS51 at 75 cm when you have to get round the back. If the route to the rear elevation runs between two fences or through a gate, the wide build simply will not pass, and that side gets inspected from the narrow tower instead. Managing agents often split the job for that reason: the wide one for the street front, the back as a separate round. The measurements of both sit side by side in the size overview of the mobile scaffolds.

The highest point of a facade inspection nearly always sits where masonry meets roof: the top course, the coping, the junction with the gutter and the end grain of the fascia. That is what you measure to. Then work back, because above your deck you still reach roughly two metres with your eyes and your hands. Platform height plus that two metres of reach is the working height you state, so a joint you want to point at eleven metres needs a deck at about nine.

Your zero is the level of the wheels themselves, which means the tape starts on the pavement and not on the threshold of the front door. On a building with a basement that is half a storey of difference, and you only notice the shortfall at the top of the facade. If the footway also falls away towards the carriageway, allow a little margin at the low end. That height and the build behind it are drawn out on the page for twelve metres of working height.

Choosing too tight punishes you harder on an inspection than on most jobs, because the top metre is exactly the metre you have to see. That is where the brickwork stands longest in the rain, where the gutter leaks and where the coping starts to lean. Stop below it and your report says the upper section could not be assessed, which makes the whole hire pointless. If you are torn between two builds on a facade of three storeys, take the taller one.

For a facade inspection the tower usually stands on the street side, which is precisely where it is busiest. At the foot all four stabilisers must be able to splay outwards, and that spread counts on either side of it. Look therefore at the full strip you need rather than at the width of the frame. A parking bay in front of the elevation is often the quietest spot, as long as you have it kept clear in good time.

Along a street elevation the ground is usually block paving or slabs, which works well. Watch the obstacles that belong there: cycle stands, a tree pit with loose soil, a cellar hatch you must not load, underground bins and the neighbour's crossover. Walk the strip first with your foot and feel for movement in the paving, because a manhole cover or a settled slab under one wheel only announces itself once you are up. How to take up an uneven spot is covered in the explanation about an uneven surface.

Because an inspection takes you along the entire elevation, it is not one spot that must be free but the whole strip. Walk that route beforehand with a tape and note where you would get stuck. If the set up takes in part of the public footway, leave enough room along the wall for pedestrians and ask your council what applies in your street. That notification is better made a week ahead than on the morning the parts are delivered.

The looking itself goes quickly. Per set up you spend fifteen minutes to half an hour observing, tapping, measuring and photographing, and then you shift. A house elevation of three storeys is covered that way in a day, while a longer terrace or a building with two elevations costs a second. Unlike painting or repair there is no drying time in it, so the clock is set by how often you have to move and how carefully you write things down.

Even so you do not want to cost the rental period out to the hour. Rain darkens a facade, and then efflorescence and damp patches read differently from how they read on a dry day, so sometimes you want a bay back in other weather. It also happens that halfway through you decide to look at a suspect corner more thoroughly, or that the managing agent can only walk round with you the following morning. A day of slack absorbs that sort of overrun.

That slack weighs little in the rental price. Only the first twenty four hours is charged in full; every rental day you put behind it comes with ninety five per cent off. For an inspection that works out nicely, because you do not want to be standing there with half a facade assessed while the collection is already booked. Booking generously and returning early is almost always the sensible order here. You can size the period up with the guidance on estimating rental days.

A deck of 245 cm covers a strip of facade just over two metres wide per set up. That is also the logical division of your report: split the elevation into strips, number them from left to right and finish each strip over its full height before you move the scaffold. Then when you write it up you still know where photograph seventeen came from, and you can see at a glance whether a crack carries on from one strip into the next.

You shift more often on an inspection than on almost any other job. An elevation eight metres wide already yields three or four standing positions, and because you pause again at every level you rack up twice that number of stops. Make a fixed routine of it: clear the deck first, then climb down, then release the brakes. Turn that order round and you end up halfway along with a bag of kit on top of a tower that has already started to move.

What people misjudge is how much becomes visible from close range. From the pavement the brickwork looks sound, while at half a metre you see the hairline cracks running through the pointing and hear with a screwdriver whether a joint rings hollow. Mastic beads, sills and cracks around a lintel only show themselves at eye level too. Expect your list of findings to keep growing and to produce follow on work, for instance repointing the facade in a later rental period.

What arrives is a stack of loose parts, complete and counted, not an erected tower. Decide in advance where those parts may go, because the footway along a street elevation is rarely wide enough to take the lot and keep a gangway open for pedestrians at the same time. A drive, a front garden or a coned off parking bay works better. Reserve it on a working day while 15:00 is still ahead of you, and the parts reach the street the working day after.

You put the delivery and the collection in the diary yourself, and on an inspection those two sit close together. Have the parts brought late in the afternoon before your inspection day, then you build the next morning and start straight away at the top. Watch the weather forecast as you set those two dates: you judge a facade badly through driving rain, so shift a day rather than peer at wet masonry through a fogged lens.

Afterwards we take the complete set away again; dismantling it and stacking it on the delivery spot is your side of the arrangement. Do that only once you are sure no strip has been skipped, because one forgotten corner otherwise means you hire a mobile scaffold and build it all over again. Read your notes through before the first brace comes loose. What bringing and collecting costs in your province is listed on the page with delivery charges per province.

The deck you stand on is proved to 200 kg per square metre: load class 3, as EN 1004 describes it. For inspecting that is generous, since little weight goes up with you. Adding it up still pays once a second person climbs and a case of measuring equipment comes along, certainly when the pair of you stand at the same side of the platform staring at one crack. Where that figure comes from is explained in the piece on the scaffold standard.

The ordinary rules of use apply here as well. Set the brakes before anyone's foot reaches the bottom rung, never wheel a set up along with a person or a toolbag still on board, and come down again once the wind gets up. Check after every move that the four stabilisers press firmly on the paving again. On short stops that list feels superfluous, and that is exactly why it gets skipped most often during an inspection round.

The risk that belongs to inspecting is your own posture. You stand still for long stretches with your head back and your gaze up, and that costs balance, certainly while you hold a camera at the same time. Keep one hand or your hip against the guard rail. Working above a footway, put a lanyard on camera and phone, because passers by walk under a tower without a second thought. The full set of rules sits at the rules for working at height.