Spray-painting a facade? Choose the right scaffold.

Anyone treating a complete wall surface takes more up than on small spray jobs. Rolls of sheeting, tape, a knife, a cloth, a spray unit or can, and often somebody walking with you to shield the edges. On the Altrex RS TOWER 52, with its deck of 135 cm, all of that fits and you can still move past each other. Which versions sit in the hire range of mobile scaffolds is listed with every dimension, so you can compare in advance.

Take the narrow 75 cm version only when your route in forces you to. At a front wall on the street that is rare; at a rear wall behind a metre wide gate it is not. So measure the tightest point on your route before you fix anything. If 135 cm will pass, that is by far the pleasanter thing to hire: spraying a facade keeps material, sheeting and tools within reach all at once, from the first pass to the last.

Keep the model and the ordered build well apart when you reserve. The RS52 as a type reaches 14.2 metres of working height and takes platforms 245 cm long, but you naturally do not order that maximum tower for a house. You fix precisely as much build as the top edge of the surface to be sprayed asks of you, and at three storeys that comes down to 8 to 12 metres. To see the versions side by side, the explanation of scaffold dimensions helps.

On a wall as a whole the highest point of the surface leads, and it hardly ever lies where you first put it. Above the brickwork there is often still a band under the gutter, a rendered edge or the triangle of a gable. Take those in, because a sprayed face that stops half a metre below the top edge stands out from across the road at once. For three storeys that brings you to between 8 and 12 metres.

Working height follows from the height of your deck plus roughly two metres that you bridge with your arms. Want to be spraying at eleven metres, then your platform sits at around nine. On this job you may not use that reach to the full: working straight ahead of you gives a more even face than aiming the gun upwards, where the film thickness varies. So reckon on the generous side. What a build to eleven metres of working height involves is shown on that page.

Take your starting point where the wheels will stand. If the drive falls away towards the road, your departure level is lower than you judge from the front door and you miss just that bit at the top. Come half a metre short and you can only finish the top band in a second session, and that is precisely when you see the join. If the surface runs on above the second floor, order one platform more.

When spraying a facade you pick your standing places not only on the ground but just as much on the wind direction. Everything you atomise travels with the wind and settles further along, so first walk round the house and look at what stands downwind: parked cars, a conservatory next door, a shed roof, a pond. Move what can be moved and cover carefully what stays, the neighbours' windows included. Only when that round is done do you decide where the first setup goes.

The ground itself asks the usual: level, load bearing and wide enough to set the four stabilisers out fully. Along a wall the familiar spoilers turn up, from a projecting cellar entrance to a row of flower boxes and a low wall round the patio. Clear those away before the parts are delivered, because dragging something off while the tower already stands costs you half an hour you do not have on a spraying day. On sloping terrain there is the article on uneven ground.

Reckon as well on having to walk the wall round at the sides. A sprayed face rarely stops exactly on the corner: there is a reveal, a frame return or a bit of side wall attached to it that has to go too. So keep room free there, so that you can drive the setup round the corner without unscrewing a fence first. If part of it stands on public ground, ask in good time what is allowed in your street before your delivery day is fixed.

The spraying itself is short, the preparing is long. The wall of an ordinary terraced house is covered in a few hours with a unit working well, but before that lie days of cleaning, touching in bare patches and masking. Windows, doors, the meter box grille, the sills, the downpipe and the plinth all go under film and tape. Four to six days of hire is therefore usual for a complete facade, even though the gun runs for only half a day.

The awkward part is that the spraying day has to fall in a dry window. You need a day on which it does not rain, on which the wind is moderate and on which the wall is not baking in the full afternoon sun. Such a window can be judged a few days ahead at best, so you want to be able to shift your planning without it costing you anything. Finish all the masking before you pin a day, and keep the spraying moment open in your diary as long as you can.

That is exactly why you book generously here. The opening 24 hours carry the full rate; after that every extra day is added with 95 per cent off, so two or three days of slack cost you almost nothing against the certainty they buy. Have to book again because your window shifted, and you start with a full day and an extra transport once more. On judging such a period there is this article on rental days.

Divide the facade into faces before you start and settle the order. The usual route is from the top down and away from the windward side, so that fresh drift does not land on what you have just done. Begin at the gable or the top band, finish the full width, drop a level and repeat. A deck of 245 cm sets how wide each pass is and where your vertical joins come to lie.

Put the vertical joins deliberately where the eye does not look for them: behind a downpipe, right on a corner, along a pilaster or against the side of a window opening. Within one setup always finish the full height before you drive the mobile scaffold on, because a horizontal break halfway up a face always shows in raking light. On a wall ten metres wide that gives four or five setups, and those four or five moments are the only stops you have.

Take up in one climb what has to be up there: spare tape, a cloth, a knife and some sheeting to screen a miss quickly. Climbing down in the middle of a face costs you more than time alone, because the edge you leave behind is drying meanwhile and will show later. What people misjudge most is how many hours the screening swallows against the spraying. Take in spraying the window frames as well and the number of edges to protect doubles.

You receive the mobile scaffold as a complete, counted set of loose parts. Point out a place for that stack beforehand, somewhere outside your spray zone, because anything within a few metres of the wall will catch drift. A closed garage or the side of the house beats the drive right in front of it. Reserve on a weekday and manage it before 15:00, and the set may stand there the next working day, at the moment you named yourself.

Assembly stays your task. You have the manual and an instruction video to hand, and with two people building takes about half a day of work. On this job your delivery date is above all a weather decision: let the set arrive a few days before the expected spray window, so you can assemble calmly and still have all the time to clean and mask. Say at reservation whether the van can get onto your drive, because a set that ends up at the street you drag round yourself.

Once the sprayed face is dry you take the tower down, lay everything out complete and we collect the set on your collection day. Wait with dismantling until it is genuinely hard, because a tube tapping against a fresh coat leaves a mark you will not polish out. Give the platforms a wipe before you hand them in. Which amount applies for the run to your province you find under the delivery rates per province.

A platform on these scaffolds carries 200 kg for every square metre: load class 3, the level EN 1004 sets for mobile scaffolds. On facade spraying you seldom come near that limit, unless two of you stand up there with a good stock of material. More important is keeping the deck clear, because rolls of sheeting rolling about loose are the real trip hazard here. What the class covers is explained in the article on this standard for mobile scaffolds.

The fixed rules do not bend on this job. Lock the wheels before the first person climbs up, leave deck and rail empty when you move the setup, and get down as soon as it truly blows. That wind limit sits lower on spraying than on other facade work, because even a stiff breeze carries your material away and makes your film thickness irregular. After every pass along the wall check that the four stabilisers stand firm and that all the brakes are on before you climb.

The danger that belongs to this job is your sight. With a mask on and a cloud in front of your face you see the edge of the platform less well than you think, and a deck that material has settled on turns slippery besides. So lay cardboard or thin plastic on it and change that as soon as it starts to shine. Keep the zone straight under the platform clear as well. The remaining agreements you find at the guidelines for working at height.