Washing windows? Choose the right scaffold.

Anyone doing a whole house is better off with a light tower, and that is the RS51 at 75 cm wide. What decides it is not deck area but weight, because with twenty panes you shift it ten times or so. In the hire fleet this model runs from 4.2 metres up to 14.2, and a wash round takes the build reaching 6 to 8. It also rolls through a gate a metre wide to the back. You will find it among the other mobile scaffolds for hire.

If you are on your own and it stops at the panes on the first storey, take a look at the MiTower as well. That tower is also 75 cm wide, built for one person, and runs to 6.2 metres of working height, which on most terraced houses reaches the top of the first floor. For the upper panes of a three storey house it leaves you short, and no amount of stretching makes that up. Compare the two beside each other through hiring a MiTower.

The wide RS52 at 135 cm is usually overkill on this job. Washing windows means carrying up a bucket, a squeegee, a scrim and a cloth, and that fits without trouble on a deck measuring 75 by 245 cm. You pay for the extra width in weight and in parts to carry through the garden. Only when two people work up there at once, or when you combine the wash round with other facade work, does the wide version start to earn its place.

The highest point of a wash round is the head of the top pane, plus the strip of frame where dirt gathers. In a terrace of two storeys topped by a loft, that point sits at 6 to 8 metres. Work it out from the deck you will be standing on and add the roughly 2 metres your arms cover on top, which puts the platform on this job somewhere between 4 and 6 metres. That is the figure you tick when you book.

Measure per elevation rather than once for the whole house. At the back the garden often sits lower than the pavement at the front, and an extension or a terrace on posts moves your starting point again. Take in whether dormer windows are on your list, because those ask more height than the ordinary storey windows below them. The page on seven metres of working height sets out what that build brings within range, so you pick correctly instead of finding yourself a storey short on the day.

Choose too low and you feel it in your arms. You end up squeegeeing with the head of the pane above you, water runs down your sleeve, and the top twenty centimetres keeps the streaks you cannot see from the ground but will see in the first sun. That costs you a second round later. So take the build that sits a touch more generous; in hire terms it changes little and on the glass it changes everything.

When you are washing windows the tower never stays long in one place, which is exactly why you walk the route once beforehand. See where the ground is hard and where you cross grass, because wet soil under four castors turns into a mud track within two set-ups. Look at where the gate is and how wide it is, because that decides whether you roll the tower through in one piece or have to strip it halfway. A route you know in advance saves an hour of pushing and lifting.

At the foot you need the same space at every stop: the width of the tower plus the stabilisers standing out at an angle. Under windows, though, you find precisely the things that do not go with that, such as a border of perennials, a raised sill, a water butt or a bike rack. Move that lot before the day starts, because dragging things aside between stops costs minutes you see again at the end. If the garden slopes away, read how to set a tower on ground that is not level.

On the street side part of the arrangement lands on the pavement. Keep a way past for pedestrians, particularly with a bucket of water above your head, and mind parked cars that dirty water can splash. With a flat or a maisonette something else comes in: you need permission to stand on the ground where the tower goes. Ask about that before you book the mobile scaffold rather than on the morning of the delivery, because a refusal at the gate wastes a whole hire day.

For an ordinary house a single hire day is often enough, provided you count the building and the dismantling in it. Reckon roughly like this: two people stand the tower up in about two hours, after which a pane takes a few minutes and every move ten to fifteen. Twenty panes over three elevations then fills a good working day. Working alone, or having to take it apart more than once to get through a gate, makes it two days.

That estimate goes with a booking sitting a shade wider than your plan, because nobody gets far washing windows in pouring rain. You can simply leave the arrangement standing on a bad day. Only that opening period is charged at the full rate; each further date you add to it comes with 95 per cent off. A day of slack therefore costs almost nothing when you hire a mobile scaffold, while it can save you a second build. What the tariffs per model do is shown on the page with hire prices.

There is another reason not to book tight: people extend this job as they go. Standing up there anyway, you want to wipe the frame edge, glance into the gutter or take in the top lights at the back. That costs half a day extra, and you do not want to squeeze it out of a tight hire period. So put your collection day one behind the last pane on your list. If the round goes faster than expected you simply report the tower back early.

A platform 245 cm long covers two windows at once on most elevations, sometimes a window with a top light beside it. Before you start, count how many panes each elevation holds and halve it: that is your number of stops. A terraced house with six windows at the front and eight at the back comes to seven set-ups. Work each elevation in one direction only, from corner to corner, so no clean pane ever ends up behind you again.

At every stop take everything up in one trip: your bucket, the squeegee, a scrim, a dry cloth and a scraper for a spot of paint. Stand the bucket in a corner where your foot cannot catch it as you step sideways. Working from the top down keeps dirty water off panes you have just finished. And do not save the last two windows of an elevation for the end of the day, or you will be peering at streaks in the dark.

Here lies the difference with two related jobs. With limescale, green growth or cement haze on the glass you are into cleaning windows with ingrained deposits and you stand still for minutes per pane with a product. If it is only the glass and not the frame and rebate, look at glass washing as a job in itself. On a plain wash round the route counts; on those two the standing time per pane counts, and that decides your hire days as well.

We bring the mobile scaffold round as loose parts, complete and counted, and you assemble it yourself; the booklet in the set and the video online take the sequence one step at a time. Point out beforehand where that stack may land: best of all by the elevation you start on, so you are not walking round the house with an armful of tubes. If your reservation is in on a working day and beats 15:00, everything is on your kerb the working day after.

The arrival date is yours to name and so is the date it goes away again, and on a wash round the forecast makes that choice for you. Have it brought a day before you mean to start: then you assemble at a quiet moment and on the day itself you only have to place the first set-up. With your own transport you may collect the parts by arrangement at no charge in Amsterdam, provided the whole set fits in your van or on your trailer.

Once the last pane is done, take the tower apart and bring everything to one point the van can reach. Leave no tubes in the border or behind the shed, because the set goes back counted and searching on collection day costs everyone time. So walk your route back once as you dismantle, gate and side path included, and stack the boards where the driver can see them. What bringing and fetching come to together differs per province; those amounts stand on the page with delivery costs.

The deck you squeegee from belongs to load class 3 under EN 1004 and so carries 200 kg per square metre. For a wash round that is ample: you, a full bucket and a few cloths stay well under it. Weight, in other words, is not the thing to worry about on a hired platform here. Water is. Knock a bucket over up there and the floor is slippery at once, and you notice it only at the moment you step sideways.

Brake the castors before you climb, even if you stay only two panes up. Never roll the tower with somebody on it, and not with your bucket still up top either; the half minute you save that way is exactly the moment it goes wrong. In strong wind you stop washing, however harmless the job looks. At each new stop go round all four stabilisers again. What else belongs to it stands with the arrangements for working at height.

Finally, think about what happens below you. Dirty water falls, and it lands on paving, shrubs or a parked bike, so keep that zone clear and warn the household before you begin. Do not leave loose items on the edge of the platform, because a squeegee tumbling down takes a roof tile or a pane with it easily. Dry your soles before you go into the ladder and you stand firm on every rung, which matters more at the end of a round than at the start.