Hanging a wall light? Choose the right scaffold.

For a single fitting on the wall you take an RS51, the version measuring 75 cm across. Narrow is no concession here but a gain: a light seldom sits in the middle of a clear surface, but beside a bay, above an extension or at the side of the house where the path is only a metre wide. Measure that gap before booking, since the frames travel through it in your arms too. With that width you pass between a fence and the brickwork without moving the planting.

On the platform you need very little space when hanging a wall light. A drill, a box of plugs, a spirit level, the cable and the fitting itself lie side by side with ease on a deck of this width, and there is room left to kneel while you make the connection. Choose the wider version only if two of you go up, one watching while the other sets the cores. Which models we hire out, and how high they go, is set out in the overview of mobile scaffolds for hire.

If the fixing point sits lower than six metres and you are doing the job alone, the MiTower comes into consideration too: a one person tower that reaches a good six metres of working height. If the light hangs higher, or if material and a second pair of hands go up with you, the narrow mobile scaffold stays the better choice. If in doubt, the comparison at these two types side by side helps, because the two differ in weight, in build time and in what you can set down beside you.

Measure not to the eaves but to the point where the light is going to hang, and on this job that easily saves two metres. A wall light above a window on the first floor usually sits around five metres above ground level, sometimes a little higher if it tucks under an overhang. Add the good two metres you still reach upward from a platform and you understand why 6 to 8 metres of reach is the answer when hanging a wall light. Hire on that figure, not on the height of the house.

More important than the maximum is the height your deck finally ends up at. You want the hole roughly at chest height, because a hole drilled above your head nearly always runs off upwards and the dust falls into your face. Half a metre either way decides whether you drill straight or drill blind. So set the platform so that you work against the wall with slightly bent arms, and not as high as it will go. For one fitting an eight metre build suits the job better than the tallest stack the frames allow.

Look as well at the spot where the castors are going to stand. If there is a sunken terrace under the light, if the tower stands in a border lying lower than the path, or if the drive runs downhill to the kerb, your build begins at a different level from your threshold. Anyone starting half a storey lower than they thought is exactly one platform short and ends the day stretching after all. What a storey normally measures is set out under the heights of a first floor.

Hanging a wall light knows one setup, and it has to be right first time. Stand the tower so that the fixing point is not straight in front of your face but a little to one side of the middle of the deck; then you can work with your shoulder along the wall and have room to swing the machine. Too far to the left or right and you drill with a stretched arm, which you see back later in a hole that does not sit square in the brickwork.

The ground decides whether that works. A light often sits above a border, a gravel strip or a drive that drains towards the street, and in such places castors sink away or the setup stands out of true. Lay levelling plates or firm slabs under the castors and hold a spirit level against the uprights before you go up; a tower standing a degree out of plumb puts the hole in at an angle you notice afterwards. How to take up a sloping spot is explained at ground that is not flat.

Think about the inside as well. The feed through you drill from outside comes out in a room where a cupboard may stand against the wall or a joist may sit just in the way. Walk that through before the mobile scaffold is standing there, because a hole that has to move fifteen centimetres means the whole setup moves with it, and a built tower does not shift in a minute. Mark a cross on the wall outside with a pencil and hold a batten along the wall inside at the same height.

The mounting itself costs you an hour or two. Building, levelling the setup, drilling, pulling the cable through, connecting, testing and taking it down again fills the rest of the day. For hanging a wall light you therefore book one hire day in practice, and that day starts when the components are unloaded and ends when the set lies back on the heap. It sounds short and it is: putting the tower up and striking it take longer here than the fitting work does.

Two days are sensible as soon as a cable still has to be run. If there is no circuit reaching that spot yet, a way has to be found for it, a channel or a conduit has to go in inside, and perhaps an electrician works at a moment that does not suit you. A switch you still want to move, or a second fitting on the other side of the elevation, also turns this into a day of extra work. Book that second day at once.

Booking generously costs little with such a short hire period. You pay the full price over the first twenty four hours, and the day you hang on behind it comes in at ninety five per cent off, so the mobile scaffold can stand until the next morning. That is pleasant if the light is still not burning at five o'clock and you would rather look again tomorrow by daylight than tonight with a torch. Weighing that up is easier with the choice between a day and a week in front of you.

From a platform of 245 cm you stand close on your work, and that is exactly why you cannot see whether the fitting hangs right. What looks centred above the window from up there turns out from the pavement to sit a few centimetres off the centre line of the frame. So do not measure by eye but with a tape from both reveals of the frame below, put your cross on the average and let somebody across the road confirm it before the drill goes on.

If a fitting already hangs on the other side of the elevation, that height counts for more than your own measurements. Two lights differing by ten centimetres jump out at once, even though each sits neatly above its own window. In that case run a line or use a long spirit level across the surface, and take the height of the existing fitting as your starting point. For that check the hired tower simply stays where it is.

Drill the hole for the feed through slightly upward, reckoned from the outside, so that rainwater creeping along the cable runs back out instead of into your wall. Hang the fitting loosely on the top plug first, check with a small level that it does not tilt, and only then do it up tight. Test the connection before you seal anything, because sealant you have to cut open again costs more time than all the drilling together. Every one of those steps in hanging a wall light happens standing on the deck.

On a one day job like hanging a wall light the logistics weigh heavily. The set is delivered as a complete, counted stack of components and that has to lie somewhere you can build it straight away: on the drive, on the path beside the house or in the front garden, and not behind a gate that is locked while you are at work. Agree who is at home and make sure the route from the van to the wall is clear of bins and bicycles.

Two dates go into the booking, one for the drop off and one for the pick up, and you name them both. Order the tower for hanging a wall light before 15:00 on a working day, and its parts stand at the door the working day after, which suits a fitting that has only just come in. Have the mobile scaffold dropped early in the morning if you can: building takes about an hour with two people, so the afternoon is left for drilling, feeding the cable through, connecting and testing the light.

Once the light is burning the mobile scaffold comes back our way. You take it down and lay the parts complete on the spot where they were brought, preferably that same evening, because a dismantled set lying out in the rain over a weekend is none the better for it. Run the count while you are striking it and that is off your mind. What the run to your address costs is set per province and listed under the delivery charges for your area.

The first thing you do happens indoors: the circuit off, and a voltage tester to check that there really is no power on it any more. Only after that do you go up. Haul the drill up on a cord or have it passed to you rather than taking the ladder with a machine in your fist, and hang your cable reel over the guardrail so the flex does not run tight along an upright. A machine catching on its own lead pulls you off balance.

These towers answer to EN 1004, and in load class 3 that means 200 kg resting on a square metre of platform. For one fitting with a few tools that is wildly more than you need, but the rules around it hold in full: castors braked before you step on, stabilisers out and checked, and no movement at all while anybody or anything is on the deck. In hard wind you put the job off, because a fitting held out at arm's length leaves you nothing to hold on with.

Finally, watch what can fall. Plugs, screws and the cap off a gland roll off a deck in no time, and under a wall light there is often exactly the path somebody walks along or the place where the bicycles stand. Use a tub or a bucket hung on the guardrail, and sweep the drilling dust away before the deck turns slippery with it. Put a bin at the foot of the hired tower if the pavement runs past. The further arrangements are at working safely above ground level.