Repairing a facade? Choose the right scaffold.

When you repair a facade you stay in one place a long while and haul a lot up with you: a chisel, a hammer, a tub of repair mortar, a few replacement bricks and a bucket of water. That is why the Altrex RS TOWER 52 stands outside the door, a mobile scaffold 135 cm wide. On that deck your kit sits beside you and you can still step past it, which saves a climb down at every damaged spot. What else stands ready is set out in the range of mobile scaffolds for hire.

The narrow RS51 at 75 cm lacks that elbow room. You choose that size only when the route to the facade forces it, a gate of a metre to the back garden, say, or a path squeezed between two sheds. So measure the tightest gap on your route before you reserve, because a wide build that jams halfway gets you nowhere. If the wall faces the street, a drive or a generous side passage, there is usually room to spare and the broader deck pays for itself.

When you book, keep the model and the build you order apart in your head. As a model the RS52 goes up to 14.2 metres and works with platforms 245 cm long, but for repairs to a house of three storeys you stay well under that. You hire exactly as much build as your highest damaged spot demands, in practice between 8 and 12 metres. The sizes sit side by side in this overview of mobile scaffold dimensions.

In facade repair the ridge of the roof does not set your working height; the highest point with damage does. Walk the wall first from across the road, binoculars in hand if need be, and note at what height every crack, every loose brick and every crumbled section sits. If the top one reaches just under the roof edge of a third storey, you land on 8 to 12 metres. If everything stays below the first floor, you order a much lower build and save half a day of assembly.

You work that height out by adding roughly two metres of reach to the height of your deck. For twelve metres the platform therefore stands at around ten. In chopping work that reach counts for less than in painting, because a crack has to be worked with two hands and a chisel rather than just touched with your fingertips. So put the deck at eye level with the damage. What a build to twelve metres of working height takes in parts is shown on that height page.

Ordering too tight punishes you straight away on this job. Half a metre low and you are chopping with your arms stretched above your head, with the grit landing in your face instead of on the sheet. On top of that a crack almost always runs further than it looked from the pavement, sometimes right into the reveal of a window. So take the build that matches your highest point, not your average one. If the damage sits on the second floor, measure to the top edge of that face.

Because you move from defect to defect, it is not a single standing place that counts but the whole strip along the wall. You want that strip level, clear and wide enough for the four stabilisers that splay outwards. A bike rack, a water butt or a low hedge sitting exactly under your third spot will cost you more time later than moving it now. So walk the route once from end to end before you order the scaffold, with your list of damaged spots in hand.

Then look at what lies under the wheels. Setts, slabs and concrete carry fine; a planting strip against the plinth does not, certainly not once you stand on it with a full tub of mortar. If you roll the setup along a falling footpath to the next spot, your deck height changes at every stop and the adjustable legs need setting again. What you can do about that is taken step by step in the article on working over uneven ground.

Under the damaged spot itself you keep room free for everything that comes down. Cutting out produces brick rubble and old material, and you do not want that in the border or on the car next door. Lay a sheet there and take it with you at every move, and keep the paving underneath empty. If the setup stands partly on public ground, ask the council beforehand what the rules are in your street, and do that well before your delivery date is fixed.

How many days you hire a mobile scaffold follows straight from your list of damaged spots. A wall of twelve metres with two cracks is less work than a wall of six metres with eight loose bricks, even though you would guess the opposite by eye. Allow one round of cutting out, one of brushing clean and one of filling per spot, and about half a working day per setup. On an ordinary house with a handful of defects that puts you at four to six days.

Inside that period sit waits you cannot speed up. Mortar that has been applied must cure before you can finish it or put anything over it, and at low temperatures that takes noticeably longer. In frost, or through days of rain, the filling stops altogether. So pin your end date not on the day the job could in theory be done, but on the day every spot is certainly seen to, with a morning after it for clearing up, sweeping and counting parts.

Booking generously costs you almost nothing here. The full rate covers only the opening 24 hours; every day you add behind it comes in with 95 per cent off. A margin for bad weather, or for a crack that turns out bigger than you thought, therefore barely registers in your total. Booking again does, because then you start a second opening day and a second transport. Estimating a longer period is easier with the rules of thumb in this piece on rental days.

From a single setup you cover a face 245 cm wide, the length of the platform, and roughly two metres high. Most defects fall well within that, so per damaged spot you position the tower once and finish that spot completely. Cut out, brush the grit away, wet the surface, fill and work the repair back. Only when there is nothing left to do do you go down and roll the mobile scaffold on to the next point along the wall.

Take up in one climb whatever has to be up there: a bucket of mixed mortar, chisel and hammer, a trowel, a sponge and some water. Everything you forget means an extra trip, and with five or six spots in a day that mounts up. Mix your mortar down below and carry it up in portions, because a filled tub weighs more than it looks and climbing the built-in ladder with both hands occupied is no way to work.

The number of setups is nearly always underestimated. From the pavement you see three cracks; once you stand beside them at eye level there turn out to be six, and one runs on round the corner. So add a quarter to your setup count when you plan. Combine this work in the same period with renewing the pointing in the same wall and your rhythm changes completely, because then you work in continuous faces instead of separate points.

The parts arrive at your address as a complete, counted set. Decide in advance where that stack may land, because the strip along the wall is exactly what you keep clear for shifting. A drive, a garage or a corner of the front garden serves better than the pavement right by your door. Reservations that come in on a working day before 15:00 can be delivered the next working day, and which date that turns out to be is for you to say.

Putting it up belongs to your side of the job. You work with the manual beside you and the instruction video on your phone, and two people need half a day for it. Let the set land a day ahead of your first chopping day: you then build at your leisure, look at the damage close up and adjust your list before any mortar is mixed. If you work on spots all round the house, say at reservation which side the van can unload on.

On your collection day you lay everything back dismantled and complete where it was dropped. Sweep the platforms first, because dried mortar on a trapdoor is next to impossible to get off later. Count the parts as you take the tower down; that way you know well before the van arrives that nothing is left behind a shrub or in the shed. What the round trip to your province comes to is set out under the cost of delivery and collection.

Every square metre of these platforms may carry 200 kg, load class 3 as the EN 1004 standard sets it out for mobile scaffolds. On repair work you meet that limit sooner than you expect: yourself, someone helping, a tub of mortar, a box of replacement bricks and a breaker add up without you noticing. So spread the load over the deck instead of putting everything down by the hatch. That class is unpacked in the explanation of the mobile scaffold standard.

The fixed rules hold here too. Brake the wheels before you take the first rung, never move the setup with someone on it or material on the deck, and get off as soon as it starts to blow hard. Because you reposition again and again on this job, that is no formality: clear the platform before you roll and then set the four stabilisers firmly out again. After every move check the adjustable legs, the brakes and whether the guard rails still close all the way round.

The hazard that really belongs to chopping work comes from above. Lumps of brick and old material drop straight down below you, so keep that zone empty and put out tape or a cone if need be, certainly along a pavement people walk past. Wear goggles and gloves, because grit bounces back off the wall. Think about your soles as well: wetted brick makes the deck slippery. The remaining rules are gathered in the ground rules for work at height.