Installing an awning? Choose the right scaffold.

An awning usually sits at the back of the house, above the terrace or over the garden doors, and you cannot reach that through the hall. The way in runs through a gate or along a path beside the fence, which is exactly why the choice falls on the Altrex RS TOWER 51 and its 75 cm width. The model itself will go to 14.2 metres, though that is purely a question of how many frames you stack; for a folding arm unit you stay with the 6 to 8 metre build.

Little goes up with you, yet what does go up matters: two or three brackets, a box of anchor bolts, the hammer drill, a long level and the templates from the carton. The cassette itself stays off the deck. You pass it up once the brackets are home, two people below and one on the platform guiding it into the housings. A narrow deck copes with all of that, as long as your tools sit in a tray rather than loose. The other models stand ready among the mobile scaffolds available to hire.

If two of you want to work beside each other on the fixings, the RS52 at 135 cm is roomier and saves a good deal of turning around one another. Weigh that against the gate it has to pass, because you settle that question before ordering and not when the parts are already lying in the front garden. What a mobile scaffold is, and where the types differ, is set out briefly in this introduction to the rolling type.

When installing an awning your top measurement is the upper edge of the brackets, which sits well above the head of the frame. Add in the room you need to lower the cassette between them, because that movement runs downwards and not sideways. Measure from the terrace or the path the wheels will rest on up to that point, and not from the threshold of the garden doors, since on most houses the paving sits a step below the floor inside.

The number you order against is the height of the deck, plus the couple of metres you can reach above it, and that total is the working height. A folding arm unit upstairs or high over a terrace sits comfortably at 6 to 8 metres; the deck is then at 4 to 6 metres and the bracket line lands at about chest height. That is where you want it, since marking above your own head runs off true. See also what a six metre build involves.

Choose too low and it shows when you tighten up. Anchor bolts for an awning have to go into the wall straight and with force behind them, and you can only put that force in while your shoulders stay below the bracket. Stand too low and you push upwards instead of forwards, and the bit wanders. Half a metre of extra build costs almost nothing. For a unit above the windows of the first floor this is the range that fits.

Under a folding arm unit there is nearly always a terrace, and that is immediately where the tower has to stand. Paving makes a fine base as long as it lies flat; a settled corner near the gully or a gravel margin along the border does not. Walk the four points where the wheels and the stabilisers will land, because those legs splay outwards and want to be precisely where the garden chairs normally live. Where an inspection cover or a rooflight sits in that spot, choose a different corner of the terrace.

Clear the terrace before the delivery arrives. A lounge seat, a parasol base, planters and the barbecue together take up more room than you think, and shuffling them about with a half built tower is no option at all. Keep an eye on the step down from paving to lawn: the moment one wheel drops off the paving into grass, the whole build goes out of plumb and your bracket line no longer holds. There is more on that in the explanation about uneven ground.

Reserve somewhere for the cassette too. An awning of four or five metres is a long, heavy package that you do not stand upright against the fence and do not leave out in the rain. Lay it on trestles or a couple of battens, outside the walking route around the foot of the scaffold and clear of the area the fabric will later cover. Then you pick it up only once: off the trestles and straight into the brackets.

On paper an awning is a single day of work. In practice you hire the tower for two, and the reason for that is the running order rather than the labour. Day one goes on assembly, measuring, marking the line, drilling and fixing the brackets. Only then do you lift the cassette in, connect the motor or the winder and set the arms. Anyone trying to cram all of that into one morning ends the day tugging at fabric in the dark.

There is waiting time in it as well. Go into the wall with chemical anchors and the bracket may not be loaded until the resin has cured, and the cure time for that is whatever the manufacturer prints on the tube. Weather plays its part too: fabric that has got wet does not go back on the roller, and a test run in a breeze proves nothing. So book on the date by which the unit is certain to be hanging and running smoothly, not on the most optimistic outcome.

Reserving one day more costs little. Only the first day of the period is invoiced at the standard tariff; every day you keep the tower beyond it costs 95 per cent less, so day two and day three barely register. Booking too tight does cost you: with the van at the kerb and the arms still unadjusted, you are back up a ladder. Weighing a short period against a longer one is done in this comparison of day and week hire.

A platform measures 245 cm and an awning rarely does. On a unit four or five metres wide the left hand bracket is within reach and the right hand one is not, so you work in two or three positions. That is no problem as long as you set out the entire line before you drill anything. Strike the horizontal first across the full width, mark every bracket position on it, check the lot twice, and only then pick up the hammer drill at one end.

Roll the build along only when nothing is left on it. Take the drill, the bolts and the level off, release the brakes, move it sideways, put the stabilisers back out and climb up again afterwards. Each cycle of that eats a few minutes, and those are already counted inside the two days you reserve. Carry up in one trip whatever you expect to need, because every forgotten masonry bit means another journey down and up the same internal ladder.

Where it usually goes wrong is the reference. As soon as you have moved, your previous measuring point is gone, and taking a fresh one off the frame fails if the frame itself is not truly level. So before you start, run a continuous line with a laser or a long straightedge, or pull a taut string between two fixed points on the wall. That line still holds after the tower has travelled three metres to the right and you have changed your stance.

What lands at your address is a counted package of loose tubes, decks and braces. Agree beforehand where it may lie, because you keep the terrace itself free for the build and for the cassette. The drive or a strip beside the garden path is handier, not least because you can then carry the parts through to the back in the right order. Place the order before 15:00 on a weekday and the set is standing there the next working day.

You enter the arrival date and the departure date yourself. When installing an awning it pays to have the parts come a day before the fitting day, so the build already stands when the unit is dropped off or when your second pair of hands turns up. Assembly is your task; the manual and the instruction film take you through the order of work, and with the two of you that is an afternoon's work. Count that half day as working time or the rest of your planning slides.

Once the fabric is adjusted and the test run is behind you, take the build apart and gather the parts together; we come and collect them. Count them off while you dismantle, because a single clamp goes missing between planters on a terrace faster than anywhere else. Put collection a day beyond your final working day and a whole morning stays in reserve. What applies to bringing and fetching in your province sits with the rates for delivery and collection.

The build you hire is a class 3 tower under EN 1004, which puts the ceiling at 200 kg for every square metre of deck. On an awning you do not approach that quickly, provided you keep the cassette off the platform. And that is exactly the temptation here: just resting it up there to line it up. Do not. Let the unit wait on trestles below until the brackets are home, then lift it into place in one movement.

The standing rules hold. Set the wheel brakes before you climb on, leave nobody and nothing on the deck while you move it, and press all four stabilisers firmly down again after each shift. In wind you stop, and on this work that counts double: a half extended awning forms a sail of several square metres tugging at the wall while you work beside it. So save the moment of running the unit out for a still day, and not before.

Two things belong specifically to this fitting. The drilling happens above a terrace where people sit, so rope that zone off before you start and keep bolts and bits in a tray instead of loose along the edge of the deck. And the test run needs room: the fabric falls forward over precisely the strip the build occupies, so roll the tower a few metres clear before you touch the winder or the switch. The remaining arrangements sit in the overview of safety rules.