Cleaning glazing? Choose the right scaffold.

On a two storey house the Altrex RS TOWER 51 is the obvious model here, a mobile scaffold that builds only 75 cm wide. Windows rarely sit above an empty stretch of wall. There is a border under the sills, a downpipe running past, and the path round to the back is often barely wider than a wheelbarrow. That slim width gets you along there without half the garden ending up on the drive. Which other builds stand ready is listed at the mobile scaffolds in the hire fleet.

Up top it is not the width of the deck that counts but what has to fit on it. Badly soiled glass takes a tub of product, a second tub of clean rinsing water, a squeegee, a stack of cloths and usually a holder of fresh blades. All of that stands on the boards while you still have to shuffle past it yourself. On 75 cm that works, provided you park the tubs in a corner behind you and leave the middle of the deck clear.

The 135 cm wide RS TOWER 52 only comes into it when two of you are up there, or when a jerrycan has to go up because there is no tap nearby. For a single house that is rare, so most people rent narrow for this. If you take the frames back with abrasive paper and varnish afterwards, the roomier deck is welcome. To set the models side by side first, look at the comparison of scaffold sizes.

Measure to the top edge of the highest pane that is still dirty, and not blindly to the gutter. If that window is on the second floor you are right with 6 to 8 metres of working height. On top of the platform height comes roughly 2 metres of reach, which puts your boards at 4 to 6 metres. That range is what you enter when you book. How many frame sections belong to it is shown on the page about 7 metres of working height.

Your zero point is where the castors will end up standing. If a raised terrace runs under the back elevation, or the garden drops away towards the fence, that zero point shifts and so does the build you order. Look as well at an extension or a conservatory roof jutting out below the windows. You cannot get the base tight against the wall there, so you stand a good deal further off the glass and want to come out a notch higher.

Choose too tight and you feel it in your shoulders the moment you hit scale. Limescale only lets go when you can bear down on it with a flat hand, and that does not happen with your arms straight above your head. The top band then comes half clean, and later that line shows up neatly against the light. When in doubt take the roomier build. For windows on a second floor that is almost always the sensible call.

The strip under the windows is usually the most cluttered piece of ground a house has. That is where the border sits, where the hedge stands, where the terrace ends or the gravel path to the shed begins. The four stabilisers want free room on every side, and their spread is a good deal wider than the build itself. So walk the elevation before you hire a mobile scaffold and pin down, per window bay, the spot where the base can stand flat and unobstructed.

Then think about the ground, because on this job litres of water come down. Rinsing water soaks into the soil, and a border that looks firm enough when dry has gone soft under the castors after an hour of polishing. In such places lay wide boards or thick slabs under the footplates and check them again after every coffee break. For level differences and a garden path that falls away, the piece on working over uneven ground gives you the method.

Finally, watch the small obstacles that belong under a window by nature. A low hedge, a garden lamp, the grating over a cellar light and the raised edge of a terrace sit exactly where a stabiliser wants to swing out. Set the build so the glass stays within arm's length, because leaning towards a pane on this job guarantees trouble. Anything that can be moved you clear a day earlier, so nothing has to be dragged about during your hire period.

This job estimates badly from the number of panes. What decides it is how stubborn the soiling turns out to be. A thin film of building dust rinses off in a couple of minutes, while burnt in scale streaks under a sill can take three treatments before the glass looks even again. So start on an inconspicuous pane and time what it asks. It is a different job altogether from a plain wash of the panes, where you never stop moving.

For a terraced house with builders' dirt on the windows you generally land on two to three hire days. Waiting is built into that and nobody can shorten it. Product has to soak before it does anything, and on glass in full sun it evaporates before it gets that far. So you work round the house with the sun and leave the south side until late in the afternoon. That spreads your work over more half days than you expected.

The way the tariff is stacked works in your favour here, so booking generously costs you next to nothing. You settle the opening twenty four hours at the full figure, and each further hire day comes with 95 per cent knocked off it. A spare day is therefore near enough free, while cutting it fine leaves you staring at the calendar with half clean windows while the van is already on the road. For rules of thumb, the guide to hire days helps you plan.

With 245 cm of deck length you are looking at a good two metres of elevation per position. At most houses that is one window bay, sometimes two narrow windows side by side. Finish that strip completely before you move, and start at the top so dirty rinsing water does not run over glass you have just done. Count the strips in your elevation beforehand. Ten metres of wall soon costs four positions per lift, and on a corner house the side wall still hangs behind that.

You move with a bare deck. Put the tubs down below first, even if you are only shifting two metres along, because sloshing water moves your centre of gravity at the exact moment you are pushing. Run through your list before you climb: product, rinsing water, squeegee, cloths, blades and a scraper. Whatever you forget you fetch by climbing, and five trips up and down per window quietly costs you half an hour of your hire day.

What people misjudge is the blade. Over flat, uncoated glass it is allowed, provided the pane stays wet, you keep it flat and you work in one direction. On coated, toughened or sandblasted glass you leave it in the box, and on a dry pane certainly. Always try a corner first and take that test seriously, because a misjudgement costs you a whole pane. That difference sets your pace, even if you go straight on to cleaning the windows at the back.

You get a complete, counted set of loose parts delivered. Point out in advance where that stack may land, because you would rather keep the strip under the windows empty and a border is no base for tubes. A drive, or the edge of the terrace well away from the borders, suits far better. Confirm the reservation before 15:00 and, on a weekday, the parts arrive the next working day; the glass then gets started a day after that.

You pick your own delivery and collection date, and here you mostly watch the temperature. In frost your rinsing water sets on the pane before you have it dry, and on a wall in burning sun your product does very little. A mild, overcast day is the best moment. Putting it together stays your job; the printed instructions and the film that come with the set show you how. The order runs through step by step in the build guide.

We collect again as soon as you are done. You dismantle everything and lay the parts together somewhere the van can pull up alongside. Rinse the tubes and the boards off if product has splashed on them, certainly with an acid product that attacks aluminium and leaves a dull grey mark. Bringing and fetching together carries a fixed price per province including VAT, and the figure for your address is listed in the overview of delivery charges per province, so your budget holds.

Every mobile scaffold in our fleet belongs in load class 3 of EN 1004, which is a deck that takes 200 kg on every square metre. On this job you creep towards that faster than expected, because two full tubs already weigh twenty kilos together and a jerrycan of rinsing water piles a good deal more on top. If two of you are up there with a water supply as well, count it through before you climb. What load class 3 covers is unpacked in the article on this scaffold standard.

The ordinary rules obviously still apply. Put the brakes on before you set a foot on the lowest rung, never move the tower with a person or gear aboard, and come down once the wind picks up in earnest. That moment arrives sooner on glass than elsewhere, because a cloth behaves like a sail in the wind and wet hands keep little grip on a blade. Check after every reposition that the stabilisers are firmly back down on the ground.

The danger that really belongs to this job is under your soles. A deck with rinsing water standing on it goes glassy, and rinse aid or soap makes it worse. So use a tub you can close, pull a squeegee over the boards now and then, and put on shoes with a tread. Keep the zone below clear, because a blade that shoots loose or a falling squeegee is not something you want on anyone's head. The rest is in this guidance on work at height.