Painting a side facade? Choose the right scaffold.

On a blind wall you work in columns: start at the top and roll your way down, with nothing to cut in around. Everything you need therefore stands on the deck with you, which is why the RS52 with its 135 cm base is the tower to hire. A bucket, a roller on a pole and a brush for the edges lie side by side rather than in your walking line. Sizes currently going out are listed under the mobile scaffolds available to book.

That width is also the first question you have to answer. Measure the gap between your masonry and the boundary at its tightest point, since a downpipe, a meter cabinet or a projecting plinth decides what is genuinely left. If 135 cm will not go in, the narrow RS51 on its 75 cm base is what remains and you give up deck. A MiTower stops at 6.2 metres and gives out halfway up a side wall of two full storeys.

Remember that the tower has to travel through the passage as well. The parts come in loose, but once it is standing you roll it along the whole length of the wall, and there still has to be room for a foot beside the castors. Before you hire a mobile scaffold for a flank that opens onto a path, measure the gate and the fence panel everything must pass. A room scaffold is no substitute here at all, since it belongs indoors and comes nowhere near ten metres of height.

On a flank you measure up to the underside of the roof edge, because that is where the painted plane stops. On a terraced or semi detached house of two storeys that point sits around eight metres; with three storeys or a tall pitched roof it runs to twelve. Take the measurement from the path the castors will stand on and not from the pavement at the front, because a side passage frequently lies a step lower. That single step sometimes decides whether an extra platform is needed.

The height you enter is not the height of your boots. Roughly 2 metres of reach is added to the platform height, since a roller on a pole takes you a fair way above the decking. For a windowless flank that lands you on a build between 8 and 12 metres. What such a tower looks like, and how many platforms belong to it, is set out at ten metres of working height. Work that out before the order goes in.

Hire too little height and a band survives up top that no roller will reach from the decking, and that band is precisely what the street sees best. A side wall is a closed plane with no openings to give the eye a break, so a slight shift of shade across the top metre stands out at once. Hiring a build with one more platform adds very little at the booking stage, while a second rental period for one band costs you a whole day.

The strip along a flank is seldom yours alone. Sometimes the boundary runs down the middle of the path, sometimes both houses own it together, and sometimes it is council ground finished with a kerb. Find out which before you reserve a tower, because what you are putting there stands for days. A short word with next door, and where the ground is public a note to the council, saves you grief halfway through the work. Ask whether anybody needs a trailer past that week.

Keep the passage open. The stabilisers reach out at an angle and take a slice of path on either side, which does not leave much of a metre and a half. They do have to come out fully: if they cannot, that is a reason to hire a narrower build rather than to push them halfway in. Lay a board or a mat over the feet so nobody trips, and put a lamp at the entrance where the alley runs dark.

Then look at what lies under the castors. A side path has often sunk over the years around the roots of a hedge, or falls towards the street to shed water. Level the tower on the spindles and check it again every time you move, because each metre along the wall can behave differently. Painting a side facade means repositioning often, so that check becomes routine rather than a one off. How to handle it is covered in standing a tower on ground that slopes.

A blind flank is large but straightforward. There is nothing to mask and no sills to touch in, so once the washing down and the patching of loose areas are behind you, each round of paint moves fast. For a terraced house, count two or three days on hire: one for building, washing down and repair, one for the first round of paint, and half a day for the second. A corner plot with a long wall soon adds another day to that.

Those days are not billed as equals. The opening twenty four hours carry the rate, and everything you hold on to afterwards comes with ninety five per cent off, so letting the booking run a day longer barely alters the figure. The rental price attached to your build appears while you reserve, and the rate per model sits on the page listing what each tower costs. That matters here, because you do not want to break off a second round because the van has arrived.

Weather steers the rest of the planning. A north facing flank holds damp for hours after a shower, and paint on a damp ground will not bond. A flank facing south takes the full afternoon sun in summer and dries away under the roller before you have laid it off. So look at which way your wall faces and place the hire days around it. If it turns out differently, move the collection date, which is yours to set.

Your bay is as wide as the platform, and that measures 245 cm. Each position finishes a strip of a little over two metres, from the guardrail up to as far as the roller reaches, and then you shift along to the next piece. On a closed plane every join shows, so keep the edge wet: two people following one another beat one person breaking off in the middle of a bay. That pace decides how often the tower moves during the day, and therefore how many positions you get through.

Moving along a narrow strip calls for discipline. Clear the deck completely, check the passage is free, lock the castors the moment you are on the new spot and set all four stabilisers out again. Because the path runs straight you can push the tower along in a line without ever turning it. Chalk where each position begins, and on the following round your bays meet up again exactly as they did, which saves hunting about once a second colour goes on.

What people misjudge is the height rather than the width. A flank of ten metres is just as wide four metres up as it is at the bottom, so every band you hang a platform higher costs the same number of positions all over again. Work out the total number of bays before you settle a rental period: wall length divided by two and a half, times the number of levels you must stand at. That figure explains why a blind wall wants more days than it looks.

The parts reach your address counted and complete, and with a flank that is immediately the first puzzle: where do you put them down. Not on the path itself, since that is where you build and where the neighbours have to walk. The front garden, the drive or a piece of verge answers better, and it keeps the passage itself open for the neighbours. Send the booking through by 15:00 on any weekday and the parts follow one working day later, which leaves the morning after that free for assembly.

Building it yourself is part of the deal, and on a flank that starts with carrying. Every frame, every platform and every brace has to go through the gate or round the house to the spot where the tower will stand. Take your time over it and lay the parts down in the order you will want them, uprights first and decking last. A manual travels with the set and there is film online covering the sequence; two people need a couple of hours for a build of this height.

After the last round, painting a side facade ends with dismantling: the parts go back into one stack on the spot where they were dropped, and on your chosen date we call round to load them. Keep the path clear that morning, because no van gets round the back. The charges for the journey out and back are fixed per province and shown with VAT under delivery costs by province, so that figure can go into your budget in advance.

A platform carries 200 kg per square metre, the ceiling that EN 1004 records as load class 3. Painting a side facade fills that sooner than you might think: two decorators, a ten litre tub of masonry paint, a second bucket for the cleaner and a box of tools mount up nicely. Spread the weight across the decking rather than piling it all beside the hatch, and take empty tubs down with you rather than letting them gather up there. There is more in the article on this standard for mobile towers.

The standing rules hold here as well. Lock the castors as you step on, keep the tower empty of people and kit whenever it travels, and stop painting a side facade once the wind gets too strong for control. Between two houses the wind can actually pick up speed, so do not be fooled by the calm out on the street. Where a path runs past, allow for somebody walking underneath without your noticing. Tape or a sign at the mouth of the alley settles that.

The risk that belongs to a blind wall is that there is nothing to steady yourself on. A front elevation gives you frames and sills to lean against; here you have ten metres of bare masonry. So stay inside the guardrails, never stretch sideways for one last patch but roll the tower half a metre instead, and hang your bucket from a hook rather than perching it on the rail where a sleeve will catch it. More sits on the page about safe work at height.