Applying facade insulation? Choose the right scaffold.

On a house of two storeys the choice falls on the narrow RS51 from Altrex, which manages on 75 cm. That width is not a concession but a condition: as soon as the boards sit against the brickwork, less room is left between the insulation package and the boundary than you reckoned beforehand, and with a narrow tower you can still turn the corner to the next side. Everything you can reserve stands together on the page where the mobile scaffolds are lined up.

Up top you hardly miss those extra centimetres, provided your stock stays on the ground. An insulation board goes up singly or in pairs, mixed mortar travels in a bucket, and your cutting tools hang from your belt. What you do feel is the length of the deck: 245 cm, and that figure says exactly how many boards fit beside one another before you have to move. Your gain here is in the long direction, not in the width of the tower.

Only when two of you stand up there at once does the RS52 become interesting, the wide version of 135 cm, because then you want to lay the reinforcing layer in continuous bands. Against a free standing elevation with no narrow passage that is a fair trade. If your route to the back runs past a gate or a garden path, that wide tower will not even reach the wall. Weigh that against the time lost driving round, and compare the sizes calmly in the overview of scaffold dimensions.

The highest point of this job rarely lies where you expect it. You insulate up to where the last board ends, and that is usually a closing profile under the overhang or just below the gutter. So measure to that top edge and not to the tiles above it, or you reserve metres you will never use. Two storeys bring you to a working height of 6 to 8 metres, and that is the reach you state as soon as you hire the tower.

Working height and platform height are two different things. Your deck comes to lie at 4 to 6 metres and about two metres of reach is added to that, because the top row of boards gets pressed home with your arms above your head. The model itself carries on much further, up to 14.2 metres, but for this elevation you deliberately pick a lower build with fewer braces. The stand that goes with it is drawn out on the page about eight metres of working height.

Choosing too tight punishes itself straight away here. Miss half a metre and you press the top board against the wall with arms outstretched, it sinks away in the wet adhesive and the whole row runs out of true. What once hangs wrong never comes out neatly again. So take the roomier build and rather keep half a metre in hand. What the different heights cost is on the prices page, and that difference nowhere near outweighs a row of boards you have to set a second time.

The foot of the tower gets plenty of company on this job. Beside the four stabilisers pointing outwards there is a tub of adhesive mortar, a stack of boards on edge and a lead running to the mixer. So make sure of a flat piece of ground that comes out considerably wider all round than the scaffold itself, and keep your line to the stack open so you can turn with a board under your arm without scraping past anything.

Judge the ground before delivery. Slabs, block paving and a driveway carry well; a border or a lawn that sinks after a shower does not, and here in particular the tower stays on the same spot for days on end. Look too at the step between terrace and garden and at drain covers along the wall. A slab tipping under a stabiliser only shows itself once you are standing with a board above your head. For uneven ground, the explanation of working on an uneven surface offers a workable answer.

While you are applying, let the mobile scaffold rest against the elevation nowhere at all. Leaning pushes a freshly bonded board out of the plane, and you see that wave again later in the finish coat. Set it so that a hand's width stays between it and the wall, and only move it once the row below is set and checked. At an extension, a low addition or a shed against the wall your standing place gets pinched, so measure those corners out beforehand.

Applying facade insulation is not a one day job. You go along the same elevation in rounds: first the base profile with the bottom row, then the boards upwards in bond, then the plugs, next the reinforcing layer with its mesh and finally the finish. Every round asks for the same positions again, each time with different tools. For a front and a rear elevation on two storeys you are therefore soon at four to six rental days, reckoned on two people working steadily.

Within that period sit waits you cannot make up. The adhesive has to grab before you drill and plug, and the reinforcing mortar has to cure through before the finish coat may go on. Those times hang on your material and on the temperature, not on the diary you would rather keep to. If it freezes, or the rain drives against the wall, everything shifts a day. So count from the day the tower stands to the day you can take it apart dry.

The way the rate is built up rewards planning with room. The full rate covers only your opening 24 hours, and each rental day that follows has 95 per cent taken off it. A couple of spare days behind your planning therefore cost you almost nothing, while having to stop halfway through the reinforcing layer means doing that whole round again later, with a second build on top. To sharpen the estimate, the article on estimating rental days takes you further.

This page is about the execution: setting boards, bonding, plugging and getting the finish coat on. The preparation around it, so measuring up, judging the substrate and bringing in and storing the material, is on the page about installing facade insulation. That difference counts for your scaffold too: during the execution the tower stands still for long stretches and you work it off row by row, while the preparation is mostly walking, measuring and carrying and you shift the tower constantly.

Per position you have 245 cm of elevation in front of you, roughly four boards side by side. You finish that strip over the full height of your stand before you move, and you start at the bottom on the base profile, because every row rests on the one below while the adhesive has yet to grab. Only roll on once the boards in your plane are set and plugged, or the movement of the wheels will push exactly that one corner out of true.

What you take up in one go decides how often you climb that ladder. Take the boards for one row, a bucket of adhesive, your float, a knife and the plugs with the drill, and leave the rest below until the moment comes. Most people misjudge the finish coat: it asks for one continuous movement across the whole face, so there you want fewer positions and longer sessions on each of them than when setting the boards themselves.

What gets dropped off at your address is a full set of loose parts, counted item by item. Decide in advance where that stack ends up, because the band along the wall is already taken by boards and mortar on insulation work. Rather lay them on the driveway than on the path you have to squeeze along with a board under your arm. Book on a working day and still before 15:00, and the set travels your way the following working day.

Delivery day and collection day are yours to mark, and on this job you tune them to the moment your insulation material is dropped off. Have the scaffold come a day before the boards: then you build in peace while the wall is still clear and you are not working over stacks. Building is done under your own steam, manual and instruction video within reach, and with two people that takes half a day. The order of work is in the step by step guide to building a tower.

Collection is on us again. You dismantle the tower and lay the parts out complete where the van can get alongside. Wait with that until the finish coat is hard enough, because tubes brushing past fresh render leave traces you will not polish out. Simply count along while you take it apart, and then you know for certain that the set lies complete when the van pulls up. Which amount applies for fetching and bringing in your own province is in the overview of delivery charges per province.

Our mobile scaffolds are built to EN 1004 and fall in load class 3. Translated to your working deck: two hundred kilos per square metre, and not a kilo more. On insulation work you come nearer to that than on painting, because boards weigh little but a full bucket of mixed mortar weighs plenty and with two of you it adds up quickly. So spread the weight over the deck and keep the greater part of your stock standing below. What that scaffold standard involves is explained briefly.

The ordinary rules hold undiminished as well. Brake the wheels before you climb on, never travel with a person or material aboard, and stop work as soon as it starts to blow hard. You reach that limit sooner here than on other work at a wall, because an insulation board of any size catches the wind like a sail and gets pulled straight out of your hands. After every move, look at all four stabilisers once more and make sure each of them presses firmly on the ground.

The hazard that really belongs to this job is everything that can go down. Offcuts, a float, a drill on a short lanyard: keep the strip under the deck empty and do not work above a footway without a barrier. Mortar left lying on the platform turns treacherous the moment it gets wet, so scrape your deck clean at the end of every day. Stand your tools on the deck against the guard rail rather than on the edge. The full rules are at working safely at height.