Replacing bargeboards? Choose the right scaffold.

Go for the RS52, the model with 135 cm between the uprights. You are rarely up there on your own for this job: one pair of hands keeps the board on the chalk line while the other drives the fixings, and a circular saw, a crowbar, a driver and a tube of sealant all have to sit within reach. On a narrow deck that kit has to be shuffled about every time you want to pass each other, and along a pitched roof edge that shuffling eats more time than the cutting does.

The extra width also decides how you handle the timber. A five metre board goes across the deck at an angle, with one end poking past the guardrail, and you want to be able to stand on both sides of it. The 75 cm model comes in only where the path along the gable is genuinely too tight for anything else, such as a gap between two houses. Sizes for everything in our fleet sit together on the page about the mobile scaffolds you can book.

A room scaffold or a one-person tower is out of the running here. The first belongs indoors and never reaches this far up, the second carries one person only, which is the opposite of what this job needs. We keep no facade scaffolds and no cherry pickers in our fleet, so a roof edge this far up is wide mobile scaffold work. What separates the two widths is set out under the choice between the narrow and the wide tower.

The top of this job is the ridge, not the gutter. On a terraced house of two storeys that ridge already sits at eight or nine metres, and on a detached house with a steep pitch it climbs further still. Measure to the spot where the two boards meet each other at the apex, not to the roof edge where you begin. The gap between those two points is exactly why people book too short a build when replacing bargeboards for the first time.

Work back down from that top point to your deck. A platform gives you roughly two metres of reach above it, so the highest board must fall inside that distance once you are standing on the tallest setting. For a gable of two storeys that puts you in the eight to twelve metre band, with the build set by the ridge rather than by the average of the line. How such a build is put together is spelled out under a ten metre working height.

What makes a sloping edge unusual is that you do not need all that height for the whole job. Down at the gutter you work a good deal lower, and a lower deck is actually pleasanter there because nothing has to be reached over the rail. So make sure the build you hire allows several platform settings, letting you drop or climb from one position to the next. For the heights that go with each storey, start with the page on work on the second floor.

A gable end nearly always sits at the side of the house, and space there is tighter than at the front or the back. Often you are on a path a metre wide, with a fence or the neighbours' boundary on the far side. Measure that strip before you hire a mobile scaffold here, because the stabilisers swing out at an angle and want room on both sides. A fence standing fifty centimetres away therefore has a say in which model ends up on your booking.

Then look at what lies underneath your positions. Down the side of a house you tend to find slabs lifted by tree roots, a band of gravel, a gully cover, or a strip of grass that turns soft after rain. Since this job has you moving several times, you will end up on every one of those spots, so walk the whole line first and put levelling plates ready where they are needed. More on ground that is not flat sits in levelling a tower on uneven ground.

Last of all, think about where the old timber goes. Replacing bargeboards leaves you with pieces full of nails, so you do not want them lying on the path that your castors have to roll over ten minutes later. Stand a barrow or a rubble bag at the near end of the wall and throw every offcut straight into it as it comes down. That keeps the whole run clear for the entire time you have the tower on hire.

Each gable carries two sloping boards, one either side of the roof surface, and sometimes a further length along a dormer. Stripping, fitting, fixing and finishing off a pair like that keeps two people busy for a solid day, and raising the tower and shifting it along the wall comes on top of that again. A house with two gable ends therefore works out at three or four days on hire, while a steep pitch or soft, crumbly timber adds one more.

Allow for work you only discover once you are up there. The moment the old board is off you are looking at the ends of the roof battens and the sarking behind them, and that is precisely where water may have been getting in for years. If something there turns out to need renewing, your programme slips. You also want the edge closed again the same day, so you do not start a fresh length when the afternoon is nearly gone.

Stretching the booking costs you very little. Only the opening twenty four hours carry the whole charge, and every day added behind them is reduced by ninety five per cent, which leaves a spare day for finishing or for a first coat barely visible on your total. That suits this job, which hangs on dry weather and on a timber merchant delivering on time. A day of slack also stops you going into a weekend with an open edge. Others weigh that up under choosing the length of your hire period.

Your deck measures 245 cm and the new board is easily double that. That ratio sets how you work. Either the board lies across the platform at an angle with both ends past the rail, or it goes up on a rope along the wall while somebody at the bottom steers the lower end. The one thing you never do is take a length like that under your arm up the ladder inside the frame, because sooner or later the first proper gust settles the matter for you.

Cut as much as you can at ground level. Measure the run, mark the mitre for the joint at the apex, saw on the floor and only then carry the piece up. Set the joints between two lengths where a rafter or a batten sits behind them, so there is something solid to screw into everywhere. Two shorter pieces are often easier to handle up top than a single long one, particularly when you are on the last few metres by yourself.

Each position therefore takes a stretch of the sloping line about as long as your platform, after which the tower moves along and the deck height is reset. Replacing bargeboards runs from the gutter up towards the ridge, so each fresh length laps over the one already fixed and the joints stay shut. If the fascia along the same roof edge is going in the same hire period, do that first, since it runs level and leaves your positions untouched.

The tower turns up as a complete, counted stack of parts, and that stack has to end up on the correct side of the house. With a gable that means the flank, where there is often nothing but a gate or a slim path. Tell the driver where you want it, or lay the parts out on the drive yourself so they can be passed through in one go. Components stranded behind a locked gate while you stand on the other side will cost you half a morning.

You fill in the dates yourself when you book, both for the drop and for the pick up. A booking wrapped up on a weekday with the afternoon still short of 15:00 puts the components at your address the very next working day, which lets the delivery fall alongside the load of new timber. Ask for the tower a day earlier than that if you can: it is then already standing, and the following morning starts with stripping out rather than with assembly.

At the end we come back for it once you have dismantled it and put the parts together in one lot. Leave them somewhere the driver can actually get to, so not behind the bag of old timber, which by then is filled to the brim. Check that no tube has stayed upright behind the shed and that every coupling goes back. What the run costs varies by province and is listed under the fixed charge for your area.

The risk in replacing bargeboards sits in the edge itself. As soon as the old board is loose, the ends of the battens are open and the temptation is to lean over the roof edge or take some weight on the tiles. Do not. Tiles at the verge sit loose and slide away under a hand. Set your position so that you work with your hips against the guardrail, and never climb on a crate or a stool to catch one last stretch above you.

The tower itself is rated for a good deal more than this job asks. Under EN 1004 it belongs in load class 3, meaning two hundred kilos carried on each square metre of platform. Two joiners, a stack of timber and tools stay well inside that, though the load does travel about the moment you swing a long board round. Brake the castors before you climb, feel round the stabilisers after every move, and only roll the tower when the deck is completely bare.

Wind deserves particular attention on a board that is there to keep wind out of the roof. A five metre length catches a serious amount of air at ten metres up, and you tend to notice that only once it is already in your hands. Stop in strong gusts and lay loose pieces flat on the deck instead of standing them against the rail. Keep the ground below clear as well, since nails and offcuts come down. General guidance sits under the rules for working at height.