Replacing draught strips? Choose the right scaffold.

For work like this the Altrex MiTower is the obvious pick: a tower 75 cm wide, calculated for a single user, ordered here at 4 to 6 metres of working height. You need very little up there, and that is exactly what this model is built around. A roll of draught section, a knife, a tape and a screwdriver fit together in one bucket beside your feet. What can be reserved in this width is gathered at the single user MiTower we hire out.

The narrow foot counts for more than you would think. Upper windows often sit above a border, a hedge, a bike rack or a sloping cellar entrance, and with three quarters of a metre between the standards you get into places a broad set-up will not. On top of that, replacing draught strips means shifting from window to window, and a light tower rolls along the wall on its castors without a second person to help.

With 245 cm of platform you have an ordinary window frame in front of you complete, corners included, along with the jamb where the last piece gets pressed home. A wide sliding window or a double door turns it into two stands, and a dormer opening into three. To hire a mobile scaffold broader than this buys no extra reach, only more parts to carry through the garden. If general upkeep of the window frames follows on, the same tower does that too.

Measure not to the cill but to the head of the highest window you are taking on, because your strip has to run round there as well. On an ordinary family house the top of a first floor window sits about five metres above the garden path. Standing on a platform that is too low, you work along that head with lifted arms and never press the section tight into the corner, and that corner is precisely where the draught comes back a season later.

With 4 to 6 metres of working height you sit right for those windows. The deck itself then lands somewhere around three metres, since working height is whatever the platform gives you plus the couple of metres your arms and shoulders add. Your zero point is the surface the castors rest on rather than the doorstep, because a front garden on a fall shifts that starting point by half a metre. Usual builds for work on the first floor are set out separately.

Choosing tight is not only about reach here. You have to open and close the window while standing beside it, and that works only when the handle sits at a comfortable height for you. Stay under it and you are reaching up to a catch you can barely see, and with a knife in your other hand that is no posture to hold for an afternoon. So take one stand more rather than one less when you settle the build.

The set-up goes beside the window opening and not straight in front of it. A window that opens outwards describes an arc over the spot where you are standing, and if you swing the sash against your guardrail you can no longer get past it to the head. Go and look from inside first to see which way it opens and how far, then put the tower on the hinge side. The sash then swings away from you and the reveal stays clear for your hands.

Under upper windows there is rarely tidy paving. Usually it is a strip of soil with planting, a gravel path or a garden path falling towards the boundary. Put levelling plates or a couple of loose slabs under the castors as soon as one sinks, and check that again after a wet night. The stabilisers have to go out on all four sides, and that is just where a hedge, a water butt or the bin from next door tends to be standing.

Look at what hangs below and above the window as well. A canopy over the front door, a roller shutter box, an outside tap or a satellite dish decide whether the tower just fits or just does not. Move planters and bicycles aside in advance, because replacing draught strips has you up and down more often than you expect. A clear path to the steps saves you a detour with tools in hand at every opening. For sloping ground the approach is set out at a set-up on uneven ground.

Per window you spend half an hour measuring, cutting and pressing, with the paper test counted in. Six upper windows in a terraced house therefore fall inside a working day, provided the right section is already in the house. Moving the tower costs more time than the stripping itself: climbing down, stabilisers in, a few metres along, out again and checked over runs to a quarter of an hour, and you do that at every window.

Even so you are better off reserving two days. If the rebate at the first window turns out dirty or damaged, cleaning, sanding or even a repair joins in and your whole plan slides. Switching from self adhesive rubber to a clamped section means a groove has to be routed first, which costs a serious slice of extra time per opening. Rain counts too, because a wet rebate will let no self adhesive strip hold at all.

The shape of the tariff helps you there. A spare date barely registers on the bill, because after the opening day the rate falls by 95 per cent, so a reserve day next to your working day is the cheapest insurance against an afternoon of drizzle. Booking short is the expensive option, since a second visit means a second build. Replacing draught strips is one of the few jobs where the moving eats the day rather than the work. How others judge such a period is at a breakdown of typical hire lengths.

Start with the paper test before you pull anything off. Lay a strip of paper between the sash and the rebate, close the window and pull on it: if the paper slides out without resistance, the strip no longer seals at that point. Do that all round at four or five points, because a window seldom shuts equally well everywhere along its perimeter. Then measure the gap itself with a feeler gauge or a thin lath, since that figure sets the thickness of the section you need.

Then the choice between two systems. A clamped section sits with a spine in a routed groove in the reveal and stays there for years; where the groove already exists, the new section simply clicks in. Self adhesive rubber goes on the flat part of the rebate and wants a background that is clean, dry and free of grease. Take the old strip out completely, adhesive residue included, or your new one is half off within a season.

Work the whole perimeter of a window before you move the tower on. With a platform of 245 cm an average frame is within reach complete, including the top corners where you want the section to meet in a tidy mitre. Cut the pieces a shade longer than the measured length, because a strip that ends up just short lets the draught straight back through in the corner. Test with paper again before shifting the tower along to the next opening.

The tower is dropped at your home as a set of loose parts, counted and checked beforehand. Find a place for that stack in advance: on the drive or along the fence it lies fine, but not directly under the window you mean to start at, or you will be stepping over your own components while building. The ordering deadline sits at 15:00 on working days, and an order inside it is delivered the working day after.

You state yourself when the parts may come and when they may go again. With draught strips that is mainly a question of picking dry weather, since self adhesive material wants a dry rebate and a rainy Wednesday is a lost hire day. Assembly is yours to do, with a manual in the set and the instruction video alongside. Pick a settled half week and the tower simply waits for the dry morning. The steps are described at the step by step assembly guide.

Once the last strip is bedded in, the tower comes apart again and everything is laid ready where the van can get at it; collection happens on the day written into the reservation. Count the components through while striking, because a small connector vanishes among the shrubs under a window in no time. Wipe the deck boards off if you have been walking through the planters, so the whole set goes back clean and the count is quick.

Load class 3 in EN 1004 allows two hundred kilogrammes per square metre of platform. On this job you stay far under it, because you plus a bucket with a few rolls of section weigh next to nothing. That does not mean you can leave things lying loose up there: a knife and a roll of tape going off the edge are the genuine risk here. More about those limits is at the load figures for a mobile scaffold deck.

Brakes go on all four castors before anybody climbs, and the tower rolls along only once the deck is empty of tools and people. On this job a rule joins in that you meet nowhere else: never shift the tower while the window stands open. A sash hanging outwards can hook behind the guardrail and travel with it, which costs you the window and your balance in one go. Shut it, climb down, then move along to the next opening.

Wind deserves extra attention, because an open window catches it like a sail. In a stiff breeze a sash slams shut or swings wide, and that happens at the moment your fingers are in the rebate. Stop work in a hard wind even though the job itself looks harmless, since a broken hinge is a repair you do not want on top. Keep the ground under you clear as well, because tools land on a path where people walk.