Fitting a name sign? Choose the right scaffold.

For this job you hire the Altrex RS51, a narrow mobile scaffold of 75 cm that fits between parked cars and the building line and still goes up high enough. At commercial premises the entrance often sits straight onto the pavement, and then that slim footprint is the difference between being allowed to set up and not. Which other sizes there are you can see on the page with the full range of towers for hire.

Not much has to lie on the deck, but two people do have to work side by side on it. A rotary hammer, the anchors, a long spirit level and the panel itself: there is little more to it. The 245 cm length matters more here than the width, because it spans a good stretch of the sign in one go so you do not reposition while lining up. A wider model gives you more floor but no extra reach sideways.

Do not confuse this with the small plaque beside the door. If it is an engraved plate at a practice or a home office, a lighter model is enough, and there is a separate page on putting up a small nameplate. Here we are talking about a sign panel with weight, several anchor points and two fitters, and that calls for a tower you build higher than entrance level. The difference is not in the name of the job but in what has to hang on the wall.

The governing point is the top edge of the panel, not its centre. On commercial premises a sign usually hangs just above the shopfront or on the band between ground floor and first floor, which puts that top edge at four to six metres. Measure from the pavement you will be standing on, so from the bottom of the wall, and add the height of the sign itself. Those two figures together decide what you book in the rental diary.

Then you translate that into a build. Working height is simply the height of your deck with roughly 2 metres of reach added on top, since your arms bridge the last stretch. A sign whose top edge sits at six metres therefore does not need a deck at six metres. A range of 6 to 8 metres of working height covers virtually everything on buildings like these, and leaves margin if the sign is taller than the drawing promised. What such a build means in practice is worked out at a tower of eight metres.

Choosing too tight bites harder on fixing work than on painting. You have to drive the rotary hammer horizontally into the wall, and that only works if the anchor point falls between chest and eye height. Sitting just above your head, you drill at an angle, the hole wanders and the anchor never pulls up tight afterwards. So hire a build that goes half a metre further rather than one that just fits; dropping a deck costs minutes, a second delivery costs a day.

At commercial premises the build stands almost always on public ground: the footway, a loading bay or the edge of a parking space. That means arranging in advance that the spot is clear. Put a cone or a barrier round it that morning, agree with the neighbours that nobody parks there for a few hours, and leave eighty centimetres of passage for pedestrians. In many boroughs a day on the pavement needs a notification or a permit of some sort.

The surface is usually sound but not always flat. Paving sinks at a dropped kerb, there is a gutter along the wall, and sometimes a cellar hatch or a pavement light sits in the footway. You put nothing on a hatch like that. Use levelling plates to take up the difference and check with a spirit level on the deck that the tower really stands square, because a centimetre out at the bottom grows to a hand's width at the top.

Watch what sticks out of the wall as well. A canopy, a camera, illuminated lettering or a blind sits exactly at the height the sign is going and holds the tower off. Measure that projection before you order, because you want to bring the panel flat against the brickwork. If a canopy is in the way, shift the tower half a metre sideways and work at longer reach. How high you have to get at a building like this is set out on the page about work at first floor level.

The hanging itself takes half a day if everything is right: setting out, marking, eight holes drilled, anchors placed and the panel lifted. Practice stretches that out. Old walls give, anchors spin in soft brick, and on timber cladding you first have to find where the studs run. So allow a full day on the build, plus the time for assembly and dismantling that sits either side of the work itself. Fitting a name sign is one of those jobs where the hire day is mostly setting out.

If the panel is illuminated, it runs to two days. A cable entry has to be drilled, a cable goes through the wall and the electrician needs access too, and he is rarely outside at the same moment as the fitter. Plan those two half days back to back and keep the hire period unbroken, so the tower only travels once. Rates per model and per period are on the page with the rental price list.

An extra day in your reservation costs almost nothing here. You settle the whole figure for the opening day alone; from the second day onwards a reduction of ninety five per cent applies to every further day the tower stands at the front of the building. For a fixing job that depends on a delivery that is welcome: if the sign leaves the signmaker a day late, your planning need not fall over. So set the collection date a day after the day you expect to finish sealing.

With a deck of 245 cm you stand at both ends of a two metre sign at once. That is the reason to hire this model and nothing smaller: you can lay the spirit level across the full length without moving in between. If the panel is three or four metres wide you reposition once, and then the trick is to mark out every anchor point first and only start drilling afterwards. Fitting a name sign of that width is really a lining up exercise, not a lifting one.

The lift is the trickiest moment of the day. A three metre panel catches the wind, is unmanageable on your own, and must not be hauled up on a rope while somebody is standing on the build. Set the sign ready on the ground across two trestles, raise it up the outside with two people, and have a third steer from below. Put the tools aside meanwhile, because you need the whole floor. Two people and a hired tower beat any rope and ladder arrangement here.

Lining up takes the most time. A sign does not hang level because the anchors are level but because the brackets are, and in practice those two differ by millimetres. So hang the panel loosely in the top points first, step back to the far side of the road and see how it sits against the window line of the building. Only then do you tighten everything for good. You want the mobile scaffold still standing for that check, so do not dismantle the moment the last bolt is turned.

The mobile scaffold reaches you as a complete set of parts counted beforehand. Get the reservation in on a working day and stay the right side of 15:00, and the counted set reaches the premises one working day later. While booking you say when it comes and when it goes back. At commercial premises the unloading spot is the thing to sort out first: a van has to be able to stand still at the wall, and the parts must not land in the entrance customers come through.

Putting it together is a job for you and your colleague, because we do not erect anything and never deliver an assembled tower. A manual comes with the set and an assembly video is ready online, and with two people a build of this height goes up in about three quarters of an hour. Do that at the start of the day, before the sign is delivered, so you are not standing with a panel on the pavement waiting for the tower to come upright.

Once the sign hangs, you take everything apart again and stack the bundled parts in the agreed place. On the date you chose, the van comes to collect them, so nothing has to be taken anywhere. If the fixing shifts because the signmaker delivers later, let us know through the contact details of the hire desk; the collection day then moves with your new planning and the build simply stays where it is. Fitting a name sign often slips a day, and the hire period absorbs that.

Two fitters, a rotary hammer and a panel of thirty kilos: that is precisely the moment load capacity matters. Under EN 1004 a class 3 deck is good for 200 kg on every square metre, and two people with a panel between them close on that faster than most work on a wall does. So spread your weight along the length, do not both stand at the same end with the panel between you, and leave heavy tool cases below until you genuinely need them.

Below you the public realm carries on as normal. People walk to the entrance, a courier comes past and a bike leans against the wall. So cone it off, work with a colleague keeping an eye from below, and never leave tools lying on the edge. Set every brake before the first of the two of you climbs. Moving is only allowed once you are both down and the panel is off, even if it is only half a metre along the wall.

Weather is a real factor in this work. A large sign catches the wind like a sail, and in a decent gust you lose control at the moment you lift it. Stop when it blows hard and move the fixing to a quiet morning. Make sure your colleague watches from below while you press the sign home, and agree who calls the lift. Fitting a name sign in a gale is not worth a hire day. Everything else that applies is gathered under what the rules ask of you up there.