Applying plasterwork? Choose the right scaffold.

Indoors the choice falls on the Altrex RS44, the model drawn for work inside houses. Its base builds so narrow that the loose parts pass an interior door from roughly 70 cm, and that is precisely the dimension that trips people up in older properties: the connecting door to the back room, or the frame at the top of the stairs. So measure that narrowest opening before you settle on a room scaffold from the hire range, because the decision is made there rather than at the height.

The 245 cm working deck is not a luxury on this job but a condition of doing it. Applying plasterwork demands that the tub, the rule and you all fit on one deck, with room to turn round without sliding anything off the edge. A stepladder offers none of that, and a board between two trestles puts you exactly where you will shortly need to move. Your material also stays at temperature up there instead of cooling off on a cold floor below.

Where a room carries on above four metres, as in a void or an open stairwell, this interior model falls short and you go for a narrow mobile scaffold with more reach from the tower hire range. At an ordinary storey height of around three metres that would be overkill: you drag needless parts through your hallway and spend longer building than plastering. Pick the model that matches your ceiling height, and not simply the biggest one you can get hold of.

Indoors your highest point sits in almost the same place every time: the junction of wall and ceiling, where your stop bead or angle bead ends up. Reach that comfortably with a trowel and you are inside the band this interior model covers. Your deck then stands a good way lower, because arms add roughly two metres of reach to the level you stand on. At four metres of working height that relationship is set out with the build that goes with it.

Measure from the bare structural floor and not from a finish that has yet to be laid. Differences of five centimetres look negligible, yet they decide whether you need one deck level more, and you find that out while shuffling about with wet hands. If a poured floor or a layer of parquet is still to come, hold to what is under your boots now and do not calculate with the height the room will have in a month's time.

Choosing tight costs you quality straight away on this work. From too low a stand you finish the top band with arms stretched out, press unevenly and watch the junction with the ceiling come back as a wave the moment side light falls across it. Rubbing down only helps so far against that. In a room on the ground floor of a house with a high ceiling, take the extra build section rather than standing on tiptoe.

A room being plastered ought to be empty, and by that we mean more than the furniture going out. Around your build you need space to fold out the four stabilisers and to walk past with a full tub without scraping along anything. Choose a position from which you can work the whole wall in one direction, and keep the doorway clear, because your supply comes through there and you have to pass with a mixing bucket without touching fresh work.

The floor indoors is usually a bare structural slab, and that turns slicker than people expect once water and mortar land on it. Put polythene or hardboard down with the joints taped, so nothing creeps under your castors and you do not roll over a curled up edge. Watch level changes at an extension or a threshold, and a stairwell opening right beside your working face. For that last case, the approach around a stairwell gives you the right set up.

Set up a fixed mixing station downstairs and keep it off your walking route. You need water, power and a bucket of clean rinsing water, and you do not want to be dragging all of that through half a house on every round. Stand your tub as close to the build as you can, because every metre carried with a full bucket is a metre you spill on. Clear spillage at once, or it sets into a hard lump exactly under a castor.

Before you mix the first tub a list has to be finished, and that list decides which delivery day you pick. Service chases filled and dry, back boxes at the right depth, frames set and braced, windows in so no draught crosses fresh work, floor protected and beads on site. If anything on it is still open, your whole hire period shifts with it. So walk that check calmly a day before your scaffold arrives, not just before you start mixing.

For a living room with four walls the figure usually sits at two to three days on hire. Priming and setting beads fills almost a whole day, laying on and ruling off fills the next, and trowelling back comes on top of that along precisely the same stands. That is why you leave the room scaffold standing in between rather than striking it early. Add a hall, a landing or a second room and you soon count an extra day per space.

A generous period costs you almost nothing extra here. The full tariff applies to your opening twenty four hours only; on every day you stick behind that, 95 per cent comes off the price, which makes margin for a wall that turns out to need more preparation cheaply insured. So set your collection day after your last trowelling round rather than on the day itself. What a job like this takes in time is in the overview of hire days needed.

Do not begin with mortar but with beads. Angle beads on external corners, stop beads along frames and ceilings and, where needed, a movement bead on the junction between two building materials: those govern the thickness of your coat and with it how flat the whole thing turns out. Set them out while you are still working dry and then check with your rule that they truly all sit in one line. From the 245 cm deck you run along a good many of them from one stand.

Then look at the background itself, because within one wall you often meet three of them. Old brickwork drinks greedily, a lightweight block hardly draws at all and a filled chase sits somewhere between the two. Each gets the primer that suits it, and over the joints between two materials you bed reinforcing mesh, otherwise that joint prints itself after a few months as a hairline crack at eye level. This is the preparation that fills your hire days.

Finally, settle your finish level before you start mixing. Ready for paper asks noticeably less trowelling than a smooth panel that will only get paint, and that difference lies in extra rounds along precisely the same stands. Agree it with the decorator following you, because a spray ready finish decided halfway through costs you a whole extra hire day. Where the ceiling skim in that room follows on, plan it inside the same hire period. Applying plasterwork over a whole room is paced by the mortar rather than by your own arms.

What gets dropped off is a counted bundle of loose parts and not an assembled tower. Say in advance where that stack of parts may be put down indoors, well away from the room being coated, because there you want absolutely nothing standing about. A hall, a utility room or an empty bedroom serves better than the space your mixing bucket will occupy. Arrange the reservation on a weekday and manage it by 15:00, and the set is inside with you on the following working day.

Your delivery day and your collection day are yours to pick, and for interior work you look not at the forecast but at your own programme. Have the parts come on the day you prime, and the build is standing by the time the first tub is mixed. Assembling stays your share of the work, manual within reach and a film demonstrating the sequence. With two people have it standing inside half an hour at this modest height, so you can press straight on with applying plasterwork.

After your final trowelling round you take the room scaffold apart and we collect the parts on your own end date. Prefer to drive the job yourself and a set may be picked up free, by appointment, at Zeeburgerpad 89, 1019 AD Amsterdam, since this compact version fits a van or the back of a trailer easily enough. The cost of running it out and back within your province appears with VAT under the rates for transport, so nothing is left open.

Your deck carries two hundred kilos across each square metre, which the EN 1004 standard describes as load class 3. On plasterwork that is a figure to take seriously rather than wave away. A filled tub weighs a good deal, you come on top of it, and if somebody stands beside you to hand material up you are already close to the mark. So keep your bucket smaller than you would like and have it topped up from below.

Lock your castors as soon as your weight goes onto the step; on a bare slab with a film of building dust a free wheel rolls away more easily than you would think. Never move the build with a tub or a person on it, not even for that one half metre to the left. Fold the stabilisers out again after every move and check all four genuinely bear on the floor. The remaining points are at the regulations for work at height.

The hazard that belongs to this job sits under your feet rather than beside you. Fresh mortar sliding off a trowel makes a deck board mirror slick, so wipe it away before it binds and keep a dry cloth within reach. Never lay your rule loose on the edge of the deck either, because a two metre lath comes down bent from this height. Keep the space under the build entirely clear, certainly with other people about the house.