Replacing an insect screen? Choose the right scaffold.

For screen work the Altrex MiTower is the model that fits. That is a slim scaffold 75 cm wide, made for a single person, with a working height running from 4.2 to 6.2 metres. The one person layout is not a limitation here but the whole point: fitting a screen you do alone, and the frame is passed up by somebody who stays on the ground. What the model can do and where it stops is on the page about MiTower hire.

What you notice most on this job is the weight. You shift the build at every window afresh, sometimes six or seven times in an afternoon, and then every kilo you have to push along a garden path counts. A heavy construction with a lot of deck boards costs you minutes per move that you do not spend on the screens themselves. Besides, you need very little space up top: a tape measure, a screwdriver and the frame.

If you also mean to paint or tackle the gutter that same week, an ordinary mobile scaffold with a 245 cm deck is worth weighing up, if only because two of you may stand on it and it holds more material. For screens on their own that is overkill: you would end up dragging parts to every window that never once get used. Which of the two suits your work is set out in the comparison between these models.

The point you have to reach is the head of the frame, because the clips or the rail the screen drops into sit there. At a window on the first floor that lies around four metres; at a loft or dormer window it climbs to six. Working height here means your platform height added to the roughly two metres you still reach over it standing. Look at the build behind six metres of working height and you can see how many parts that takes.

Start your measurement at street level or on the garden path where the castors will actually stand, rather than on the doorstep at the front. A planted strip along the wall often sits a step lower and a drive falls away towards the road, so half a metre of build goes astray that way. Walk past every window before you reserve as well, because the highest one sets the build you hire, even where the others sit a good deal lower.

Standing too low is more of a nuisance on this job than it sounds. You have to tilt a frame into a rebate with both hands and work the clips at the same time, and that is impossible above your head. Nor can you see the top rebate then, and that is exactly where you have to check the frame beds down everywhere. So take a build on the generous side. That goes doubly for a window on the second floor.

Below a window there is rarely a flat, empty spot. A shrub grows there, a planted strip runs along, a cellar entrance juts out or the pavement falls away to the gutter. So work out per window where the four feet land before you hire the scaffold, because on screen work you do not set it down once but six times over. A place that works perfectly for the first window may come out on an inspection cover at the third.

The stabilisers have to go fully out here as well, even though you are up for ten minutes only. Precisely on short work the urge to leave them half in is strong, since you will be moving on again shortly, and that is where it goes wrong on screen jobs. If a foot sinks into a border, put a paving slab or a thick plank under it before you climb. What that involves is described in the guidance on stabilising.

Think about the route too. You take the build around the house, past the bay, through the gate to the back garden and back again. Walk that circuit beforehand with a tape and see where it narrows below the width of the scaffold. Clear away the bikes, the wheelie bin and the coiled hose on the same round, because otherwise you run into them again at every following window and it costs you minutes each time.

Count screen work in rounds rather than in hours. The first round is the measuring round: you go past every window, take the rebate at three points across the width and the height, and note per window whether it is a fixed screen, a roller screen or a screen door. The second round is the fitting round. Six windows therefore means twelve pitches, and together that fills a good day once you count the build and the strip down.

What happens between those two rounds decides your rental period. Frames made to size are not always in straight away, and until you have them the fitting round cannot go ahead. So you can do one of two things: leave the scaffold standing on site until everything is in, or else hire it twice over for a short spell. If painting or a gutter is on the list in that same stretch, carrying on is nearly always the calmest and the cheapest call.

Carrying on is not expensive either. The full rate is charged over the opening twenty four hours alone; from there each further day of hire is billed at 95 per cent less, so holding on climbs nowhere near as fast as you would think. That makes the gap between two separate periods and one continuous one considerable, because paying twice for a first day mounts up. Work both variants out on the page with the tariffs before you fix the delivery and collection.

Measuring is done up top, because from the ground you always misjudge a rebate. Take the width at three heights and the height at three points across the width, and note the smallest figure per window. Old frames are seldom square, and a screen two millimetres too generous will no longer clamp. Write down at the same time which side the hinge has to go on, and whether the casement in question swings outward or inward.

The fitting itself is short work. You take the old frame out, clean the rebate, fix the clips or the top rail and click the new screen in. Have someone pass the frame up from below rather than carrying it under your arm, because on the ladder you need both hands. On the MiTower you are up there on your own, so that second person stays on the ground in any case and hands things over.

Moving takes most of the time here. With six windows you are twelve times busy with brakes off, stabilisers in, shunt along, out again and back on the brake. Allow a couple of minutes for each. Take everything you need up in a bucket, because for one forgotten screwdriver you otherwise climb all the way down and all the way back. If you want the glass behind it done at the same time, look at washing windows for the approach.

The scaffold arrives in parts, complete and counted, and so not as a finished thing you only have to stand upright. Pick a place in advance where those parts may lie: the drive, the garage or a corner of the front garden, but on no account right under the first window you want to start at. Have the booking in place on a normal working day ahead of 15:00, and the van comes by a day later with the whole set.

The day it comes and the day of the return trip you enter yourself in the reservation. On screen work that helps more than it sounds, because you often want to do the measuring round earlier than the fitting round. Build the scaffold yourself with the manual and the instruction footage beside you; a one person model goes up single handed, and that is exactly why this type suits short jobs. Allow half an hour, at a moment when you need not press straight on.

Once the last screen hangs you strip the scaffold down and carry the parts back to where they were dropped; on the day you marked we come past to collect them. Count them off as you dismantle, and you can be certain that no clip plate has been left lying behind in a border somewhere. What bringing and fetching come to together varies by province; you can read that amount back under the cost of delivery.

The MiTower is a scaffold for one person, and its deck may hold up to 200 kg per square metre under load class 3 of the standard EN 1004. On screen work you sit well below that, even with a frame and some tools in hand. Do not let that tempt you into climbing up with two of you anyway, because that is not what this model was built for. More on what a deck will take is at loading and weight of a scaffold.

The ordinary conditions stand, even on a job of ten minutes per window and even where the scaffold is standing low. Brakes locked before you climb, nobody and nothing on the platform while you shunt along, and stop as soon as it starts to blow. That wind is a genuine point here: a screen door or a large roller screen works like a sail the moment you lift it, and at four metres up you feel that in your balance at once. Better to wait an hour.

The risk on this work is its own brevity. Because you are only up briefly, people skip steps: stabilisers half out, the frame propped loose against the rail, a stretch to the next window instead of moving. Keep the zone directly beneath you clear of people at all times, because a falling screen frame with an aluminium edge is sharp and light enough to plane away sideways. Every requirement is listed at working safely at height.