Removing moss? Choose the right scaffold.

For this job the Altrex RS52 and its 135 cm deck are the right call. You do not want the extra width in order to walk about; you want it for the kit: a tub for the brushed off moss, two brushes on different handle lengths, a watering can of treatment and a sack for the coarse waste. On a narrow deck all of that stands permanently in the way of your feet. Compare the options before you hire a mobile scaffold, since every version in the hire fleet is listed with its dimensions.

Something else plays a part. With moss on the roof slope you reach up and out over the tiles from the guard rail, and that asks you to shift weight forwards without standing on the edge. At 135 cm you still have deck behind you, which works far more calmly than having your heel already against the end rail. If two of you go up, one brushing and the other emptying the tub, that width stops being a luxury altogether and starts being the reason the day goes quickly.

If you do pick the slim RS51 at 75 cm, it is because only the wall needs doing, or because a narrow passage to the back garden decides it for you. It weighs less and goes through openings the wide one will not, but you give up working room, and you notice that the moment a tub full of wet moss stands on the boards. For moss on a low extension alone, a shorter build or even the one person MiTower is already enough.

The highest point on this job is almost never the ridge but the gutter edge and the first two or three courses of tile above it. On a three storey house or a tall terrace that edge sits at eight to ten metres, so the build you order has to work to 8 to 12 metres. Working height there is deck height plus roughly two metres of arm reach, which leaves your platform somewhere between six and ten metres. The build for ten metres of working height shows which parts belong to it.

Your measurement does not stop at the gutter but at the highest spot where moss is still lying. On a tiled roof the green film often runs three or four courses up, and you only get that last course if you can look down on it. Stand too low and you push the moss up over the tiles instead of off them, and an hour later you are back at the same strip. Take one section too many rather than one too few.

If the top mossy course is out of reach of any conceivable build, work from a mobile tower stops there. Cherry pickers and facade scaffolds are simply not things we let out, so anything you cannot touch with a long handle from a fixed deck belongs to another sort of job and other equipment. For a gutter at second floor height the build this page is about has plenty in hand, even with three courses of tile above it.

Removing moss rains debris down. Wet slabs of it drop off the tiles, the gutter yields a mixture of moss, leaf litter and grit, and every bit of it lands on the strip where your tower is standing. So put down a sheet or an old tarpaulin first, running well past the feet, and move it along with you. Wet moss left on paving for a day leaves a green stain you then get to brush off as well, and that is easily an hour gone.

The ground has to be firm, and along the drip line of a roof it very often is not. That is exactly where the soil is soft, where moss lies on the slabs and where a border of wet earth sits. Put solid boards or slabs under all four stabilisers, and check that the build stays level once you step onto it. For a sloping or waterlogged spot, the guidance on ground that is not flat takes you further.

Think as well about what is standing under the gutter. On a moss job that tends to be the patio, the bikes, a shed door or the neighbour's car, and all of them will catch your waste. Move whatever can be moved and cover carefully whatever cannot. If your build sits on the street side, leave the footway walkable and sweep up before you stop for the day, because wet moss on brick paving is slippery for everyone going past.

Split the work into three zones and add up the time per zone. Emptying the gutter and rinsing it costs about half an hour per position, brushing the lower courses of tile takes roughly as long, and the band of wall below goes faster. An average front elevation runs to three or four positions, and a corner house or an extension can add three more. That puts removing moss at two to three hire days, plus a day if there is a rear roof slope.

There is also a waiting moment that has nothing to do with working. Moss treated with a product has to die back before it will really let go, and that takes days to weeks. The sensible move is to do that treatment well before your hire period, from the ground or from an upstairs window, and only book the tower for the brushing and the carting away. Otherwise expensive time stands idle while you wait on a chemical to work, and the tower does nothing but occupy your path.

Weather counts too. In frost you leave the gutter alone, and on a windy day the moss you brush loose blows across the whole garden instead of into your tub. Booking generously is therefore sensible, and it costs little: you settle one undiscounted day at the start, and everything after that comes in with 95 per cent off. A spare day barely registers. The page with the current rates shows what the rental price comes to for the build you have in mind.

Each position covers 245 cm of gutter, with the same width of roof slope above it and of wall below. Finish that column completely before you roll on: brush the roof slope dry first, empty the gutter, then the band of wall, and only then rinse. Do it the other way round and you wash the gutter clean only to sweep your own roof moss into it five minutes later. That costs a quarter of an hour per position, and over an elevation it mounts up fast.

Take a tub or bucket up with you and drop the brushed off moss straight into it rather than over the side. Wet moss is heavy, and a full tub is not something you swing over a guard rail. So empty it halfway rather than waiting until it is brimming. Anyone who simply lets the moss fall spends longer clearing up below than they gained above, particularly where there is planting underneath and the clumps have to be picked out of it by hand.

Do not underestimate the number of positions. Eight metres of wall already means moving four times, and each move asks you to bring your tub down, release all four stabilisers and set them firmly again. Reckon on a quarter of an hour each time, and longer where garden clutter is in the way. If the work carries on into the gutter trough itself, look at cleaning out the roof gutter, which asks for exactly the same positions and the same hire days.

The tower arrives as loose parts, complete and counted, not standing. Pick a dry spot for that stack outside the zone where the moss will land, on the drive perhaps, or against the shed. Get it in by 15:00 on a weekday and the parts join the round for the following working day. At the reservation you say yourself when the delivery happens and when we come back for it all, so the tower is only in your way for as long as you want it there.

Look at the forecast before you settle on a date. Moss removal is best done on a dry day after a dry night, because then the growth releases instead of smearing. Having it delivered the day before you start also gives you time to assemble at a sensible pace. That assembly is your work: the booklet in the set and the film alongside it run through the sequence, and with someone else helping you have the build standing in half a day.

Afterwards you unscrew the lot and lay the parts ready for collection somewhere the van can reach. Rinse the decks and the castors before stacking, because moss residue dries hard onto aluminium and green smears on the tubes turn up again at the count. Carriage inside your own province is priced on the page of delivery charges, so that figure goes into your sums at the outset rather than meeting you at the end of the job.

This deck stops at 200 kg for each square metre, the loading that EN 1004 ties to class 3, and that ceiling governs everything you carry up. On a moss job the weight is not your tools but your waste: a tub of sodden moss and gutter silt runs to thirty kilos easily. Set that tub in the middle of the deck, empty it in good time and never stand a second full one beside it, not even briefly. A bucket of water counts towards the same total.

A platform with moss trodden into it turns lethally slippery, and that is the real risk here. Sweep the deck after every strip, and rinse it as soon as it starts to look green. Wear boots with a solid tread and watch where your feet go, even while you are working with a long handle. Brake the castors before you climb, and never move the build with the tub still aboard or somebody else up top.

Keep the zone underneath clear, and that is more than a formality: down come lumps of moss, the occasional loose tile and sometimes half a shovel of gutter silt. Fence it off if there are children or pets in the garden, and stop work when it starts to blow hard, because both your brush and the loosened moss then lose all direction. Sweep the paving below at the end of each day as well, so nobody skids on what you dropped. The remaining rules are gathered in the overview of working safely at height.