Spray-painting battens? Choose the right scaffold.

A batten screen or slatted frame is hardly ever in a roomy spot. A path runs alongside it, a fence stands behind it, or the whole thing is fixed to a carport. That is why the choice here falls on the narrow Altrex RS51, a tower that builds up only 75 cm wide. With that width you get through a garden gate and past a boundary where a broader frame jams, and you only shift it once a strip is finished. The range of mobile scaffolds for hire sets the models side by side.

Up top you barely miss those extra centimetres. On this work you stand a little back from the battens, because the mist needs room to spread before it reaches the timber. You shift sideways more than anything and carry little kit up with you. What you do notice is the platform length: 245 cm of deck, and that is exactly the run of battens you can finish from one stand without rolling along or going back down.

You only start on the 135 cm RS52 when more has to go on the deck than you and your gun. If you hang sheeting behind the slatted frame first, or somebody works with you cutting in the end grains with a brush, that roomier deck is welcome. As soon as the way through to the battens turns out narrower than a metre, the option drops away by itself. Both towers appear with their measurements in an overview of mobile scaffold sizes.

Measure on this job to the top batten that still needs a coat, and not automatically to the roof edge above it. Where the slatted frame runs on to just under the gutter, the working height you want lies between 6 and 8 metres. The deck then hangs somewhere between 4 and 6 metres, because on top of the platform height another 2 metres of reach counts before your hands are at that top batten. That figure goes into your booking, and an eight metre reach shows how such a build looks.

Take as your zero point the height the wheels will rest on, not your back doorstep. Batten screens often start on a low wall, on a border edge or on a terrace a step below the rest of the garden. Every difference you skip is added at the top, and you notice it precisely on the last two battens. Where the path falls away towards the street, work from the lowest point you still have to pass with the tower.

Choosing too tight bites harder here than on a closed face. Stand too low and you spray the upper battens from underneath, the mist shoots up through the gaps and part of it lands on your own face and arms. The top edge of every batten then stays half untreated, and from the garden that is the first thing anyone sees. If you are torn between two builds along a wall of two storeys, take the higher one.

The standing place half chooses itself, because you have to be in front of the battens and that is usually where the space runs out. Look first at whether the ground can carry the four stabilisers: paving and hard surfacing are fine, a border that sinks after rain is not. Where a strip of gravel lies in front of the frame, rake it level before the van arrives. A foot that settles askew only shows once you are up top, and by then you are working out of true.

Then think about the other side of the screen. Whatever stands behind the battens catches part of your mist: the bikes, the patio table, next door's lawn, the side window of a parked car. Clear away what can go and hang sheeting over what stays, and do that before the tower is in position. Otherwise you are wrestling between the stabilisers with a roll in your hand. Where the boundary lies within a few metres, warn the neighbours a day ahead.

Look as well at what runs along under the frame. A batten screen often hangs above a planter, an outside tap or a water butt, and that is exactly where a stabiliser wants to swing out. Such things are better moved a day early than worked around by standing the tower askew. What to do with a sloping terrace or an uneven garden floor is set out in setting up on uneven ground. Measure that strip now rather than on the morning itself.

Spraying itself is not the long part on battens. The days go on masking beforehand, clearing up afterwards and the fact that you pass every strip several times to catch all the sides. For a screen of eight metres or so along a house you come out at two to three rental days in practice. Take in the top of a pergola or the edge of a carport and half a day is added for the extra shifting and lining up.

Inside that period sit hours you cannot fill. A coat has to flash off before the next can go on, and how long that takes is decided by your material and not by your diary. The weather comes on top: wet timber will not take a spray and in wind your mist blows over the boundary. So do not plan on the outcome where everything goes your way, but on the day the job is certainly finished, and add a morning for stripping off sheeting and tape.

The way the rental price is put together rewards booking generously. Only that opening 24 hours counts in full; every following day the tower stays with you comes with 95% off. A spare day for a wet morning therefore costs you next to nothing, while booking tight leaves you with half-sprayed battens and a driver already on his way to your address. To make that judgement calmly, working out your rental days lists the rules of thumb.

A batten has a face, two flanks and a top edge, and only the face is caught when you stand square in front of it. So you work a 245 cm strip in several passes: first at an angle from the left, then at an angle from the right, then straight ahead for cover. The underside of a horizontal batten you take by dropping through your knees. Anyone who sprays straight ahead only will see after a few seasons exactly where the timber went bare on the flanks.

Spraying in passes decides how often you shift. On a closed face you are done as soon as the strip has a coat; here you are done only when every angle has been covered. Go down before you roll along, because a tower like this is moved with both hands and with the hose off the wheels. Then set the brakes again and fold the stabilisers back out before you climb up, even after a move of less than half a metre.

Before you climb, run through what has to come up: the gun, a cloth, tape and a strip of card to shield the edge of the batten screen. Every forgotten item costs you a trip down and back. The number of stands is almost always underestimated, because eight metres of battens is already three to four positions per pass. If you follow on with the window frames in the same colour, count extra stops into your planning.

No assembled scaffold is delivered but a stack of loose parts, counted and complete, so work out in advance where that stack goes. On this job the run in front of the screen is usually already taken by sheeting, tape and tins, so lay the tubes and deck boards on the drive or further along in the grass instead. If your order comes in on a working day and it is not yet 15:00, everything is there on the next working day.

You pick the day the set pulls up and the day it goes away again, and here you match those two dates to the forecast. The handiest is to hire from the day you start masking: in the morning you put the tower together, in the afternoon you hang sheeting behind the slatted frame. Putting it together is your own work, preferably with two of you, and the manual and video that come with it walk you through the order. That is also covered in building up step by step.

With the final coat on the battens, you strip the tower down and gather every part in one place; we drive round to pick the set up again. Only do that when the battens feel dry, because fresh mist keys to the tubes and then you spend longer cleaning than dismantling. What the run to your province costs can be read on the page of delivery charges by province, so it does not surface in your budget later on.

You are standing on a deck in load class 3 of EN 1004, good for 200 kg per square metre. For this job that is generous, because you, a bucket and a gun stay well under it. Climb up with two of you and a stock of material and it is worth adding up. Otherwise the usual agreements apply: brakes on as soon as you step aboard, never roll with anyone or anything on it, and stop when the wind picks up.

This job carries a temptation you do not get on a closed facade: the batten screen is right in front of your nose and feels solid. It is not a handrail, though. A slatted frame hangs on a few screws and will not resist a sideways shove, so pulling on it or leaning against it goes wrong. Stay inside the guardrails of your deck and shift along once more rather than stretching out to that one batten at the end.

Look as well at the deck under you and at the ground below. Settled mist turns a platform greasy, so lay card over it and change that once it begins to gleam. The zone at the foot wants to stay free of children and pets, since a cap or a roll of tape drops straight through open battens onto whoever is standing there. The rest of what applies to work like this sits in the rules for working at height.