Cleaning windows? Choose the right scaffold.

For a cleaning round the RS51 is the most practical model: 75 cm wide, with a build that climbs from 4.2 metres to 14.2 metres of reach. You need that slim width because a lap past every opening takes you round the back as well, through a gateway or along the path between the hedge and the brickwork. A broad stand jams there and you end up levering it about instead of cleaning. The full series appears on the page about hiring a rolling tower by the day.

Up on the platform that narrow width suits you just as well. Two buckets, a few brushes, a squeegee and a screwdriver take almost no floor, and anything else loitering up there gets kicked over sooner or later. For cleaning windows the measurement that counts is the deck length of 245 cm. It lets you cover one complete opening plus the piece of wall beside it from a single position, so the screen slides out and the vent comes off without you touching the castors at all.

Where two of you are working up top at once, or where a wet vacuum goes up to suck the rebates out, the broader RS52 at 135 cm serves better. For an ordinary lap past the openings of a terraced house that is overkill, and you pay for it in agility every time you move along. How the models compare is set out in the overview of sizes per version. Count the openings you intend to do before you decide.

The point you must get to on this job is the head of the highest window, and usually a trickle vent sits directly above that. In a two storey house it hangs four to six metres up, so the build you order wants a working height of 6 to 8 metres. Your deck finishes a good deal lower than that figure, since roughly 2 metres of it is reach: your arms and upper body added together, measured from the boards you stand on.

Even so, a thorough round is not only measured upwards. Cleaning windows also means getting at the bottom rail and the two lower corners of the rebate, which is exactly where that green film takes hold. End up standing too high and you are looking down into the opening with a brush that no longer meets the corner. Better to finish the top deck just under the head of the frame, because then the whole window sits within reach from top to bottom.

Start the tape at whatever the castors are going to rest on. A garden path falling away towards the fence, or a terrace laid one slab higher than the lawn, moves your starting point, and on an elevation with three rows of openings that difference stacks up. If you are unsure which build to hire for your upper windows, add a section rather than guess, and look at the page on openings at first floor level and add a storey where another row sits above them.

Underneath an opening there is nearly always something that does not care for water: a planted border, a timber deck, a bike rack, or a patch of paving where dirty rinse water simply lies. So pick your standing place for drainage as much as for levelness, since litres of it come down on this job and none of it lands where you expect. Keep the bucket of dirty water on the ground rather than on the platform as well, and leave room around the base for the four stabilisers that splay outwards.

Then take note of everything screwed to the wall. An outside tap is a gift on a cleaning round, but a dish, an exterior light or a downpipe right beside the frame governs how close you can bring the stand. Measure the gap between the brickwork and the boundary, certainly in a narrow side passage, and check the meter cupboard and the garden tap stay reachable once the tower is in place with its legs out. A shed door that no longer opens is otherwise discovered halfway through the day.

Then there is the ground under the castors. Wet grass turns to mud within an hour of you rinsing above it, and a wheel settling into it while you stand above with a full bucket puts the tower out of true. On soft going put levelling plates or slabs under them and check with a spirit level before kit goes up. Repeat that at each move, because the ground beside the next opening may sit differently. Dealing with a sloping path is explained on the page about setting up where the ground is uneven.

Allow a quarter to half an hour per opening, and more where the screen has not left its runner in years. That quarter of an hour covers undoing the vent, brushing the rebate out, poking the drainage slots clear and washing the glass afterwards. Twelve windows front and back fill a complete working day, and with seized screws in the vents you reach a day and a half without trying particularly hard. So count your windows before you commit to a period, and count the awkward ones twice.

Weather settles the rest of your planning. In a frost, cleaning windows leaves the rinse water frozen on the cill. With full sun on the wall the product dries on the pane before you have it off. And in a strong breeze the spray blows back into your face while you are down in the rebate with a brush. The best days are overcast and still, and since you cannot order those, you would rather hire with a spare day inside the period than lose the tower halfway.

In money terms that spare day amounts to very little. You pay in full for one day only, and from the second onwards ninety five per cent comes off the daily figure, so a reserve day costs less than a bottle of cleaning product. Booking too tightly means the opposite: striking the tower halfway round the house, with one elevation gleaming and the other still filthy behind its screens. Judging that span is covered under planning the days you book.

This part of cleaning windows is exactly why you hire a platform instead of shuffling a ladder along. Each opening keeps you in one spot for twenty minutes or more, with the screen out of its runner and lying flat beside your boots, the vent off and its screws dropped into a lidded tub. On a ladder there is nowhere to put any of that, so you climb down for every single part. From a deck you set the whole window down around you and work through it once.

The corners are precisely why you stand on a hired tower for this. Green growth sits in the two lower corners of the rebate and under the lip of the seal, and reaching those means bending down with both hands while your feet stay planted. That is a stance no ladder ever gives you. Set the deck just under the head of the frame so the bottom rail stays within comfortable reach, and a single hire position then covers the window from top to bottom.

Carry up in one trip everything the opening needs. Two buckets, three brushes, a stack of cloths, a squeegee, a screwdriver and that tub of screws all sit comfortably on 245 cm of platform. Every descent for something you forgot costs five minutes, and across twelve windows that mounts up faster than you would think. Put your kit down on the same side each time so your hand finds it without looking. If you go on to washing the glass itself, keep that as the closing lap.

A counted bundle of loose components gets dropped off and the driver checks it before leaving; the tower itself you build. Find a dry corner for that pile in advance, because under the openings is a poor spot: that is where your bucket goes and where the rinse water runs. Send the booking through on a weekday and, provided it is in before three o'clock, everything travels out to you on the next one. You enter the date it turns up and the date it travels back when you reserve the tower.

Erecting it falls to you, with the manual open beside you and an instruction film showing the order of the components. At this height a pair of people take roughly an hour before the tower stands and the stabilisers are out. Do it the day before you start, since you do not want to open your cleaning day with an hour of carrying tubes and turning spanners. Look at the forecast while you are about it, because an overcast, still day is worth more here than a sunny one.

When your round is finished we come out to take it all away again. You dismantle and stack the components where the van can reach them, ideally not in the middle of a wet border and not across the path the neighbours use. Rinse the decks off before you break them down, because dried limescale streaks are hard to shift afterwards. Each province has a fixed sum for bringing and fetching, which you will find under what delivery costs.

Load class 3 in EN 1004 signs a deck off for 200 kg spread across one square metre. On a cleaning round you rarely go near that ceiling, since two buckets of water and a handful of brushes weigh little between them. The hazard here sits somewhere else entirely: all that water ends up on the platform, and aluminium decking under a film of suds is as slippery as ice. So wear boots with a sole that keeps its grip on wet metal.

Beyond that the familiar rules hold. Lock the castors before your first foot touches the stair, never roll the stand along while somebody or a full bucket is riding on it, and come down once the wind gets up in earnest. Clip your bucket to a rail tube as well rather than letting it balance loose on the edge, because one tipping from six metres is dangerous for everyone below. At each new position along the wall, confirm the four stabilisers are bearing firmly again before you climb back up.

Take a look downwards before you begin, too. Water, dirt and now and then a screw off a vent land where people walk past or where the washing hangs out. Bring the washing in, cover the bikes and keep children out of that strip for the day. Electricity and water are poor company, so leave an exterior light beside the frame alone and certainly do not play a hose along it. Further requirements are gathered under the rules for working up high.