Painting a facade? Choose the right scaffold.

Anyone painting a complete facade carries more up than they expect beforehand. A tin of paint, a tray with a roller, two or three brushes, abrasive paper, a filling knife and a cloth all stand on your deck at once. On the RS52, the 135 cm wide version from Altrex, you set that down on one side and can still walk past it. That saves shuffling buckets at every strip. Which versions the mobile scaffold hire range holds is shown in the overview.

Paint with two of you and that width becomes decisive. One rolls the large face while the other cuts in around frames and junctions, and that only works pleasantly if you can pass each other without knocking something over. On the narrow RS51 at 75 cm it does not, and you spend the day waiting on each other. That narrower model comes into play only if the route to the facade is genuinely too tight for 135 cm.

When you reserve, look separately at the model and at the build you order. As a model the RS52 can be carried to a working height of 14.2 metres and uses platforms of 245 cm, but at a house of three storeys you obviously do not order that maximum tower. You fix a build that reaches the top of the surface to be painted, in practice 8 to 12 metres, and here you need no more. Every dimension is listed in the piece on mobile scaffold sizes.

In painting the surface to be treated nearly always runs on to where the facade stops: the underside of the gutter, the junction with the fascia board or the point of a gable. That top edge sets your height, because a strip you cannot finish properly is visible from the street straight away. At three storeys your working height therefore lands somewhere between 8 and 12 metres. If a gable sits above all that, count it in before you fix the build.

The sum is simple: your platform height plus roughly two metres of reach gives your working height. For ten metres of working height your deck stands at around eight. When rolling you may count those two metres fairly fully, because an extension pole takes you a good way, but the brush edges and the junctions you want at eye level. So measure from the edge you still have to cut in with a brush. The build for ten metres of working height is set out on the matching page.

Always measure from the level the wheels will rest on, so not from your threshold or your patio. If the street lies lower than the front garden you can easily lose half a metre. Choose too tight and you finish that last strip with stretched arms, the coat goes thinner there, and on the second round you see exactly where you were straining. For a surface that runs up to the second floor, take one platform more.

Because you make the same circuit at every coat, you think here not in one standing place but in a series of them. Walk the wall and divide it up in advance into lengths that stay just inside the 245 cm of the deck. At each of those spots the ground has to be level and the four stabilisers have to come out fully. A tree, a tall hedge or an extension sitting exactly on such a boundary forces an extra setup later.

The ground matters more here than on short jobs, because the scaffold stands for days on end and keeps coming back to the same places. Setts and concrete stay under the wheels as they lie; soft ground and fresh topsoil sink a little further at every round, so your setup stands differently at every coat. If there is a path with a fall, adjust the legs per position and write down how you had them. There is more on that in the piece on uneven ground.

Under the setup you want room for your dust sheet on paintwork. Paint spatters further than you think, certainly when rolling, and off setts or a car it does not come away easily. Cover the plinth, the window sills and the paving before the first coat goes on, and slide that sheet along with every setup. If the tower stands partly on the pavement, clear it with the council and warn your immediate neighbours well before delivery, because they walk past it for days.

On facade painting you count not in square metres but in rounds. One round along an ordinary front wall costs you about a day with two people, moving the tower included. Put on a primer, a mid coat and a top coat and that alone is three working days, with the preparation still to come: washing down, sanding, spot priming, filling and masking. Five to eight days of hire is therefore a fair estimate for an average house, and at a corner property with two elevations it climbs further.

Between those rounds sits waiting time you have to plan round. Paint needs its overcoating time and on a cold, damp day you simply do not get it. Besides that it paints badly in full sun on a warm wall and not at all in rain, so now and then you lose half a day. Leave the mobile scaffold standing through those hours and use them for sanding, filling or preparing the next face of the wall.

Those extra days weigh lightly in what you finally settle. The full rate applies over the first 24 hours; each day that follows joins the total with 95 per cent off. Two spare days for disappointing weather therefore cost you far less than a second booking, where you begin again with a full opening day and another transport comes on top. Building such a period for a job of several coats is worked out with rules of thumb in the explanation of rental periods.

Your platform measures 245 cm, so per setup you treat one vertical strip of wall, a little under two and a half metres wide, from top to bottom. Finish that strip completely before you move: first cut in along frames, corners and the plinth, then roll the large face while the edge is still wet. That way the join stays invisible. Stop halfway through a strip and after drying that transition shows as a line down the whole wall.

Settle your strips on the first round and keep to them afterwards. On the second and third coat you roll the mobile scaffold back to the same places, so your joins fall on the same vertical line every time. Put those lines as far as possible on a natural break: a downpipe, a corner of the wall, the edge of a window opening. A wall ten metres wide gives four to five setups that way, and you multiply that number by the number of coats you apply.

Where people come unstuck is the carrying up. A half full tin, a tray and the roller pole are manageable, but a full tin up the ladder with both hands is asking for trouble. Hoist it on a rope or top up above from a smaller jug. Otherwise take only what you need in that one strip. If you take in the window frames in the same wall as well, allow half an hour extra per strip and add it to your total rental period.

We drop the mobile scaffold off as a counted set of loose parts. Choose a place for that stack in advance where it is not in your painting route, so not against the wall and not on the stretch of paving you want to cover. A garage, a carport or a corner of the drive is ideal. Place your order on a working day and get it in before 15:00, and the set can be lying there the next working day, on the date you gave yourself.

The assembly is your task. You get the manual with it and an instruction video is ready, and with two people you stand at height inside half a day. Plan that build a day before your first coat, because otherwise you only start painting once the sun has moved round the wall and you work half of it in the heat. Choose your delivery date with the forecast beside you as well, because a wall you cannot yet sand costs you a whole round.

After the last coat you take the tower down and lay the parts out complete, after which we take them away again on the agreed day. Do that only when the paint has hardened through, or you will still press a dent into your fresh top coat with a tube. Wipe the platforms over with a cloth before you hand them back. Which amount applies for transport to your province is stated on the page with delivery rates per province.

These mobile scaffolds are made for 200 kg per square metre of platform, which is load class 3 as EN 1004 lays it down. For painting a facade that is ample, even with two of you up there and a filled tin beside you. Watch mainly how that weight is spread: two people plus all the material on the same side of the deck is less wise than spreading it a little. What that class exactly holds is set out in the notes on this scaffold standard.

The basic agreements stand undiminished. Brake the wheels before anyone climbs up, move the setup only when nobody is on it, take your tins and trays off before you roll as well, and climb down once the wind really picks up. On facade painting that wind limit is not purely a safety matter: in wind your paint dries away too fast and leaves and dust blow into the wet coat. Fix the four stabilisers again after every move.

The risk that truly belongs to paintwork is the floor under your feet. A spilled pool of paint or a soaked rag makes such a platform treacherously slippery, and you usually notice only when you step back to look at your work. So wipe spatters up at once and always stand your tin in a catch tray. Think as well about what happens below: a falling brush is a nuisance, a falling tin is downright dangerous. The further agreements are at the guidelines for work at height.