Plastering walls? Choose the right scaffold.

Inside a house the door frame, not the ceiling, is the measurement that decides everything. The Altrex RS44 room scaffold is built around that: you carry it in as separate parts, and from roughly 70 cm of door width it gets through in most homes. That matters a great deal with plaster, because you rarely stop at a single wall and you want to push the build on down the hall after the first room. The sizes kept for interior work are listed under hiring a room scaffold.

On the deck itself the question is not room for tools but room beside your feet. There is a bucket up there, a two metre straightedge lying about, and you swing a trowel with your arm length added on top. That straightedge decides more than anything else: it has to pass flat alongside you without catching a guard rail or the ceiling. On a room scaffold from the rental fleet you make that movement standing, without shifting your weight.

An outdoor model is a nuisance for this job. Such a build reaches higher than you ever need inside, its parts were never drawn for a stairwell or a narrow hallway, and the base fouls your furniture. If the front elevation follows once the plaster is dry, that is the moment to hire a mobile scaffold instead, and those models sit in the range of mobile scaffolds for outdoor work. For everything that happens behind the front door, plastering walls included, the room scaffold remains the model that fits.

With plaster the highest point is the join between wall and ceiling, and that line has to be closed with the trowel. So measure from the room floor up to that line, not up to your own eye level. In a house with a raised ceiling, an old upper storey or an open stairwell you land on 2.80 to 3.20 metres without noticing. The build you hire for that sits between 3 and 4 metres of working height, and it puts you comfortably under any normal interior wall.

Do not confuse working height with the height you actually stand at. To the height your deck is pinned you add roughly 2 metres of reach, because your arms and the trowel cover the rest. With the deck at a little over one and a half metres you are working the wall up to about 3.5 metres. Book on that total, and the page about a build reaching four metres of working height shows what it delivers in practice.

Hiring too low shows up exactly where it stays visible. You end up laying the top twenty centimetres against the ceiling with your arms stretched, you lose pressure on the trowel and the face runs proud. Worse, you start correcting from the top tread of a hop-up while the mix is already pulling. Take a build with a little room to spare instead, because dropping the deck one hole down is a five minute job and running short is not.

A room that is about to be plastered is seldom empty. A cupboard stands against the wall and has to shift, a radiator sits under the window, and a skirting board runs along the floor that you will not be able to reach later. So only roll the room scaffold in once the wall is completely clear, and keep a metre spare at either end so you can walk past it and put the bucket down somewhere. That clearance is needed at the feet for the stabilisers as well.

The floor is the second point. On laminate, parquet or a poured floor, put hardboard or a thick sheet under the castors, because the weight of the build plus you plus a full bucket rests on four small contact patches. On a screed or tiles the hired room scaffold rolls straight over, though you sweep the grit away first. One small stone under a castor makes the whole thing rock, and you feel that with a loaded trowel in your hand at the worst possible moment.

Finally look at what hangs over your head and to the side. A pendant fitting, a smoke detector, a curtain track or a sloping wall under the roof all decide how close the build may come to the wall. Take pendant fittings down before you assemble. In a hall or on a landing you sometimes get only half a platform length, so you reposition more often. There is more on indoor use in the piece on using a mobile scaffold inside a house.

Count in wall faces, not in rooms. A wall four metres by three goes on in a morning with two people, but flattening follows and a couple of hours later the trowelling up, and you plan that for the same day. A living room with three walls and a ceiling fills two full working days that way. Moving from room to room adds half an hour of assembly and dismantling per room on top of the time you spend on the deck itself.

Then the curing. Fresh plaster has to dry for days before paint or paper may go on, and during that period the build is of no use to you. So you hire it for the days you are laying on, and have it collected afterwards, rather than leaving it idle in the room. If you want to paint once it is dry, book a second hire period later. The rental price attached to each period is listed on the tariff page for every model.

Booking generously works out well here. Only the opening twenty four hours goes onto your reservation at the whole figure; everything joined onto it carries ninety five per cent off per day. With plaster that is welcome, because nobody knows in advance how many hours an old, wavy wall will take to bring flat. Put the collection date one day later than you hope to need, and you will not be dismantling in the dark on the last evening. Plastering walls rewards that bit of slack.

A platform length of 245 cm is also the width you finish per standing position. On a four metre wall that means two positions, and you put the changeover somewhere it will not show later: at a door frame, in an internal corner, or under a dropped ceiling. On a blind six metre wall you set out the bays before you start, because the junction between two strips has to be made wet on wet and not half stiffened.

Decide before you begin what goes up with you. A bucket of mix, a trowel, a straightedge, a sponge and a pail of water is plenty; everything else you add is in the way the moment you shuffle sideways. Mixing happens below, so stand the tub and the paddle drill right beside the build rather than out in the hall. With two of you, one stays down to pass things up, and that saves dozens of trips.

What catches people out is the second pass. Flattening and trowelling up want the same positions as laying on, in the same order and at the same intervals. So you need the room scaffold not only while you are spreading, but all day. Anyone who starts dismantling straight after laying on is standing an hour later with a sponge in hand looking up at the top edge. Leave the build standing until the face is genuinely finished. Plastering walls ends when the trowel comes off, not when the spreading stops.

The room scaffold arrives as a complete set of parts, every item counted before it leaves. There is a 15:00 cut-off on working days; stay inside it and your parts travel out for the working day that follows. While booking you set the drop-off and return dates yourself. Agree in advance where the parts may be put, because a load that lands in the middle of the hall sits exactly on the walking route of your plaster job. A garage, an empty bedroom or the utility room works better.

Assembly is the part that stays with you, because we do not erect scaffolds and nothing ever arrives assembled. A manual comes with the set, and the assembly video shows the order the parts go together in; at this height you are done in half an hour. Do that on the day before the first bucket is mixed rather than the same morning: you want to start with the wall clear, the floor covered and the build sitting level. Fresh mix will not wait while you are still clipping braces.

Afterwards you take the room scaffold apart again, bundle the parts and stack everything at the agreed spot. On the day you chose, our van comes back for the material, so nothing has to be driven anywhere. If the plastering overruns because a wall needed more preparation than expected, pass on a new collection day through the contact page of the rental service. That is easier than forcing the last of it into one evening.

The deck is a class 3 platform under EN 1004, so each square metre of it will take 200 kg, and with plaster you approach that sooner than you would think. A full bucket weighs close to thirty kilos, and if somebody else steps up to pass the straightedge, that counts heavily too. Keep the load spread out over the deck length instead of gathering it all into one corner, however convenient that feels while you are spreading.

The second risk is under your shoes. Mix that drops past the trowel makes the deck slick and sticky within an hour, and you only notice at the moment you step sideways. Wipe it down with a wet sponge as you go and keep the top surface free of blobs. Set the castor brakes before you take the first tread, and only move the room scaffold when nobody is on it and the bucket is off: empty it first, then push.

Finally, think about who is walking below. Indoors that means housemates, children or a dog coming into the room while you are working with a trowel above your head. Keep the door of the work room shut and say that plastering is going on. Do not leave tools loose on the edge either, because a trowel that falls lands point first. The rules that actually apply here are gathered together in the piece on working safely at height.