Fitting a house number? Choose the right scaffold.

For a house number you hire the Altrex Mi Tower, a mobile scaffold 75 cm wide that is built around a single user. That suits what this job asks of you: all that travels up is a drill, a small box of plugs and the digits, and nothing more needs to fit on the deck. The narrow width slips past a bike rack or through a side gate to a rear entrance without anything having to be moved. What else stands in the fleet is set out on the page about hiring the MiTower.

Be honest about whether you need to hire anything at all. If the number goes up about two metres beside the front door, the paving under it is flat and you can keep the door shut for a while, a household step ladder does the job in half an hour. Hiring a tower for house number work at that height mostly buys you a morning of building and dismantling. That is a waste of your time, and we say so beforehand rather than afterwards.

There are three situations in which a mobile scaffold does earn its keep. The first is a tall elevation, where the number belongs beside a first or second floor window of an upstairs flat. The second is a number above an entrance or a porch, where a ladder would have to plant its feet in the doorway. The third is a large name board or a run of separate letters, because then you spend an hour measuring and lining up. Compare the models in the piece on the MiTower against a mobile scaffold.

What do you actually have to reach on a house number job? The top edge of the digit or the board, and that point is your measure. Above a porch door it sits around three metres; beside a first floor window it climbs to four or five. The MiTower runs from 4.2 metres working height up to 6.2 metres, and a house number nearly always falls in the lower part of that band. What you book is the working height: your platform height with roughly 2 metres of reach added on.

Your tape starts where the wheels will end up, and beside a front door that is rarely the threshold. If two steps lead up to the entrance, the tower stands on the pavement next to them, so you begin lower than you would guess. A basement flat with a raised entrance does exactly the same thing to your measurement. Walk that stretch of wall with a tape before you choose the build, because half a metre of difference here means one extra section in your set.

Choosing too tight shows up in the result straight away on this job. Stand half a metre low and you drill with your arms stretched above your head, the bit wanders off the marked point and the number ends up crooked. The dust comes down into your face as well. Since you are hiring the lightest build there is anyway, one section more costs you next to nothing. What goes into such a set is listed under the build for 6 metres working height.

With a house number the tower nearly always stands on the pavement or the path right in front of the entrance, and that is exactly where everybody has to pass. Think of the postman, the neighbours from the same stairwell and the people wheeling a bike inside. So set the pitch a little off the centre of the door, so the door still opens and there is room to walk by. An hour of thought about that spot saves a whole day of shuffling.

The ground is usually paving, and that works well as long as you can genuinely spread the four stabilisers. They angle outwards, so allow for more room than the tower itself takes up. Look beforehand at what lies in that zone: a tree pit, a bike stand, loose slabs, a step down to the door or a drain cover that one stabiliser foot wants to land on. Bikes leaning against the wall go away before the set is delivered, not while you are already building.

On a busy street keep a walking route open and fence off the zone under your work point with a few cones or some tape. For a couple of hours of work that feels excessive, but this is an entrance where people step out without looking up. On a narrow pavement, ask what your council allows, even if the tower is only there for one day. If the pavement falls away towards the gutter, read the article on levelling on a sloping surface.

The fitting itself takes an hour, two at the outside if you are lining up a board of separate letters. The day goes on everything around it: laying the set out, building, moving the pitch to the right spot, then dismantling afterwards and stacking it tidily. For the MiTower, building and taking down together comes to about an hour, even on your own. So count on one rental day in which you do the lot, not on a morning in which it all happens to fit.

There is one waiting time people forget. Fix a heavy board with chemical anchors or mounting adhesive and it has to cure before you take the prop away, and that time is printed on the pack of whatever you are using. An illuminated house number adds a connection on the inside, and then you want the tower still standing in case the cable run does not sit right first time. Booking two days gives you that room.

Booking longer costs you almost nothing, and on a job this short that is the thing worth knowing. You pay the full rate for the first 24 hours only; every rental day behind that comes with 95 per cent off. Putting a second day in because rain is forecast or because you only have time in the evening is therefore not an expensive insurance. What the rental price for this build comes to you work out on the page with the rates.

The deck is 245 cm long, and for this job that is nearly always enough. A three digit house number spans half a metre at most, so the tower goes down in one place and you stay up until it is done. Only with a long name board or a run of separate letters spread over more than two metres do you need a second pitch. In that case snap a line across the whole board first, so the second half lands at the same height.

Everything needed up top goes up in one trip, because climbing back down the tower for one forgotten plug costs more time than the drilling. On the list: plugs and screws in two sizes, a drill with a matching masonry bit, a spirit level, a pencil, tape, a cloth and the digits in a bucket so nothing rolls off the deck. A straw to blow the hole clean belongs there too, since leftover dust stops the plug going home.

What catches people out is the lining up. From the deck you stand half a metre off the wall and cannot see whether the number hangs straight from the street. So tape the digits in place first, go down, look from the pavement and only then shift them. On old brickwork watch where you drill as well: a hole in a joint goes in more easily and repairs better afterwards than one in the middle of a facing brick.

The MiTower arrives as a complete, counted set of parts. That is a small stack, but do not put it down in the doorway where you actually want to be working. The strip beside the entrance or a piece of front garden is handier, and on a walkway or in a stairwell you lay it against the blank wall. Complete the booking on a working day inside the 15:00 window and the parts reach your address the next working day.

Which day it arrives and which day it goes away are both yours to pick, so the set can turn up on the morning you are free and leave again the day after. Building stays with you; we do not put scaffolds up for anybody. With this model that is perfectly manageable single handed. The manual and the video that goes with it show you the order of assembly, and you run through that once calmly before you start.

If you have it delivered, you pay a fixed price per province for bringing and collecting together; what that is for your address is on the page with delivery charges. We do not drive outside the Netherlands or to the Wadden Islands. After your rental period we come and collect the set again. All you do is have everything dismantled and stacked ready at the spot where it was dropped, so the driver does not have to carry a pile of tubes through your front garden.

Every square metre of deck may carry 200 kg; that limit belongs to load class 3 from EN 1004. A drill and a box of screws come nowhere near it, not even with a bucket added. The point with this model lies elsewhere: the MiTower is built for one person, so your helper stays on the ground and passes up a bucket on a line at most. If you want two people on the deck, you have to hire a different model.

The ordinary rules stay in force even though the work lasts an hour. Brake all the wheels before you take the first rung, and check that again after every break. Move the tower empty only: nobody on the deck, no tool box on the boards. And do not start in a strong wind, because a wall on an open street corner catches more of it than you notice at ground level while you stand up there with a machine in your hand.

The real risk with a house number is what happens below you. You work above an entrance where people step out without looking up, so screen that zone off and warn the occupants of the building. Do not leave tools on the edge of the deck, because a drill that falls lands right on the doormat. Take care drilling around a doorbell or outside light: there is wiring in the wall. The full list is in the rules that apply to working at height.