Installing roller shutters? Choose the right scaffold.

The Altrex RS51 suits this best: a 75 cm wide version you build up in stages, from 4.2 metres all the way to 14.2 metres of working height. On a house you use only part of that, but the narrow dimension helps you down at ground level. You have to get the tower past an extension, across a patio or through a garden gate, and this width nearly always manages it. The whole selection, with the widths and reaches side by side, is at the models we have out on hire.

The broader 135 cm version looks tempting, because a shutter box is a substantial thing, but in practice it works against you. It is harder to get along the wall and gains you little up top, since the box ends up hanging on the masonry rather than lying on the deck. If your work is indoors, at a lightwell or in a stairhall, then the indoor room scaffold for low ceilings is the right pick; against an outside wall on a house of two storeys it is not the tool for the job.

The 245 cm platform length is the measurement that counts on this job. An average window opening is narrower than that, so the whole width of the shutter is within reach without moving the tower once. It means you can set and check the box, both guide rails and the bottom slat from one position. You also lay your level, your plugs, your driver bits and the tape out beside one another rather than hunting for them halfway through installing roller shutters.

Your top point is not the gutter but the upper edge of the shutter box, and that sits well above the head of the frame. For an opening on the first or the second floor, count on a build that comes out at six to eight metres. That number is the height of your deck plus the couple of metres you bridge standing with your arms raised. What such a stand involves is set out at a build reaching eight metres, along with the parts it takes.

You also want to see a little over the top of the box, because the upper fixing brackets sit on its head and the cable entry sometimes runs round the back. Come up exactly at eye level with the box and you are drilling by feel, unable to tell whether the whole thing hangs level. An extra half platform makes the difference between aiming properly and filling holes afterwards in fresh paintwork. You state that extra lift at the moment you hire, not once the parts are stacked on the drive.

Measure from the level the castors will end up on. At a rear elevation that is often a patio lower than the ground floor slab, and at a front elevation a pavement that rises slightly towards the door. That difference counts. If you are torn between two lifts for windows on the second residential storey, take the higher one, because finishing a fitting job on tiptoe never comes out neat and costs you more time in the end than one extra lift of scaffold ever will.

The stand goes centrally beneath the opening, because you want to reach both guide rails from the same point. So do not park it beside the frame but directly in front of it, and allow for the stabilisers, which splay out from the base and need firm ground under them. Below a ground floor window there is often a projecting cill or sub cill; that decides how close the tower can come to the wall in the first place, so hold a tape against it before you book anything.

Under a window you rarely find a flat, empty strip. There will be a planted border, a gravel margin against the wall, a crawl space hatch, a patio canopy starting halfway along or a shed butting up just below the opening. Put a thick board or a solid pad down where the ground is soft, and shift loose planters before the delivery arrives. On a sloping garden, the guidance on ground conditions sets out how to take that up without moving the whole stand.

When installing roller shutters at more than one opening, think about the order of your windows while you are siting the tower. You move from opening to opening, and the route between them has to be free of garden furniture, a trampoline or a cycle rack. Check as well whether a consumer unit or an outside light is fixed on the wall where the box has to pass; you would rather know that now than with the shutter half hung and the drill still in your hand.

Allow half a day per window for installing roller shutters on your own, and a third of that with two of you. Into that goes the marking out, drilling the box brackets, setting the guide rails, hanging the curtain and the test run. For three or four openings on one floor you land on a hire period of two to three days, including putting the tower up beforehand and taking it apart afterwards, plus a margin for the one window that fights you.

Inside that plan sit pauses you cannot do anything about. Electrically operated shutters need a supply cable ready, and if the electrician only turns up the following morning your stand does nothing that afternoon. With manual operation, shortening and adjusting the tape per window takes longer than people expect. If painting or sealing round the frame follows on, you will want the hired tower for that too, so count it in when you set your hire days rather than discovering it on the last afternoon.

Planning generously costs little here. The whole amount is charged over a single day and night, and each following day carries a discount of ninety five per cent, so an extra day scarcely shows in what you pay. Book too tight and the last shutter hangs half finished while the van is already outside. How to judge a period covering several openings is explained in the article on counting hire days, with worked examples for jobs spread over several windows.

Installing roller shutters starts with the box. Mark the centre line of the frame, hold the box in place above the lintel and check with a long level that it lies true across its whole width. Only when that is right do you drill the brackets home, because a box hanging a few millimetres out pulls the curtain to one side on every pass. Finish it completely before you touch a single guide rail, since coming back to the box later means undoing every fixing you have just made.

Then come the guide rails, and they make or break the result. Hang them, leave them loose on the top screw and measure the gap between them at the head, halfway and at the bottom; those three figures have to agree. Check the diagonals crosswise afterwards. If anything is running out, adjust before you set the lower plugs. This is exactly where a 245 cm platform pays, because you can take half a step aside and sight straight down the rail from top to bottom.

Finish with the operating gear and a proper test run. Hang the curtain, fit the tape, the cord or the motor bracket, then send the shutter all the way down and back up at least twice. Listen for anything rubbing and look at whether the bottom slat meets the cill evenly. Do it while you are still up there, because adjusting a stop from the ground is impossible and putting the tower back up a second time costs you the better part of a day.

The tower turns up in pieces: uprights, braces, platforms, guard rails, castors and stabilisers, all counted before they leave. Point out somewhere for that pile in advance and leave the strip immediately under the windows clear, because the boxes and the guide rails go down there in order. A driveway or a bit of lawn to one side works better. Place your order on a working day, with 15:00 as the cut off point, and everything is ready the next working day.

The date the set turns up and the date it goes back are both chosen by you. It helps to have the tower arrive on the morning your shutters are delivered, so you can sort out in one pass which box belongs to which window. Erecting it is part of your side: two people, the manual open and the assembly film on your phone, and at this height it takes little time. Anyone who prefers to drive collects the set by arrangement at Zeeburgerpad 89 in Amsterdam, at no cost.

Once every shutter hangs and has been tested, we come to take the components away. You dismantle the tower, count the parts as you go and set them out complete at the agreed spot. Do that final test run at each window before you start striking, because a guide rail can only be adjusted from height. The fixed amounts per province for bringing and removing are listed at the delivery costs by region, so you can put that figure in the budget before you commit to a date.

The deck carries an EN 1004 rating at load class 3, which allows two hundred kilos on each square metre of flooring. With shutters the trouble is not the total but how it is distributed: a complete box with its curtain is heavy and long, and if you lift it together you are both standing on the same side of the deck. Set the box down in the middle of the deck first and lift it into place from there, one end at a time.

The basics apply here as anywhere. Brake every castor before anyone climbs, do not slide the tower along while somebody is up top or a box is lying on the floor, and break off the moment the wind gets up at that height. A two metre shutter box catches wind like a flag, and you only feel it once the thing is above your head. More of the rules that apply throughout a hire period are gathered at working safely at height.

The hazards that belong to this work are sharp slats and falling oddments. An aluminium bottom slat cuts along its end, and screws, plugs and driver bits roll off the deck because you go through dozens of them. Keep the strip beneath the platform clear and say so to anyone busy in the garden. Only test an electric shutter when nobody is standing under the guide rails, because a curtain that suddenly drops does not give way. Call down before you press the button.