Cleaning sun shading? Choose the right scaffold.

You clean with the fabric wound out, and then it slopes away from the wall. So you have to get alongside it rather than stand square in front of it. The narrow RS51, with its 75 centimetre deck, fits that situation precisely: it travels along the edge of the terrace and stands beside the fabric instead of under it. Every version on offer, with its build stages listed, sits with the rolling towers in our hire fleet, so you can see at once which build stage suits your unit best.

A wide deck adds nothing at all to this job. Up there you want suds in a bucket, a soft brush on a long handle and a cloth, and those go on any size of platform. What does matter is the 245 centimetres of length, since that covers a good stretch of the front rail without moving. On a unit four metres wide that means two positions beside one another, taking the overlap with you properly so that no dry stripe is left standing in the middle of the fabric when it dries.

Before you book, work out how the parts reach the terrace at all. Behind a house there is usually a garden gate, a narrow alley or a path past the shed, and a wide set-up will not thread through any of them. Whether your own way through is wide enough is answered at the measurements for a tower in a doorway. Terrace chairs and planters count in that route too, so move them on the morning of delivery rather than while you are carrying frames. Cleaning sun shading starts at the gate.

Your highest point here is not the fabric but the hood of the cassette. That is where the dirt lands from above and that is what you have to be able to look down into. Where the unit hangs above a terrace on the ground floor, or over a balcony door a storey up, the work asks for 6 to 8 metres of working height. The sum is easy to check: take the height of your deck and add roughly 2 metres of reach on top, which is the total you hire against.

Measure from the terrace and not from the lawn beside it, because those two differ by half a metre without any trouble. Where the shading hangs over a conservatory or a single storey extension, take the reading from the spot the castors will genuinely rest on. If the unit turns out higher than you thought, the page on an eight metre build shows which stage belongs to it. Half a metre short means the hood stays dirty until next year, whatever you do with the brush below it.

On this job take a notch more height rather than a notch less, even at the cost of an extra stage. You want to inspect the top of the cassette and to run a brush along the fabric from above, and that only works if you come out slightly over the fixings. Stay too low and you scrub with your arms up while dirty water runs down your sleeves. For shading at first floor level that counts double, since nothing up there is reachable from the ground.

The set-up goes next to the fabric and not beneath it, because an extended unit occupies the space you would otherwise stand in. Put the tower at the side of the terrace, in line with the wall, so from the deck you work at an angle across the fabric and reach all of it. Reckon on a clear strip beside the tower, because on a small terrace the boundary wall arrives surprisingly quickly. Measure that strip before you hire anything, because cleaning sun shading from a cramped pitch is miserable work.

Terraces are less level than they look. Slabs work loose, there is a fall towards the garden for drainage, and along the edge the grass begins. Check with a level at every position that the deck lies horizontal and use the spindles to take up the difference. Where there is timber decking, ask yourself whether the boards carry the tower with two people on it without flexing. Lay a board across two joists if they do not, and check it again once the deck is loaded.

Allow for the water that comes down. You are working with suds, and they run along the fabric and down the wall onto the paving, so the furniture, the cushions and the barbecue go aside first. Make sure as well that the unit can stay fully wound out for as long as you are busy. Getting a tower steady on a terrace is covered at stabilising and tying down a rolling tower. A foot standing out of true is only noticed once you are up there scrubbing.

Hiring a tower for cleaning sun shading usually calls for two days. The washing itself is done in a few hours, but the fabric has to be thoroughly dry before it may go back into the cassette. Wind a damp sheet away and you get mildew spots and a musty smell that never leaves it again, however often you wash afterwards. That drying time governs your hire period more than the scrubbing does, particularly in spring and autumn when the sun hardly warms the fabric at all.

Those two days also hold your margin for the weather. You want no rain while it dries and no strong wind while the unit stands out. If a shower comes over, wind it in and start the drying again the next morning. With several units on different walls, allow an extra day, because you shift the tower and begin a fresh drying round at each one. That mounts up faster than people expect once the units are on different sides of the house.

The shape of the tariff makes that extra day cheap. Only that first twenty four hour block is charged whole; every day of hire behind it loses 95 per cent of the rate, so waiting for dry weather costs you almost nothing. What the rental price is for your model and height is listed with VAT at the rates for hire. Set your collection date after the day the fabric is dry and wound away, and not on the morning of it with the sheet still out.

A folding arm unit is wider than the 245 cm deck, so you take the fabric in two positions, moving the tower halfway. The sheet also hangs at an angle, and that changes your order of work: start at the top by the wall and work with suds towards the hem, so the dirty water runs down the slope with you. Use a soft brush and no pressure washer, since the coating and the seams will not stand it. Rinse each strip before the suds dry on it, working in bands from the wall outwards.

Do not forget the hood and the front rail, because that is where most of the dirt sits. Leaves fall into the cassette from above, and along the front rail green growth and grit stay behind where only somebody standing higher can see them. Take those two with you while you are up there, since nobody climbs a second time purely for them. Then go along the folding arm joints, clean them off and give each of them a single drop of lubricant while you can still reach.

The hem and the valance deserve separate attention, since they stay wet longest and hang nearest the garden. Green growth shows there first. Watch as well for puddles in the fabric: too flat a pitch leaves water standing that holds dirt and stretches the sheet. Push a puddle like that up from below and then set the unit a notch steeper. How that pitch is arrived at is explained at fitting shading to a wall, brackets and all. Cleaning sun shading is easier on a unit hung properly in the first place.

The set arrives counted and complete at the address you give, and the driver puts it down where you want it. Choose the front garden or the drive for that rather than the terrace itself, because the tower has to stand there and the water has to run somewhere. Anyone reserving on a working day before 15:00 sees the parts arrive on the next working day. So look at the forecast before you pick a date, since building a soaking wet set of parts starts the job badly and slows everything that follows.

Putting it up is your own work, with the manual to hand and the film that shows step by step in which order the decks and guard rails go in. Two people spend roughly an hour and a half on it at this height. Have the set come when a dry spell is beginning, because both the building and the drying of the fabric are miserable in rain. Per province the cost of that trip is listed at the overview of delivery charges, so you can add it in.

We come and collect everything afterwards on the date you chose. You break the tower down yourself and put the parts where the driver can reach them, preferably back at the front near the road. Do that only once the fabric is dry and wound away, or you are heaving tubes about with wet hands. Check the parts off as you dismantle so that nothing at all stays behind among the plants or under the decking to be found next summer.

Every set-up from our hire fleet follows EN 1004 and belongs to load class 3: 200 kg per square metre of deck. On cleaning work you come nowhere near that, not even with a second person and two buckets of water aboard. What you do watch is where those buckets sit: a full one on the edge of the deck is knocked off in a moment. Stand it against the guard rail and keep the middle of the floor free to walk on with a brush in your hand.

The castors are braked as soon as anybody goes up, and moving to the next section happens with an empty deck. Wear shoes with grip, because a platform turns slippery the instant suds land on it, and wipe the water off the boards between strips. If the wind gets up, wind the shading in and postpone the cleaning; a unit left extended and flapping is a danger both to you on the deck and to the fabric itself. Cleaning sun shading can wait for a calmer hour.

Working alongside a sloping sheet has a trap of its own: you start leaning on it with the brush. Never do that, because an awning of any kind carries none of your weight and the folding arms are under spring pressure. Keep your weight on the deck and use a handle to reach further. Finally, let nobody sit on the terrace below you, since falling tools pick the worst moment. The rest is at the rules for work at height.