Applying facade render? Choose the right scaffold.

For applying facade render on a two-storey house you generally choose the RS51, the narrow Altrex at 75 centimetres wide. Your mixing tub stays on the ground anyway, so up top you only need room for yourself, a bucket and the hawk you work from. What the narrow version mainly buys you is speed between bays: fewer parts, less weight and a stand that two of you have moved sideways in a couple of minutes. Every model sits beside the others in what our hire fleet offers.

The wide 135 centimetre version comes into view if you want two people on the floor at once, say one laying on and one working the texture in before the bay tightens up. On that kind of job the extra walking room genuinely counts. The price you pay for it is a stand that will not pass everywhere, so measure your route to the wall. Both widths appear with their measurements in this overview of scaffold sizes.

Doing a single small bay on an extension or a garden wall, a one-person model can be enough. Even so, applying facade render is rarely a solo affair: someone mixing and passing up at ground level saves you the trip down at every bay, and that trip is precisely what your material will not allow. Leave a room scaffold where it stands, since it is meant for indoor work and not for an outside wall with a tub of mortar beneath it. Outdoors at this height, the mobile scaffold stays the model you hire.

Working height is your platform height plus the two metres you cover above it with outstretched arms, and you book on that total. For applying facade render on a two-storey house that comes out at 6 to 8 metres, which gets you to the top edge of the rendered area: usually the junction with the soffit or with a roof edge. Which build belongs to it you can look up at a reach of eight metres before you reserve.

On this job there is a further reason behind that height. A bay wants finishing in one pass, and that only works if you reach the top edge from the same floor as the bottom edge. Have to add a lift halfway across a bay, or reposition the platform, and the edge of what you have already laid on tightens up meanwhile, and you will still see that transition once it has dried. So choose your height on the topmost centimetre you still have to render.

Measure from whatever surface the castors will be standing on, and not from the back door threshold. If the stand goes in a garden that sits a step lower, you hire from that lower level and need more build than you judge from indoors. Torn between two ranges, take the higher one: half a metre spare hurts less on render than a bay you have to do in two goes. See also the height at a first floor.

The spot beneath the stand is your workshop on this job. That is where your mixing tub goes, a bag of material, a bucket of clean water and usually a drill with a paddle on an extension lead. Those things have to be close to the feet, but not so close that they are in the way when you push the tower to the next bay. Keep the four corners free for the stabilisers as well, since they angle outwards and take more room than you expect.

Note what has to come out from under you before the work starts. Fresh material spatters, and whatever misses the tub lands on paving, on gravel or in the planting and does not come off easily there. Sheet the strip along the wall and move planters out. Make sure the ground is level and firm too, certainly if you are walking about with full buckets. For a terrace on a fall, this article on levelling on a slope gets you going.

Look at the sun and the wind on the elevation you are starting from, as well. A bay in full afternoon sun or in a stiff breeze dries faster than you can spread, and then you lose to your own material before you reach the bottom. So begin on the side that is in shade at that moment and work ahead of the sun, so every bay keeps the working life it was meant to have. That is one more reason to take your hire period a little wider than the number of bays suggests.

On render work you count in bays and in coats, not in square metres per hour. Per stand you finish one bay, and the elevation of an average terraced house breaks down into six to eight of them. Lay on a base coat and then a finishing coat and you pass every bay twice, once for each. Add the building and the dismantling on top and one elevation therefore comes to three or four days of hire.

The waiting time between two coats governs the rest of your planning. How long before you can carry on is printed on the bag and depends on temperature and humidity; that time cannot be made up by working harder. On top of that come the days you should not start at all: frost overnight, an elevation standing in blazing sun, or rain landing on fresh work within a couple of hours. Count those days into the hire period as well.

Booking wide has deliberately been kept cheap in the rental price. Only the opening twenty-four hours are charged at the whole rate, and each hire day following carries a ninety-five per cent reduction, so a day of slack to wait out drying costs you next to nothing. Book too short and half an elevation stands in base coat on the morning the van arrives for the parts, which is exactly the scene to avoid. A realistic estimate you can make with the explanation of hire days.

The 245 centimetre floor is your measuring stick on this work. The width of the bay you finish in one pass is the width you can reach without stretching, and that comes to roughly two and a half metres. Divide the elevation up beforehand with that figure in mind and let the divisions fall on something already there: a corner, a downpipe, the side of a window frame or a projecting band in the brickwork. That is where the join shows least.

Work every bay from the top down and keep the edge wet while you are at it. Do not go down halfway for a fresh tub, because in those few minutes the edge tightens and you see the transition in the finished result. So take one bucket too many up rather than one too few, and have your helper below set the next tub ready before you ask for it. That keeps the run from top to bottom unbroken and your working edge live.

Moving belongs between two bays, never inside one. Set the hawk down, come to the ground, roll the tower to its new place, brake the castors and check the stabilisers before you go up with fresh mortar. Reckon ten to fifteen minutes per move and count that time into your day: at eight bays that runs to well over an hour with nothing going on the wall. If decorative render follows in the same hire period, keep the same bay layout.

We supply the mobile scaffold as a full set of loose, counted parts. Point out a spot in advance where those parts may lie, and bear your mixing place in mind: the strip directly under the wall is what you will want for the tub, the water and the lead. A stretch of drive or a corner of the garden is handier. Anything ordered by 15:00 on a working day is outside your door the working day after.

You fill in the arrival day and the collection day yourself as you hire, and on render work that is worth thinking through. Have the scaffold brought the day before your first rendering day, then you build in peace and start early next morning, while the wall is still cool and the material does not pull away at once. Assembly falls to you, helped by the printed instructions and the film that goes with them; two people take half a day. Collection from Zeeburgerpad is possible too, free and by appointment.

With the final coat on, you strip the stand down and lay all the parts out together in one place; after that we carry them off. Hose the tubes and the platforms clean before you stack them, because dried mortar will not come off later and it does not belong on material going back out on hire. What we charge for bringing and fetching is stated in advance at the costs per province, so nothing catches you out.

A hired mobile scaffold is built for two hundred kilos on each square metre, the third load class named in EN 1004. That sounds ample until you start adding up on render work: wet material is heavy, and with two full buckets, a tub, yourself and a second person you are easily at half of what is permitted. So put no more on the floor than you are going to use in the bay you have in hand, and bring empty buckets straight back down with you.

The greatest chance of a slip on this job lies in the floor itself. Whatever misses the tub makes the surface greasy, and you usually notice only when you step sideways with a full bucket. So lay cardboard or sheeting down and sweep between times. Beyond that, lock the castors before you climb on, and move the stand only when nothing and nobody is left aboard. More rules are set out at the agreements for working at height.

Stop in a strong wind, even if you wanted to do one more bay. Wind makes the stand restless and dries your material out too fast into the bargain, so in that weather you lose on both sides at once. Keep the space under the floor clear as well: a falling bucket of mortar is heavy and covers a wider area than you think. Warn the household and the neighbours not to walk beneath the stand while you are up there with wet facade render, since they hear nothing coming.