How far is it safe to lean over from a scaffolding tower?

Need to do gutter repairs, fascia painting and all that (been here 20 years - 'bout time I did it) and I plan to do it off a hired tower. Trouble is that the house has bay windows and other obstructions which stop one getting a tower in close to the wall all the way round. I guess the bottom of the tower would be as much as a meter out at those points.

Is it safe to plan to lean over to get at the gutters? I will get a tower with outriggers.

Reply to
Henry Law
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Can't see a problem with that. Looks safe to m e e e a a r r g h h

...sorry..couldn't resist!

Regards,

Reply to
Stephen Howard

I had a similar(ish) situation with my tower (actually using it as a cantelever tower crane to lift the casing off a large 100kva generator) and I tethered the 'likely to lift' side to a very heavy weight ( a pallet of sash weights weighing over a ton) with a taut rope.

AWEM

Reply to
Andrew Mawson

If you lean towards the house, that's the way the tower will fall.

And I reckon it WILL.

However there is a perfectly simple way to stop it.

Out a plank across the platform that butts up to the house and screw it down to the platform You can safely (probably) even walk along it.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

You'll probably spend more time moving the tower than doing the work and, if you've still got to stretch a metre, it hardly seems worth it. Scaffolding probably wouldn't be that much dearer and you would have proper access. You also wouldn't have to worry about the mounting hire charges if the weather turns against you. I'd think about having the whole lot replaced in plastic but I don't know the extent of the "cladding". Upvc installation is one of those areas where prices are sufficiently reasonable to tempt me away from d-i-y. Working off ladders obviously keeps the costs down.

Reply to
Stuart Noble

So you know - Wickes, and other places sell 'drain rods' but they also come with an attachment to help scrape out gutters. May save you from over-reaching

Reply to
pjlusenet

Thanks for this and other replies; I'm particularly taken by the NP's idea of bracing the tower against the wall of the house with a plank or planks, and Andrew Mawson's of installing ballast on the away-from-the-wall side, though I'm not sure I've got anything heavy enough.

I'll price a complete scaffold from a local supplier - that really would make everything so much easier - but I can't imagine that it would stack up in economic terms against £150-odd per week for an alloy tower.

Reply to
Henry Law

Ive just BOUGHT a steel tower for £150 quid...

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

=================================== You might find that it's actually cheaper to buy 2 budget priced towers (6' x 4' recommended) and lock them together with scaffold clips around your bays. I've been using this method for the past 10 years without any problems. I bought the towers for about 80 GBP each(West Midlands) and I think they're about 100 GBP now. Planks to suit from a local timber yard shouldn't break the bank.

As far as bracing is concerned short lengths of scaffold tube with a few clips will make you very secure. I used mine like this last week at gutter height with room (almost) for a quick waltz.

Cic.

Reply to
Cicero

Don't know your exact dimensions but would a ladder with a good standoff clear the bay? If you have deep soffits there is a "microlite" standoff which bridges to the roof which gives really good clearance as well as safe roof access.

Jim A

Reply to
Jim Alexander

That's worth a go. I've got a standoff already - a small one, about

350mm - and use it all the time for window painting and such, but it's not deep enough for the gutters, which overhang more than that. The idea of a deeper one hadn't occurred to me.
Reply to
Henry Law

Just brilliant :-)

Reply to
The Medway Handyman

That's exactly how I clean most gutters. Its called a drop scraper. Doesn't fit all gutters though, depends on the size & tile overhang.

Reply to
The Medway Handyman

Message-ID: from Henry Law contained the following:

Buy scaffold, do job, sell scaffold. Sorted.

Reply to
Geoff Berrow

It was £300 to get the front of my house scaffolded for 4 weeks, and £15/week extra thereafter. That was for a structure strong enough to take weight of roof tiles whilst I replaced the felt and battens. I would do that again without any hesitation, verses using ladders or towers.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Well this January it was £1100 to scafold access to my roof to replace a SINGLE tile !!! OK It's three stories and it was an insurance claim - I was horrified but the insurance company said it was cheap - but I thought that they were bonkers !

AWEM

Reply to
Andrew Mawson

And I expect the roofer shot up a ladder to do the initial inspection.

Reply to
Stuart Noble

really

cheap -

inspection.

25 years ago the entire roof was retiled off ladders !

AWEM

Reply to
Andrew Mawson

Mine was only 5 years ago, luckily without detection by the safety police. The roofer was telling me how they used to repair church steeples off a ladder. Net result of the new thinking is that nothing gets repaired, and everything is left until it becomes a major job.

Reply to
Stuart Noble

Tell the hire shop thats what you want to do, and they will find a tower to do the deal. For example cuplock (heavy steel tower) has parts to extend the platform at the top bigger than the base, where as a H section tower it would be V dangerous.

Also consider a cherry picker, lots of hire shops do them.

Rick

Reply to
Rick

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