Spray-painting window frames? Choose the right scaffold.

The RS51 with its 75 cm deck is the logical model out of the fleet for this work. Masking asks that you stand right in front of the frame and press tape from top to bottom into the rebate, and a narrow tower goes in tight against the brickwork. Just as important: during the taping round you move it sideways constantly, and 75 cm rolls over a garden path where wider pitches snag. The models sit together at the mobile scaffolds for hire.

What you take up with you on this job is surprisingly bulky: rolls of film, two or three widths of tape, a snap-off knife, a cloth and later the spray kit. A deck 245 cm long has room for that without you tripping over it, provided you lay everything along one side. Length helps more than width here, because you move mainly sideways along the frame and not backwards. Stand the rolls upright against an upright and they will not run away.

Working in twos, one taping while the other prepares the next pane, the 135 cm wide RS52 can earn its keep. For a single sprayer that roomier deck is more nuisance than comfort: every centimetre of width you pay back at the gate, past the bay and on the thin strip between hedge and house. As a model the RS51 runs on to 14.2 metres, so a third storey of frames asks only a taller build and no different type of tower.

For this job you measure not to the head rail but to a piece above it. Overspray settles on everything hanging nearby, so you mask the lintel, any brick course above it and the underside of the overhang as well. On a two storey house that means a build with 6 to 8 metres of reach. Translated to the deck: the platform height plus about 2 metres makes up that figure, so you stand at 4 to 6 metres.

That is deliberately higher than what you would take for brush work on the same frames. With a brush you stay inside the rebate and work at frame level; with a gun you have to get above the frame to press film against the wall and pull the top edge of your masked area tight. Pick too low and you tape that top edge with your arms stretched out, and it rips loose the moment wind gets into it. Look at a build up to eight metres for that.

Measuring starts at ground level under the castors. If your drive falls away towards the road, or the back garden lies lower than the patio you come from, the starting point drops with it and the build you must order changes. Are there frames in a second floor, then count on to above the highest lintel and not to the top pane. Booked too tight means an extra pitch here purely to be able to tape, which costs you more than the taller build ever would.

You put the tower closer to the wall than on most other jobs, because your fingers have to reach into the corner of the rebate. At the same time the four stabilisers must stay unfolded, and splaying outwards they take the very room you need to roll out film. So pick a strip you can walk all the way round and where nothing stands that you will have to move halfway, because a roll of film jammed between two stabilisers tears.

Then look at the ground. Setts, slabs or concrete give the castors grip; gravel and loose garden soil do not, and a slightly sloping path deserves sole boards under the base. What counts most here: everything standing under the frames will catch overspray. Move the car a street away, cover the bikes, take the garden furniture off and warn your neighbours a day before the first spraying round. For a spot that is not flat, read about an uneven surface under the tower.

Work out where the pitches go, too, because taping and spraying happen on different days from the same spots. Mark with chalk or a paving joint where the castors stood, and next morning you put the tower back without puzzling and your spray pass joins onto the tape line already there. Shift too far during the taping round and you will have to come back at a half masked frame from another angle, and that is exactly where the crooked tape lines you see on the glass come from.

The taping decides your hire period. Reckon on half an hour to three quarters per frame: wrapping the pane, pressing tape into the rebate corner, closing the joint onto the wall and taking in the sill. On a front with seven frames you are busy a full day that way before anything has been sprayed at all. The spraying round itself then takes only a few hours, and stripping film and tape costs another half day at the end. Two to three hire days is therefore realistic for an average front.

On top of that come waits you cannot hurry. Between two sprayed coats the timber has to dry off, and tape comes away only once the coat is dry enough not to pull, yet not so hard that the edge tears with it. Outdoors wind and sun join in: in a stiff breeze masking stops because film starts flapping, and spraying is then out of the question altogether. So plan a day of slack into your booking.

Financially that slack is barely felt. The full rate covers the first 24 hours, and each consecutive hire day after it is knocked down by 95 per cent. Sticking an extra day behind your planning therefore costs almost nothing, while booking too tight means pulling film off the glass before the last coat is on and wrapping the frame a second time. All rates per model and build stand including VAT on the page with our rental prices.

With 245 cm of platform length you usually have one frame plus the strip of wall beside it within reach per pitch. Finish that frame completely before you roll on: first the film over the pane, then the tape in the rebate, then the edges against the brickwork, and only when everything is sealed does the gun pass along. That order saves you pitches, and every pitch you do not make is half an hour gained on a day with seven frames.

The sharp line comes from the pressing down. Lay the tape slightly over the glass and press it with a filling knife or your thumb into the corner where the rubber meets the timber. Stay square in front of your work while you do it; looking up at an angle you cannot see that corner and the tape starts to wave. That is precisely why you stand on a platform and not on a ladder, because here you shuffle sideways ten times at every frame.

Do not underestimate the number of rounds. You pass every frame to tape it, again to spray it and a third time to strip it, so with seven frames you shift the mobile scaffold well over twenty times. Take the knife and the opened roll down with you each time, because a snap-off knife left on the deck falls onto the path below sooner or later. Combine the work with brush painting the frames at the back and the number of pitches doubles.

What arrives is a counted set of loose tubes, decks and braces, out of which you make a tower yourself. Find a dry spot for it beforehand, because film and tape are better not stored beside a wet stack of scaffold parts, and the strip under the frames will soon be full of covering material. Manage to place the order on an ordinary working day before 15:00 and the set comes the very next working day.

Delivery day and collection day you fill in yourself, and on this job you look at the forecast while you do. If you want to spray on a still morning, have the set come two days earlier: one day to build and one to tape. The assembly is your work; the accompanying manual and video run through the sequence one step at a time, and two people have the tower standing in half a day. Masking will not happen on that day, so count it separately.

When you are done we drive out again to take the parts away. You make sure the tower is dismantled and complete, preferably only once the sprayed work feels dry, because freshly sprayed timber marks from a tube scraping past. Wipe the settled overspray off deck and guardrail before you take it apart, and the set goes back into the van clean. What the transport costs in your region you can read at the rates for delivery.

Each deck is good for 200 kg spread over a square metre, which load class 3 in EN 1004 prescribes, and this job rarely puts you in difficulty. Still it piles up faster than expected: rolls of film, boxes of tape, a spray kit with hose and sometimes a second person taping alongside. Do not stack the heavy things all at the same upright but spread them along the length, and leave whatever you do not need that morning standing below. That also saves hunting at every frame.

The fixed rules stay in force on this work as much as any other. Brake the castors before you go up, let nobody ride along the moment the tower moves, and in a stiff breeze do not climb at all. You reach that wind limit sooner here than on other work, because a half fixed piece of film behaves like a sail and pulls at the guardrail. So never roll out more film than you tape down straight away, and check stabilisers and castors after every move.

The risk that belongs to spraying is the deck itself. Settled overspray makes a platform slippery without you seeing it happen, so lay card on it and replace that as soon as it shines. Loose pieces of film on the deck are just as treacherous: they slide out from under your shoe. Keep the path below you clear as well, because a knife or a roll sliding off the guardrail lands hard. The rest stands at the rules around working at height.