Removing stickers? Choose the right scaffold.

Removing stickers from a wall is one person work through and through. You stand there with a hot air gun and a scraper, nobody at all needs to be beside you up there, and that is why the Altrex MiTower gets the nod: a tower that builds 75 cm slim, is rated for a single user and weighs little enough that you can tip it half a metre sideways on your own. To see its builds and reaches together, look at hiring a one person tower, which lists the parts included at each height.

On the deck you need almost nothing for this. A gun on an extension lead, a plastic scraper, a spray bottle of adhesive remover, a roll of cloths and a bag for the film you pull off. All of that fits easily onto the 245 cm under your boots, even with a bucket of water added. More important than floor area is standing square in front of the letters, because your peeling angle decides whether the film comes away whole or tears itself into confetti.

A wider tower is a hindrance rather than a help here. Signage nearly always sits on a frontage facing the street, or on a wall with a narrow strip in front of it, and a broad build swallows exactly the space pedestrians need to keep walking through. If your text reaches beyond six metres or so, move up to a narrow mobile scaffold from the hire range with more reach, since this compact model simply runs out of build at that point.

Ignore the roof edge and measure to the top of your highest letter, then add a hand's width above it so you can work over the top comfortably. For text above a shop window or on the first floor that lands you between 4 and 6 metres of reach. Your deck then sits two to four metres up, since your arms count for roughly two metres on top of whatever level you stand on. At six metres of reach that build is set out in full.

The model itself spans 4.2 to 6.2 metres, which leaves slack you use on purpose here. Sticker work asks that you come out just above your letters instead of barely reaching them. Too tight and you pull upwards rather than flat along the wall, and it is precisely that angled tug which tears film into ribbons you then pick off one shred at a time. What you save on assembly you pay back twice over.

Look at where your zero point lies as well. A shop frontage often sits slightly above or below the pavement, and on a driveway that falls away that can easily cost you half a metre in the sum. So measure from the surface the tower will rest its castors on. If your signage hangs on the wall of a storey above the ground floor, count the full window height in before you fix a reach.

Signage rarely hangs over a quiet back garden. Usually your tower stands on the street side, with pedestrians wanting past and sometimes a display stand, a cycle rack or cafe furniture directly beneath your working face. Empty that strip before the scaffold is delivered, because building between parked bicycles costs more time than clearing them does. Leave a walking route beside the tower and tape it off while you are up there, so nobody tries to reach the doorway by ducking between your stabilisers on the way past.

Four stabilisers need room under your deck, and they swing out further than the tower builds wide. Level paving is ideal, but watch the fall towards the gutter, a crossover that dives away and loose slabs that start to rock as soon as you shift your weight. Put a thick board under the foot plates where needed. For a surface that refuses to sit level, the guidance on stabilising a tower and tying it in sets out the order.

Think about power in advance too. A hot air gun draws hard, and you do not want a reel that gives up halfway along the wall; run the lead up alongside a standard rather than straight across the walkway. If your tower stands on council ground, ask what is permitted in your street and whether a notification is needed. Such a request takes several working days, so start it well before you hire and fix a delivery date.

A shop name or a row of loose letters above a window usually falls inside one working day, provided the film is still supple. If that signage has been up for eight or ten years the picture changes: weathered film tears at every pull, and then you take it off shred by shred while the hours slip away. For that scenario two days on hire is the realistic figure to book. Measure the total length of your text first and then reckon generously per running metre of it.

The second half of the job is the adhesive. It stays behind as a field of tacky residue that you soak with a product and then scrape away, and that goes letter by letter rather than metre by metre. Count on ghosting as well: on a wall that never faded under the signage, your text stands afterwards as a pale shadow on the background. Washing or blending those patches out easily fills up the whole remainder of a second day on hire.

Such an extra day weighs lightly on the rental price. The whole tariff applies to the first twenty four hours; every day after that counts towards your total with 95 per cent knocked off. Booking wide therefore costs almost nothing, while booking tight leaves you with half a frontage done and a second round of assembly. Set your collection day well past the moment the residue has to be gone. Estimating gets easier with the overview of hire days per job beside you.

Each stand puts 245 cm of text within reach, and with signage that is a usable unit: most shop names consist of two or three such lengths standing in a row. Finish a length completely, adhesive included, before you move the tower along, otherwise you roll back later for something you had almost done. Warm the film until it feels supple and take it off in one continuous movement, as flat along the wall as you can rather than towards yourself.

That peeling angle makes all the difference. The flatter you pull, the more glue leaves with the film and the less stays behind to soak off. Keep the gun moving so you never overheat one spot of the background, and hold the nozzle deliberately further back on plastic trim or on painted sections. Loose letters get handled one by one, from the top edge downwards, so the heat does not hang in your face while the next one warms.

Removing stickers ends with the glue, and you deal with that from the same stand. Spray your product on, give it time to soak in properly and then scrape with plastic, never with steel. Finish by buffing with a clean cloth, because a thin film left in place turns within a week into a streak of dust and rainwater. Carrying on across the rest of the wall afterwards, a round of washing the whole frontage down follows on logically from the same stands.

No assembled tower pulls up outside your door; what arrives is a counted bundle of tubes, boards and guardrails. Agree where that may lie, because on a pavement in front of a shop it is seldom exactly where you intend to work. A parking bay you cone off for a morning, or a stretch of paving beside the entrance, works far better with customers coming and going. Confirm on a weekday while the clock reads under 15:00 and the set follows on the very next working day.

Both dates, the one the parts show up and the one they leave, are filled in by you, and with sticker work you want them close together. If the shop below yours stays open, have the hired tower come a day early so that you can build first thing without getting under anyone's feet. Assembly remains your task, manual to hand and an instruction film demonstrating the sequence. At this height it takes an hour, and considerably less with a second pair of hands.

As soon as the last letter is gone you take the tower apart, stack it where the van can reach it and we fetch the bundle on the date you chose. A set can also be collected without charge, by appointment, from Zeeburgerpad 89, 1019 AD Amsterdam; this compact version fits a van and even a sturdy trailer behind a car. Delivery and return within your province carry a set figure, shown inclusive of VAT under the charges per province.

Your working deck carries two hundred kilos per square metre; within the EN 1004 standard that falls under load class 3. For this job the limit is generously drawn, since you plus a tool bag and a bottle of solvent come nowhere near it. Watch something else on this tower instead: it is meant for one user, so let nobody climb up alongside you to look at an awkward letter, not even for half a minute.

Lock the wheels before your weight goes onto the first step of the ladder, and never push the tower along with tools or a person still aboard. In strong wind you stop pulling: film that has come loose acts like a sail and snatches at your hand at exactly the wrong moment. After each move, check the four stabilisers press firmly onto the slabs again, especially if you have rolled across a fall. The remaining rules are gathered at the regulations for work at height.

Two dangers belong specifically to this job. A hot air gun stays glowing hot for minutes after switching off, so put it in a metal tray and never loose on a deck board or leaning against a guardrail. And your lead travels everywhere with you: run it down alongside a standard so it never ends up under a castor. Keep the pavement below the tower clear as well, because a scraper lands hard on paving in a busy shopping street.