Painting woodwork? Choose the right scaffold.

With opaque paintwork you stand still a long time at one element and hardly move sideways. Deck width therefore buys you little, and the RS51 with its 75 cm is more than enough. What matters more is that the size gets everywhere: along the path to the back door, through a gate to the garden side and between a hedge and the wall, because your exterior timber sits on all four sides of the house. The other models and their dimensions are on the page about mobile scaffold hire by type.

What goes up with you differs per round, and that is exactly why it has to stay orderly. For the first coat abrasive paper, a filling knife, a cloth and primer travel up. For the finishing coat you take clean brushes, a paint kettle and tape, and you leave the sanding gear below. Stand those things in a fixed place at the end of the deck, so on the second and third round you reach blind for what you need and knock nothing over.

Where two of you work at the same element, or you take on a large boarded area at once, the RS52 with its 135 cm gives noticeably more room to move. If the inside of those same frames also needs doing, a room scaffold is the answer: it passes a doorway from roughly 70 cm and makes three to four metres. That is a separate reservation, though one you can plan in the same week. The difference between outdoor and indoor work is described in the explanation about indoor use.

Look first at which timber part sits highest before you settle on a build. At most houses that means the boarding along the roof edge or a bargeboard, sometimes the head of a dormer. That point fixes your order, even though you begin at ground level. Two storeys puts you in the band of 6 to 8 metres. Working height you arrive at by putting some two metres of arm reach on top of your platform height.

With painting something counts here that matters less on other jobs: you want to stand just below your working face and look at it in raking light. Hang your platform too high and you look down on a sill and miss the underside of the profile. Stand too low and you paint with a raised arm, which leaves the coat uneven. So choose your build such that you can hang the platform at a comfortable level for each round, and measure from the ground the wheels rest on.

Picking too tight bites you three times here instead of once. Every strip you cannot reach comfortably gets painted at arm's length again on every coat, and in opaque paint that stays visible as a band of a different thickness. Hiring one section more is still cheaper than half finishing the top metre three times and looking at it afterwards with real regret. Which reach asks for which build is set out at a build to 8 metres of reach.

Set your stand positions out before the delivery arrives, because you use them not once but at every coat. Mark in chalk or on a slab where the four wheels stood, and on rounds two and three you roll back to that exact position in a minute. That saves time, and it keeps your set-offs on the same vertical line, so a join in the finishing coat disappears neatly behind a corner profile or a downpipe.

The ground has to stay usable for that whole period, and with paintwork that is a week or more. On slabs and a drive that happens by itself; on grass rather less, since after two wet days the wheels sink and your tower stands out of true just as you want to start the finishing coat. So put plates or paving slabs under the feet from the outset and set the stabilisers carefully. How to tackle a sloping surface is covered at stabilising and tying in your tower.

Think about the place below as well. On this job something is always standing on the ground: a paint tin, a tray of brushes, a jerrycan, a sheeted length of terrace. Set aside a corner for that outside the running line of the tower. Bear in mind, finally, that the scaffold stands at the boundary for a week or more. A short word with the neighbours prevents awkwardness when you are still glossing above their fence on day five.

With three coats over all your exterior timber, allow a stretch of five to eight hire days, depending on how many elements the house has. The sanding and priming of the first round is the most work; the undercoat and the finishing coat go faster after that, because you know your stand positions and the preparation is behind you. What stretches the planning is not the hours with the brush but the days in between, and those you cannot make up by working harder.

Paint has to harden through before another coat may go over it, and outdoors that hangs closely on temperature and humidity. In spring you can usually lay a coat every other day; in autumn a full day of waiting is normal. Add to that the wait each morning until the dew is off the timber, and the stop in the afternoon before it turns damp again. Your workable window is a good deal shorter than the daylight you get.

Just because of that it pays to leave the tower simply standing between the coats. Only the first twenty four hours are reckoned at the whole tariff, and from there on each day has 95 per cent removed, so the waiting days add almost nothing to your rental price. Booking two short periods with an assembly and a transport in between costs you far more. How to judge such a run of days is explained in the overview of hire days per job.

With 245 cm of platform length you stand at most houses in front of a whole frame including the junctions around it. Always finish the entire element from one stand position before you roll on, even if that means pushing through for a while. A frame whose half was laid an hour before the rest shows a faint transition once dry, and in opaque paint that never goes away. That argument weighs heavier here than the pace at which you work along the wall.

Take up only what belongs to that coat and keep your brushes separate from one another. Use primer and finishing paint through each other and you will see it later in the sheen. Hook your paint kettle onto the rail instead of standing it beside your feet; knocking off a brush tips a kettle sooner than you think. What falls, moreover, usually lands on the element you had just finished, and then you start that piece again.

What almost everyone underestimates is the number of times you pass the same place. Count your stand positions and multiply that figure by three: only then do you have the real number of set-ups, and with it a fairer picture of your hire period. The edges cost the most time as well: the underside of a sill, the rebate round the glass and the corner where a fascia board meets a bargeboard. Together those are worth more hours than all the flat timber.

You receive the mobile scaffold in the form of a complete set of loose, counted parts. Find a corner for them where the stack can lie undisturbed for days, because you assemble once and only roll after that. Do not lay them on the terrace you want to sheet, nor directly under the stand position where you start on day one. Round the reservation off on a working day, keeping under the 15:00 mark, and we load everything the next working day.

The delivery date and the collection date are both your choice, and for paintwork you make it with a settled spell in view. Have the parts turn up a day before your first sanding session; then you stand it up in peace and start the next morning on dry timber. That saves you a lost first working day. Erecting it belongs to your share: with the manual and the film alongside, an RS51 to eight metres stands in about two hours with two people.

Once the finishing coat is dry we come back for the components. Do not break the tower down until you are sure the paint is hard, because a tube leaning against a freshly glossed frame leaves a print you can only get out by sanding. Lay the parts ready afterwards and count them one by one, then nothing is missing at loading. The rate for transport hangs on the province you live in and is listed with VAT at the delivery charges per region.

The platform deck carries two hundred kilos on each square metre. That is load class 3, the banding the EN 1004 standard gives this type of tower. Painting woodwork you seldom reach it, but stand up there with two of you and add a few tins and a bucket of water and it climbs faster than expected. So spread that weight along the length of the deck and keep the hatch clear of tins, buckets and paint rollers you have just put down.

The basic rules do not change, not even on your third round when everything is becoming routine. Brake all the wheels as soon as anyone goes up, never move the tower while paint or people are on it, and fold the four stabilisers right out after every move. If it blows hard, stop. On this job you have a second reason for that: wind drives dust and sand into your wet finishing coat, and then you are sanding that strip again tomorrow.

The risk that comes with paint is a slippery deck. A few spots of primer and a little water make aluminium treacherous, and you notice only when you step sideways. Lay down something you can easily replace and wipe spilt paint away before it sets. Keep the zone under you clear of people as well, certainly when you are working above a front door, a garden path or a terrace. The further agreements are at the requirements for working at height.