Painting a gable? Choose the right scaffold.

For a gable you end up with the RS52, the wide Altrex model on a 135 cm base. At eight to twelve metres that width is not a luxury but a requirement: the build stands steadier, there is floor left over for a paint kettle beside your feet, and a second person can join you without the pair of you shuffling past each other. The other sizes waiting in the yard are set out in the overview of mobile scaffolds available for hire.

The slim 75 cm version exists for jobs where you want to be light and manoeuvrable, and painting a gable is not one of them. Up there you carry litres of paint, sanding gear, a filler knife and perhaps a length of replacement timber, and you want all of it in a single trip. Five minutes of climbing for a forgotten brush weighs heavier on this job than a few centimetres of extra width at the garden gate.

How much surface you cover from one position comes down to the 245 cm platform. A gable works in your favour there, because the triangle narrows towards the top: around the ridge one setting does the lot, while lower down near the roof edge you shift along once or twice. Measure the route to the end wall before you hire a mobile scaffold this wide, because 135 cm will not pass every gate. A gate half a metre too narrow is better found with a tape measure than on the delivery day.

The mistake made most often is measuring to the gutter. On a gable that is where the work begins: the triangle carries on from the roof edge for another two to four metres up to the ridge, depending on how steep the pitch is. If your gutter sits at six metres and the roof has an ordinary slope, the apex is somewhere near nine or ten. Add the top edge of the cladding to that, because it has to take paint as well.

That puts painting a gable at 8 to 12 metres of working height, with a platform between six and ten metres. Working height counts the deck you stand on and then the two metres or so that an arm and a brush add above it, which is the band you cover without shifting your feet. What such a build asks for in parts is set out on the page for a build to twelve metres before you finish your booking.

Going too low is no small miscalculation on this job. Come up a metre short at the ridge and it is precisely the apex that stays untreated, and that is the part taking the worst of the weather. Adding a section during the job means dismantling, ordering more parts and starting over. Measure twice and hire the build that lets you touch the ridge with your hand rather than with the tip of a brush. One extra level costs relatively little.

A gable sits on the end of the house by definition, and that is usually where space is tightest. Often there is a path a metre or so wide with the boundary or the neighbours' drive directly behind it. At eight to twelve metres the stabilisers are set well out, much further than on a low build, so that strip is almost never wide enough without an arrangement with the people next door. Make that arrangement before the van pulls up.

The ground has to take that height too. Slabs on a properly compacted sand bed or a concrete drive are fine; loose soil, a flower bed or a newly laid border are not. Put spreader plates under the castors where the paving has sunk and check the setting again each morning, because a millimetre out of true at the bottom becomes a real difference up at the ridge. If the plot falls away towards the road, see how to handle that at a tower on uneven ground.

Then look at what hangs and stands along an end wall. A downpipe on the corner, a meter box, a satellite dish, an outside tap, a beech hedge or the roof of the shed next door all decide where the tower can still go. Think about overhead cables too, and about the branches of a tree in the neighbours' garden; at ten metres you are suddenly among them. Walk that line with the build height in mind, ideally with someone watching from across the garden.

A gable is a straightforward shape, but the paintwork on it rarely is. There are usually years of weather sitting there: flaking paint, weathered boards, sealant joints hanging loose and sometimes a section of timber that has to be replaced. Sanding, repairing, priming and two covering coats put you honestly at four to five hire days on an ordinary house, and that is before the build day has been counted at all. Treat that first day as work in its own right rather than something you slot in beforehand.

Between coats there are waits you cannot shorten. A coat has to harden before the next one goes on, and on an end wall the sun decides where you start as well: on a face in full sun the paint pulls away too quickly. Weather counts for more up here than it does at ground level. A day with real wind in it is simply not a working day for painting a gable, and in spring and autumn that happens more than once a week.

Booking generously is therefore close to free insurance. The full rate covers your opening twenty four hours, and each further day you attach runs at 95 per cent off. Keeping the set for a week costs far less than seven separate days would, and you never have to rush. Book too tightly and you stand with a half finished apex waiting for the collection van. What other people settle on is described in how long a tower usually stays on site.

Start at the ridge and work your way down towards the roof edge. It is not only more comfortable, it is the only order that leaves no marks: drips, sanding dust and paint mist all fall downwards, and you want them landing on a face you still have to do. Begin at the bottom and you spatter your finished work again and again, and the end of the day goes on repairs instead of progress.

Up at the top one position is enough, because the triangle is only a couple of metres wide there. As you drop down, each row gets wider, and with a 245 cm deck you soon need two or three settings per level. Keep the line between two settings on a natural break: a vertical joint in the cladding, a downpipe or the edge of a shutter. That way a wet edge never falls in the middle of an open panel.

Moving the tower at this height is a different matter from shifting a low one. The deck has to be empty, nobody may be standing on it and the ground must be even over the whole route; if in doubt, take a section down rather than forcing a tall build over a threshold. So carry everything you need up with each new setting. If the fascia boards along the roof edge are also on your list, plan them from the same position.

A ten metre build means a lot of parts. They come as a complete set, counted and checked, and the stack is bigger than most people expect. Point out a spot in advance that is not on your working strip: the drive, the front garden or a piece of grass beside the path. A weekday booking wrapped up by 15:00 puts the parts on your drive the working day after. Make sure the van can reach the place where the parts have to land.

Delivery day and collection day are two entries in the booking that you fill in yourself. On this job it pays to take delivery a day ahead of your first session with the sanding block, so the build goes up in peace instead of on the morning you mean to start painting a gable. Standing it upright is your part of the work, in stages from the bottom, with the manual open in front of you and the instruction film running on a phone. That order is described in the step by step build sequence.

Once the last coat has hardened you take the build apart and stack the parts somewhere our van can get to; collection happens on the date from your booking. Pick a still day for the dismantling, because taking a tall build down in a strong wind is a job in itself. Count the parts off as you work from the top down, and no brace stays behind on a platform level for you to find a week later.

Your working floor answers to EN 1004 at load class 3, meaning a permitted load of 200 kg for every square metre. On this job that limit is nearer than you think: two people, two buckets of paint, a tool box and a sheet of board add up quickly. Spread the weight across the deck instead of putting it all in one corner. Heavy items belong over an upright rather than in the middle of a deck. What may stand there is covered in the load a mobile scaffold carries.

Wind is the deciding factor when you are painting a gable. The triangle projects above the roof line and stands completely exposed; no adjoining building gives it shelter and at ten metres it is always stronger than it is in the street. Stop as soon as it gets up, even if things still seem calm below. The brakes go on before you climb, you never move the build with anyone or anything on it, and the stabilisers are checked each morning.

Finally, keep the ground beneath you clear. A brush or a tin of paint falling ten metres is a serious risk to anyone underneath, and beside an end wall there is often a path to the neighbours' back door. Tape that stretch off, warn the people next door and do not work above a spot where children play. Lay your tools flat instead of propping them against the guardrail, where the first gust will slide them off.