Painting fencing? Choose the right scaffold.

Anyone tackling a fence from end to end shifts the set-up dozens of times. That is why you hire the Altrex Mi Tower here, the narrow 75 cm version meant for a single person. Light and slim beats roomy on this work, because you push the scaffold six or eight places further per pass and you would rather do that with little weight under your hands. Which settings exist and how the hire runs is shown in the Mi Tower overview.

That only one person may be up at a time sounds troublesome on a job of several days, but in practice it is manageable. Working in a pair, one takes the upper half from the platform while the other does the lower half standing on the ground. That way you get on without needing to hire a mobile scaffold of the wider sort, and you have only one set of parts to lug if you start further along the fence.

This page covers the full route, so sanding, de-rusting, priming and two opaque layers. If all you have left is a smooth final coat on a fence already prepared, look at the top coat on railings instead. That saves you a great deal in hire days: there you walk the route once, here four times. The scaffold you book is the same in both cases, but the period you hold on to it runs up to a good double for the full route.

Measure on this work to the very highest point that still gets paint: usually the top rail, sometimes a finial or a cap on the posts. If the fence stands on a plinth, a retaining wall or a raised bank, that base belongs to your height and you count it in. Bear in mind that the figure you book is your platform height with a reach of about 2 metres on top, so the deck comes out well below the number on your confirmation.

Do not confuse the model with the setting you build it to. The Mi Tower handles 4.2 to 6.2 metres of working height in total, and for fencing you use the lower part of that: four to six metres suits almost every fence. Only with a fence on top of a high retaining wall do you creep towards the upper limit of that range, and then you pay extra attention to the ground. What such an intermediate setting looks like is described at a working height of 5 metres.

Booking too low is felt above all in the first pass. Sanding and de-rusting are done with force, and pressing with your arms above your head is not something you keep up for half a day. You then skip the top few centimetres without noticing, and that is exactly where the rust starts again a year later. Rather choose one setting higher, so the top rail lies about chest high and you can push the sander straight at it. That one step costs you next to nothing on the hire.

On this job you do not pick a spot but a strip. Walk the whole length before you book a scaffold and look at where the castors can roll, because you cover that route four times. Paving, a half-hardened verge or a rolled drive are fine. A soft grass strip is not: after the first pass there are ruts in it, after a shower the castors sink, and then every position means pushing against mud instead of forwards.

On both sides of the base the stabilisers have to open fully, and beside fencing that clashes more often than elsewhere. Stay posts, a ditch on the boundary, a low hedge or the neighbours' parked cars sit exactly where you want those legs. Walk that through and clear what can be cleared before the scaffold arrives. Under no circumstances lean on the fence itself, not even in the sanding pass, because most fences stand looser in the ground than they look.

A full painting route also brings debris that a top coat alone never produces. Paint flakes, rust particles and sanding dust gather under your set-up, and you do not want those left in the grass or in the border. Before you start, lay a sheet or a cloth under the length you are working on and shift it along with the scaffold. Afterwards you roll it up and the clearing away is done in one go, under the fence as well.

Count this work in passes and not in square metres. Per position you have a little over two metres of fence in hand, so fifteen metres of fencing yields about six positions. Those six you go over four times: sanding and de-rusting, priming, first opaque coat, second opaque coat. That is twenty-four times rolling up, braking, setting the legs and laying out again, and those actions together fill more time than the brush ever spends in your hand.

On top of that come the waits. A primer has to cure before opaque work can go over it, and between two top coats exactly the same holds. That time is set by the product you use and not by your diary. Rain, mist or a cold night push everything along further still. For the full route on a fence of this length you therefore land at five to seven days that the scaffold stays on your plot, even if you use every day well.

That length presses on the rental price less than you would think. The first day is charged in full, and every day after it counts for just a twentieth, since 95 per cent comes off. Planning a painting job generously is cheap, while booking tight forces you to lay a coat at a moment when it is really still too damp. Book two days too many rather than one too few, because the second option ends up costing you a whole pass over again.

Every pass asks for different kit on your platform, and with a one-person version that is worth thinking about. In the sanding pass the machine, the lead, abrasive sheets and a brush go up; for priming a tin, a brush and a cloth; for the top coats only your kettle and tools. Take exactly that per pass and nothing extra, and you keep the floor of the scaffold free of clutter to trip over as you work sideways along the fence.

Treat a bay between two posts as a unit and finish it completely in that pass, the undersides of the rails and the backs of the bars included. Never leave half a bay standing at the priming stage: bare metal left out overnight is no longer clean enough by the next morning. The 245 cm of your platform often runs about level with the spacing between posts, so that division usually costs you no extra position.

Watch the lead while you are sanding. Run it down along an upright rather than straight across your platform, because a machine pulling on a cable pulled tight takes your balance with it. If you work on battery, take a second one up so you do not have to climb down halfway through a bay. And switch the machine off before you put it down on the deck, even if you are only setting it aside for a moment to check a corner or to fetch a fresh sheet.

The scaffold is delivered to you in loose parts counted beforehand: uprights, platform, braces, guard rails and castors. Find a place for them you will not need in the first days, so not the strip you will be rolling back and forth over. A drive, a piece of yard or the grass on the other side of the path serves well. Book on a working day and arrange it before 15:00, and the parts arrive the next working day, usually well before you get to building.

You fill in yourself when the set arrives and when it is taken away again. For a route of several days you look at a longer forecast than you would for a single job: you want an unbroken run in which both the sanding and the last top coat fit. Assembly is down to you, manual and instruction film to hand, and with this light model you manage it on your first morning without anyone else lending a hand.

After the last coat we come back for the parts. You dismantle, count along as you take it apart and set everything complete on the place you agreed with the driver. Do that only when the paint is dry enough to walk past, otherwise a tube still takes a streak across your new work. What bringing and taking away come to together varies by province; those rates are stated with VAT included at the cost of delivery and collection.

The platform you stand on belongs to load class 3 in EN 1004, so 200 kg on every square metre. On this work you come closer to that than with a top coat alone, because in the first pass a sander, a bucket and a bag of abrasive stand next to you. Stay well under the limit even so, and watch above all where the weight sits: sliding everything against one guard rail is less wise than spreading the load over the floor.

The familiar agreements apply here too, and over a long hire period attention to them slips fastest. Brake the castors before you climb, move nothing while someone is up there or tools are lying on the deck, and break off once the wind gets up. On a painting route that last one is extra annoying because you are in the middle of a bay, but half a top coat is easier to put right than a blown-over set-up. All the rules are in the overview of requirements for high work.

The risks peculiar to this job come out of the first pass. Sanding dust and rust particles fly up into your face, so work with goggles and a mask and keep the wind behind you as far as you can. What you sand off then lands beneath you, so let nobody stand there and close the path off if people walk past. Sweep your platform clean after every pass as well, because dry grindings make the floor surprisingly slippery and you notice that only as you step sideways.