Painting railings? Choose the right scaffold.

For paintwork on tall railings you hire the Altrex Mi Tower, the narrow 75 cm version that goes out as a one-person tower. That slim base squeezes in beside a fence with a hedge or a ditch on one side and often no more than a verge on the other. For a top coat you take little up with you in any case: a kettle, a brush and a cloth, and nothing else besides. Which builds exist you can see in the MiTower hire range.

That this is a one-person tower sounds like a limitation but works in your favour on this job. Nobody passes behind you to touch the wet paint or stir up dust, and you set your own pace as you shuffle from bay to bay. If you want two people up at once you have to hire a mobile scaffold in the wider version, but for laying on a final coat that space is redundant and only leaves you more parts to carry about.

Note the difference between this job and the whole painting route. Painting railings as meant here is the closing coat on a fence that has already been prepared and needs nothing further. If sanding, de-rusting and priming still have to happen before opaque work can go on, look instead at the full painting route for fencing, because the tower then passes the same length several times and you hire it a good deal longer. The model stays the same; the hire period differs sharply.

The highest point on this job is the top rail, or the tips of the balusters if they stand above it. That is what you measure to, and you add the plinth to it: railings on a garden wall, on a bank or on a concrete kerb carry that height with them. The working height you are quoted is your platform height with about two metres of reach added, so your deck hangs lower than the figure leads you to expect.

The model and the build are two different things, and people mix them up. The Mi Tower as a whole covers a working height of 4.2 to 6.2 metres, but for railings you use only the lower settings of that, somewhere between 4 and 6 metres. A fence of two metres on a low wall of one already sits at the top of what you need here. What a build towards six metres of working height means in practice is worked out on a separate page.

Your tape starts at the ground under the castors and not at the level on the far side of the fence. On a boundary between two plots that easily costs half a metre, and that is precisely the bit you miss later. Choose too low and you lay the top rail with your arm stretched above your head, which is the movement that makes a coat uneven and lets curtains sag into it. On a final layer you look at a miss like that all season.

Where the tower stands helps decide how your work turns out. Put it on paving or on a drive and the dust stays down. Put it on loose sand, in a dry verge or on gravel and something lifts with every step and lands in your wet coat. Sweep a surface like that, damp it down lightly or lay a sheet under the base, and do so a day before you start on the railings.

You need room on every side of the base, because the stabilisers stick out at an angle and you want them fully extended. Count that spread in if you are working along a fence with planting: a privet or an ivy growing against the bars swallows half your strip. The railings themselves are no support, not even briefly to pull yourself up on, and certainly not with fresh paint on them. So cut back a day before the tower arrives.

Look at level differences as well. Railings stand remarkably often on a lip, a low wall or a falling bank, and then the castors on one side come out lower than on the other. Find a flat stretch, or move the set-up half a metre until you have it true. A tower out of plumb feels unsettled once you are up on it, and with a smooth final coat that is the last thing you want. How to handle a slope is in the piece on setting up on uneven ground.

The painting itself takes less time than people think. Per position you finish a little over two metres of railings, so a fence of fifteen metres costs you six or so set-ups. With building in, that is a day of work, and on a short entrance gate no more than a morning. Even so you rarely book a single day for it, and that is not down to the length of the fence but to the sky above it.

A final coat wants to cure undisturbed. You start once the dew has lifted and you stop well before the air turns damp again, so your usable window is only part of the day. If a shower crosses shortly after you finish, a stretch of railings goes again. That is why you hire two to three days and use the best of them, rather than having to paint on a fixed date because the tower is otherwise gone.

On the rental price that margin barely shows. Your first 24 hours is the part billed in full, since 95 per cent comes off every further day, so a reserve day works out at a fraction of the opening one. So set your end date a day wider than your plan says. Waiting for better weather with the tower already standing beside the railings is cheaper than having the set collected and brought out again later.

With a platform length of 245 cm you have a little over two metres of railings within reach per position. Finish the bay between two posts completely before you move, working from the top down, and put your join on a post. The only place where two painting sessions meet then coincides with a vertical line that is there anyway. Never stretch into the next bay, because that outstretched arm is exactly what lays a thicker band.

Take little up and keep that little clean. A kettle, a good brush, a fresh cloth and nothing more; sandpaper stays on the ground for this round. Wipe the deck before you climb and knock your soles out, because sand you carry up reaches the paint by way of the floor. Put the kettle in a corner where your trouser leg does not brush past it. Anything left lying on the tower gathers dust as well.

Think your route through in advance. With a top coat you want a whole length done in an unbroken series of positions, without an hour's break in the middle. Stop halfway and pick it up later and the edge of your previous bay has already skinned over, and you will see that join. So work out before you start how many times you have to move and whether you can manage that within the dry part of the day. If it does not add up, begin early the next morning instead.

The tower reaches you as a set of loose parts counted before it left: uprights, platform, braces and castors. Do not drop that stack in the verge beside the railings, because your set-up goes there and you want no churned ground under it. A drive, a stretch of pavement or the grass further along is a better spot. Book on a weekday with 15:00 as the cut-off and the complete set rolls off the van the next working day, well before your first dry morning.

The arrival date and the removal date are yours to fill in, and with paintwork you let that choice follow the forecast. Choose a drop at the start of a dry run, so you can build in peace and start on the railings first thing the following morning. Assembly falls to you, with a manual and a short film showing the order the parts go in, and with this light tower you manage that alone in about half an hour.

As soon as you have finished we come back for the set, after you have taken it down and stood it ready complete. Wait with dismantling until the top coat is hard enough to walk past, because a brace tapping fresh paintwork costs you a repair on exactly the stretch you put most work into. Count the parts as you take them apart. What bringing and collecting come to together is listed with VAT included at the rates per province.

This tower is meant for one person at a time, and with paintwork that is no hardship. The platform may carry 200 kg per square metre, the value belonging to load class 3 in EN 1004, so you plus a kettle of paint sit comfortably below it. Even so, let nobody climb up to have a quick look at how it is going, because a one-person version really does mean one person up top, however short the visit. Anyone who wants to watch does so from the ground.

The ordinary rules stay in force. Brake the castors before you set foot on the ladder, never move the tower while somebody is on it or your kettle is still up there, and come down once the wind picks up. That limit sits lower with paint than with other work, because wind carries dust and leaves straight into your wet layer. The rest of the requirements are bundled in the overview of rules for high work.

What plays extra on this job sits below you and at your feet. The tips of a baluster fence often sit right at platform height, so watch the backs of your knees and your hands as you bend. Spilled paint on the deck is glassy and does not dry away by itself: put a cloth over it at once. Finally, set a sign or a tape at your position if a path runs past, so nobody walks under you into wet bars.