Installing a charging point? Choose the right scaffold.

The MiTower is the scaffold you are after on this work: 75 cm wide, meant for one person and light enough to build and move on your own. That fits the job, because a fitter here usually works without help, and the strip between a parked car and the wall is tightly measured for anything wider. What is available in this segment and which build heights go with it you see on the page about hiring a MiTower.

The 245 cm deck is exactly what you want on a run that goes horizontally. Trunking rarely hangs off one point: you fit a bracket, shuffle a piece along, place the next bracket and only then lay the cable into what hangs there. With that length you do a good two metres of trunking per pitch, tools beside you included. A case with bits, plugs and screws fits next to that without trouble, provided you set it against the guardrail.

Does the run have to go higher than six metres, say along a three storey elevation to a meter cupboard in the loft, then the MiTower will not get you there. This model is built for 4.2 to 6.2 metres of working height and stops above that. Then you hire a mobile scaffold of the RS51 type instead, which as a narrow tower carries on to 14.2 metres. For an ordinary house with the meter cupboard downstairs or one floor up, the MiTower is ample.

Measure not to the charging point itself but to the highest point of your cable run. That is usually the penetration through the wall at the meter cupboard, or the spot where the trunking turns the corner under the eaves and you have to steer with a bracket. On a terraced house that sits somewhere between two and four metres, and then you need a build with 4 to 6 metres of reach. Those figures work out because the platform height carries about 2 metres of reach on top.

The lowest build of this scaffold starts at 4.2 metres and covers the bulk of these jobs already. If you do hire higher, that is nearly always because the meter cupboard is upstairs or because the trunking has to run the full width of the elevation. Look in that case at what belongs to six metres of working height. Is your run entirely on the ground floor, then there is hardly anything to hire and a step stool will do.

Your measuring point lies at the paving under the castors. A drive that falls from the garage down to the pavement easily costs you half a metre, and you notice that exactly on the last stretch of trunking. Choose too tight and you drill the penetration with your arms above your head, while what you want is to face the hole squarely and keep the drill level. A hole running back in at an angle fills with water in the first heavy shower, and that only shows up much later.

The place this scaffold ends up is nearly always the drive, the path beside the garage or the strip along the front elevation. That gives you a hard surface, which works well, but it also means a car has to go and the garage door may not open that day. Park the car elsewhere for the day and agree with the household that the drive stays blocked until the installation is done, even though there seems to be room enough.

Watch the splay of the stabilisers, because they reach out at an angle and on a drive they love to hit a bollard, the neighbours' charging point or the gate into the garden. Look at what is in the ground too: with a charging point on its own plinth a trench is open or has just been filled, and on freshly made up ground you do not want a tower standing for days. How you solve that is set out at a base that is out of level.

Work out beforehand how many pitches you are going to make. If the run goes from the meter cupboard to the side elevation and from there to the drive, you shift the scaffold two or three times over its full length. Keep that route free of bikes, wheelie bins and garden furniture, because a tower you have to lift to get past something is exactly what you do not want. Anything standing on that route you move the evening before.

Most charging points are in within a day. You hang the box, drill the penetration, run the trunking, pull the cable through and terminate at the meter cupboard. The part at height takes only a couple of hours, but those hours are spread across the whole day: first setting out the run, halfway through finishing off the trunking, and at the end sealing the penetration. So you hire the scaffold for a full day and not for a half.

Does the run cross two elevations, does a consumer unit have to be added, or is the meter cupboard upstairs, then reckon on two days. The inspection and the actual connection by your installer can also fall on a different day from the fitting on the wall. Drying times as in decorating you do not have here, but dependencies you certainly do: a network operator who has to call, or a cable delivered only the next morning, decides whether the tower stands another day.

That extra day is a small matter in the cost. Your first 24 hours go at the full rate; each further day of the booking is cut by 95 per cent. That difference is big enough to plan around. Building a day of slack in is therefore a good deal cheaper than having delivery and collection come out a second time because you handed the scaffold back just too early. What the various models cost stands with VAT included at the rental prices per period.

The box itself you simply hang from the ground, because a charging point goes at about a metre so the plug stays comfortable to handle. Everything above that you do from the deck of the tower: the wall brackets for the trunking, the bend round the corner, the penetration at the meter cupboard and the seal around it. Work from the highest point downwards, then you do not have to go up again later for a bracket you forgot.

Make sure you take up in one go what you need above. A cordless drill with a masonry bit, plugs, screws, the trunking cut to length, a sealant gun and a tape measure, plus the cable reel that you hang on the guardrail instead of laying on the deck. Set that reel so the cable can pay out freely down the outside of the scaffold, or you will pull it tight between the uprights and jam it just as you want to lower it.

Per pitch you cover a good two metres of wall, so a run of eight metres asks three or four positions of the tower. Coming to a corner, move it once more rather than trying to work round the brickwork with a stretched arm. Combine the work with an outside light above the drive and you take on both jobs from the same pitches, so you only need to hire the scaffold once for the pair.

You get the scaffold delivered as a counted set of parts and put it together yourself. On this job that is easy to plan: make sure the set is there a day earlier, so the installation day does not start with building work. Lay the parts on the drive and not in front of the garage door, because your material still has to pass there. Book it on a working day, with the clock still short of 15:00, and the set turns up the following working day.

Delivery and collection dates you enter yourself at the booking. Working with an installer? Then match those dates to his diary and not to yours: he comes on a fixed morning and will not wait for a tower to go up. The building is your job and on this model it goes fine alone, with the manual and the video beside you. Half an hour to an hour is enough at this modest height, certainly if you laid the parts out in order.

Once the work is done we come for the set again, after you have taken the tower apart and laid it out complete. Pick a spot for that where the van can get to, so not behind a locked gate to which only you have the key. Run through whether every part is lying there again before you pull the door shut behind you. What the run out and the pick-up cost depends on your province, and you read that at the costs of delivery.

A platform carries 200 kg per square metre, which belongs to load class 3 from EN 1004. On this work you will not get near that, certainly not on a tower meant for one person. Do genuinely stay up there alone: a second person coming to look or to pass something up does not belong on this model. Hand things up from the ground or hoist them with a line rather than letting somebody climb behind you with a reel.

The standing agreements apply to a light scaffold as well. Brake the castors as soon as you start climbing, never move it while tools are lying on it, and wait for a strong wind to drop before working. On a drive something extra comes in: never leave the tower unattended along the public road without the castors locked, because a light pitch like this rolls a little way towards the pavement in a good gust.

The risks that belong to this job are electrical and falling. Switch the circuit concerned off and check that with a voltage tester before you drill anywhere near existing wiring, because a bit shooting through a cable gives you a double problem at height. Keep the zone under you completely clear as well: a drill or a coil of cable sliding off the deck lands with a bang on the paving of the drive. The rest you find at the rules for work at height.