Repairing plasterwork? Choose the right scaffold.

The Altrex RS44 is a room scaffold, a model drawn for interior work, and you notice that before you are even in the room. Its parts are short and light enough to pass an interior door of about 70 cm, which takes you through the hall, past the banister and over a threshold without marking anything. On this job that is the first obstacle to clear. The indoor versions you can reserve are gathered at the indoor models in the hire range.

On a platform of 245 cm you are seldom up there alone during a repair. Beside you stand a bucket, a hawk of mix, a straightedge, two or three floats and a bag for the material you have cut out. All of that you keep within arm's length, because climbing down every time to fetch something costs more than the filling does. A platform of that length also brings the damaged area and the sound border round it inside one stand.

An outdoor model has little business in a living room. The wide versions are drawn for façade work, they build far past any ceiling height, and their longest parts will never go through a room door. If you go on to tackle a damaged section of façade outside, you can hire a mobile scaffold for that side within the same booking. Indoors this remains the only version that gets you onto your working spot without a fight with door posts, skirtings and a stair rail.

The highest point on this job is usually not the middle of the wall but the corner where the plaster runs into the ceiling. Damage gathers exactly there: alongside a flue, above a window head, or in the band where a leak once tracked down. So your measurement goes to that top edge, not to the first loose patch you can see. In a room of ordinary storey height, 3 to 4 metres brings you everywhere, the corner above the door included.

Reckon from the floor the castors will rest on, and not from a raised hearth or a stair tread. Take your platform height, count roughly two metres of reach above it, and that total is the figure you book on. If the room runs into a small hall with a step, measure from the lowest surface, because that is where the room scaffold will stand most often. What a build to that figure involves is set out at a four metre working height.

Hiring short shows up in the plane itself. Stay half a metre under what you need and you are working with the float above your shoulders, which costs you the feel for flatness; the repair then sits proud or hollows away, and in raking light from the window that is impossible to miss afterwards. Doing a patch again costs an extra hire day plus the waiting all over. So choose your height on the top corner of the room rather than on the first crack.

Clear the spot for the scaffold before the components come through the door. Slide the cupboard away, take the picture off the wall beside it and roll the carpet up, because grit and splashes are coming down whatever you do. Lay dust sheet or hardboard on the floor and make sure it stays put under the castors without creeping. A wooden or poured floor is not something you want scored over its full length by a sharp chip of rubble under a wheel. Repairing plasterwork sheds more rubble than a fresh coat ever does.

Around the foot you need more floor than the tower itself covers, because the stabilisers point outwards at an angle. That is where it pinches indoors: a radiator under the window, a skirting with trunking above it, a door swinging inward and a window board just proud of the wall. Walk those four before you start assembling. If there is a dropped threshold or a level change into a conservatory, keep the castors on one side of it and move once more instead.

Think about the route in as well. The parts come through the same door you will later walk through with a bucket of mix, so keep that opening free of tools and loose tubs. Put your rubble bin beside the scaffold rather than in the walking line, and you will not trip over it coming down with a full float. Working in a hall or stairwell with an opening to the floor below, read up on a set-up over a stairwell first.

The clock on a repair is not set by how fast you fill but by how long the material takes to go hard. A cut out area of a few decimetres fills in two or three passes, and between those passes there is nothing you can do at that spot except wait. Then comes sanding, then getting the dust off, and only after that the finishing coat. For a handful of spots in one room the room scaffold stands with you two to three days.

If the damage sits in more than one room, add half a day per space for striking, carrying and setting up again. Where the damage traces back to an old leak, the background has to be bone dry before you fill; that time is not in your work plan but it is very much in your hire period. Count such waiting days in rather than hoping they will not arrive. A wall still giving off moisture pushes fresh plaster loose again within a season, and repairing plasterwork twice over is no saving at all.

The rental price is built so that planning wide costs almost nothing. The first day of any booking is the expensive one; from the second onwards 95 per cent drops off the daily figure. Taking one more date so a coat can harden quietly therefore hardly registers. Booking tight works the other way, leaving you looking at a half filled wall on collection morning. How people judge such a period beforehand is at a breakdown of typical hire lengths.

Begin every spot with your knuckles. Tap the wall round about until you hear where it sounds hollow and where it is sound again, and pencil that boundary in. Inside it you cut everything away until you feel an edge all round that no longer moves, because filling up against a loose edge is work that comes back inside a year. Do that tapping from the platform and not from the floor, or you will miss precisely the hollow areas sitting high on the wall.

With a platform of this length you usually take one area of damage plus the strip around it in the same stand. Filling in passes means you want the scaffold left standing between two coats, so only move it once a spot is completely ready for its waiting time. What goes up with you is a short list: chisel and hammer, brush and water, filler, float, straightedge, sanding sponge and an empty bucket for the rubble. Anything forgotten means climbing down with wet hands. Repairing plasterwork rewards a full bucket carried up once.

The last pass decides whether you keep seeing the repair afterwards. Work the filling wider than the hole itself, so the transition into the old plaster runs away into the plane instead of standing as a ridge. That is why you park the tower centred on the patch with a bay of wall free either side, not hard up against the damage. Hold the texture of the surrounding wall, since a smooth patch shows under side light. For a whole plane rather than separate spots, look at a whole wall of new plaster.

The room scaffold reaches your door as a complete, counted set of loose parts. Point out a corner in advance where that stack may land, and do not choose the room you are about to repair, because your dust sheet goes down there and you will be walking round it with a bucket. The hall, the utility room or an empty bedroom is handier. There is a cut-off at 15:00: beat it on a weekday and your set arrives the next working day.

You pin the day the set comes and the day it leaves, and for repair work you want it there the day before your first cutting session. That leaves an afternoon to build and to cover the floor, so you start the next morning with dry hands. Putting it up is your job, with the manual to hand. Run through the order in the step by step assembly guide before you pick up the first brace.

Once the work is finished our van comes round again for the parts; you pull the scaffold apart and stack it ready, complete, somewhere we can get at it. Leave that until the last filling no longer feels tacky, or you will smear mix over the tubes and the platform boards. Count the parts as you strike, and a brace still standing behind a cupboard shows up at once. Stack the pile inside in the hall rather than out in the rain. Repairing plasterwork leaves enough dust indoors without wet tubes joining it.

EN 1004 rates this deck in class 3, and the figure behind that class is two hundred kilos for every square metre. For a repair that is generous for you plus a bucket, but it fills up faster than you expect once a bag of powder, a tub of water and a second person join in. Add that up before you haul everything aloft. How the class works out in kilos is described at the figures on load and weight for a mobile scaffold.

The fixed rules hold indoors just as they do outside. Brakes go on before your foot touches the first rung, and shifting along is allowed only once the platform is bare and nobody is above. On a smooth poured floor or laminate a tower rolls away more easily than it does on street setts, so check the castors after every move. Wind plays no part here, but an open window and a door slamming still give you a start at height.

The risk that belongs to this job lies under your feet and under the scaffold. Grit and lumps of old plaster make the platform slick, so sweep it regularly and drop the rubble in a bin rather than leaving it lying. A chisel or hammer that goes off the edge lands on a hard floor, so keep housemates and pets out of the room while you are busy. Lay your tools down flat instead of propping them against the guardrail while repairing plasterwork above head height.