Painting work? Choose the right scaffold.

The narrow Altrex RS TOWER 51 is the version asked for most often when painting work is the reason. At 75 cm across it passes a garden gate, the alley between two houses and the gap between a hedge and the brickwork, which on a project with ten standing positions saves you carrying every single time. Just as important, you move it single handed, and that happens several times a day here. The complete line up sits under the different mobile scaffold builds on offer.

If two of you are painting, or the job is mostly large surfaces rolled on, the wider RS52 at 135 cm is the better buy. Two people pass each other on that deck and your paint kettle is not in the way. Either version gives you a platform 245 cm long, and that length settles how much wall or how many frames you finish per position before you climb down again. On loose frames you end up somewhere else each time regardless.

If your painting work carries on indoors, that needs something separate. An RS44 room scaffold covers 3 to 4 metres and goes through an internal doorway from roughly 70 cm, which makes it usable over a stairwell, under a ceiling or along a tall wall. Working outside alone on something that stays under 6.2 metres, the one person MiTower with the same 75 cm width is enough. Which of the two suits your interior is shown at the room scaffold you can hire for indoor work.

Walk the whole list before you commit and write the height beside each item. It is not the average that counts but the highest point: if the frames sit on the first floor and the board below them runs on to the gutter, that board decides what you hire. On an ordinary terraced house the list ends somewhere between 4.2 and 8.2 metres of reach, and seldom above that. Note per item whether it faces front or back, because that sets your route later on.

Turning reach into a build is small arithmetic. Working height means the height of the platform with roughly two metres of reach added, so at 8.2 metres you are standing around six and can put a brush on the gutter with a straight arm. Take the tape from the paving on which the wheels will end up, and remember that the back of a house often sits lower or higher than the pavement at the front. Which build goes with that is on the page about eight metres of reach.

Choosing tight only shows up at the last item on your project. Standing with your brush just under the top edge of a board, you stretch, lose the stroke and see it later in the gloss. On top of that you pay for a second delivery to cover that final half metre. For a list that runs up to the second floor of the house take the build above. At hire that is a few frames extra and nothing more.

A painting project has no single standing position but a route. You do the front from the pavement, shuffle past the bay to the side, go through the gate to the back and finish at the shed. Walk that route once with a tape in hand, because the narrowest gap on it decides the width you can hire and the softest ground decides where you will want base plates. If 75 cm already jams at the gate, your whole plan changes.

The surface under the wheels changes with every side of the house: block paving at the front, a drive at the side, terrace slabs and grass at the back. Allow for the four stabilisers that swing outwards and clear accordingly. The obstacles on painting work are predictable: a low hedge under the sill, an outside tap, a wheelie bin, and the buckets and tins you have just set down yourself. Move those along to the next position too. For a plot that slopes there is the guide to bracing and anchoring a tower.

Think about the days you are not painting as well. Between two coats the tower simply stands there, and you do not want it in front of the neighbours' door or in the middle of a footpath. Pick a spot where it can stay for a few days without being in anybody's way, and ask the council what applies if part of it lands on the pavement. That is better sorted out before you start than on your first painting day.

Painting work is not counted in hours but in passes. First sanding and dusting off, then filling where needed, priming, and after that an undercoat and a top coat. Each pass runs along the same standing positions, and between two passes the paint has to be hard enough to go over. For the outside of an ordinary house that quickly comes to a week and a half on hire, while only a few of those days have a brush in them. Frames facing north dry more slowly than timber on the sunny side.

The weather takes a few more days out. Below about ten degrees most exterior paint dries slowly, in rain you do not start, and on a wall in full sun your coat closes too fast. Evenings count as well: dew settling on a fresh coat leaves it dull. So reckon in hire days rather than painting days, and leave air at the end of your period for the day that goes wrong. Look for a stretch where two dry days sit together, because each coat wants a day of its own.

A long period is luckily not expensive here. The full rate applies to the first day and night alone; ninety five per cent then comes off every following day, so standing between two coats costs almost nothing. Striking the tower and having it come back later works out badly, because you then pay transport twice and build twice. What short and long booking really differ by is set out in the comparison of daily and weekly hire.

With 245 cm of deck you finish roughly two and a half metres of wall per position, or two to three frames above one another. On flat surfaces that goes quickly and you move often; on detail work a single position eats time because you sand, dust, mask and paint each window separately. Know in advance which sort of painting work sits where, because that settles whether a day holds three moves or three long stops.

Take up per position exactly what has to happen there and finish it all before you come down. A tin, a brush, a roll of tape, abrasive paper and a cloth is enough; haul the heavy things up on a line rather than carrying them under your arm. Hang your kettle on a hook at the guardrail instead of standing it on the floor, and then you cannot kick it over the edge either. Anything you carry up loose will end up being carried down again at the end of the day.

If your project consists of only one kind of painting work, different rules of thumb apply to the number of positions and the length of your hire. For that, go to the page on painting a facade from a hired tower or the one on timber painting at height, where each situation is worked out. On a mixed list you keep to the narrow version, simply because it reaches everywhere the timber is. Both pages assume you keep the same hired build for the whole run, moved rather than swapped.

A stack of loose parts is delivered to you, counted and complete, and during the rest of your project that stack does not go away. So choose a corner where it hinders nobody and where you can keep it dry. Keep it off a lawn if you can, because frames left on wet grass go back muddy. Finish the booking on a working day while it is still before three, and the parts arrive the working day after. That way you start building on a day the weather is with you.

The day it arrives and the day it leaves you fill in yourself at booking. For painting work put the arrival a day before your first sanding day, because building takes half a day and you want to do something after that. Building is your work: two people, layer by layer, with the manual and the video supplied alongside the set. Moving it and taking it down belong to that as well, which on a project with ten positions is worth knowing beforehand.

When the last coat has dried you take it apart and we put everything back on the van. Do wait until the paint is genuinely hard, because a scaffold tube tapping a fresh door frame costs you more time than an extra day on hire ever would. Count the parts as you stack them and nothing ends up among the things in your shed. That count is also what your deposit hangs on. The amount per province for bringing and fetching is on the page about delivery and collection charges.

Everything on hire is built to EN 1004, and the platform is rated for 200 kg on each square metre under load class 3. On painting work you rarely come near it, until the moment two people are up there with a full kettle, a spare tin, filling gear and a sander. Keep the heavy things together in the middle of the floor and not at the edge. What the class actually means is unpacked in the piece explaining this scaffold standard.

The biggest risks on this job are in the paint itself. A spilt coat on the deck turns slippery the moment it rains, so wipe it off at once or lay card over it. Lock the wheels before you climb, and never roll the build with tins, kettles or a second person aboard, however small the shift looks. If it blows hard you stop: spray mist and loose cloths go everywhere, and a tin that topples runs across next door's paving.

Finally, look at what happens below you. A brush falls off a guardrail easily and a tin set too near the edge goes the same way. Keep the strip under the build clear, certainly on the street side where people walk past. Climb up on the inside and never up the outside of the frames, not even quickly with a tin in your hand. The remaining agreements are gathered at the rules for working safely at height.