Which working height do you need?

Working height is the height at which your hands can actually reach the work, and it follows one fixed formula: platform height plus roughly 2 metres of reach. Stand on a platform at 5 metres and you get to about 7 metres with your arms stretched out. Every tower on this page is listed by its working height, because that is the number you need when you are standing in front of a wall wondering whether you will reach the top of it.

This is where people slip up. Someone measures the gutter at 8 metres, then looks for a tower with a platform at 8 metres, and ends up two steps too high. The opposite happens too: you pick a low tower by eye and only notice halfway through the build that the last metre stays out of reach. So measure the point where you have to work and compare it straight to the working height on the tile, never to the platform height.

Start at the highest point you genuinely need to reach. For painting that is usually the top of the window frame, for gutter or roof edge work it is the edge itself, and for roof jobs it is the last point you still want to touch with your hands. Measure from the spot where the tower will actually stand up to that point, so not from the front door and not from street level if you are working in the back garden.

Then look at the ground under the castors. A raised terrace makes your job shorter, while a sloping garden or a sunken light well next to the wall makes it taller, and that difference is easily half a metre or more. Heights run in steps of roughly 1 metre, from 4.2 up to 14.2 metres of working height. If you land between two steps, or you are not certain about your measurement, take the next step up.

Up to about 6 metres things stay simple. You usually build a single section above the base, and plenty of people manage that on their own, certainly on a shed, a garage or a low wall. This group also includes the MiTower, a one person tower reaching 6 metres of working height. Between 7 and 10 metres the picture changes: the stabilisers take up real space around the base, and you want two people for the build because every part has to go up.

From 11 metres you are stacking many sections on top of each other, and the ground and the free space around you become the deciding factors. The surface under the castors has to be level and firm across the whole area the tower and its stabilisers cover, and above you the space has to be clear of branches, canopies and cables. The maximum working height is 14.2 metres; if you need more than that, a mobile tower is no longer the right tool.

Next to the height you choose a width. The RS51 is 75 cm wide, so it fits through tight passages, along a side path, between a hedge and a wall, or through a gate. The RS52 is 135 cm wide and gives you working room on the platform, for tools, a bucket of render or a second person. The platform length is 245 cm on both, so each set up covers the same stretch of wall.

For indoor work there is the RS44 room tower. It passes through an internal door from roughly 70 cm wide, so you can move it from room to room without stripping it down completely. All towers are built to load class 3 under EN 1004, which comes down to 200 kg per square metre of platform. That covers two people with tools and material, as long as you spread the weight instead of stacking everything in one corner.