Access above a conservatory ?

Mar 07, 2009 21 Replies

Just bought a house, and in the near-ish future i'll need to replace the gutter boards and soffits (many of the air vents are currently missing / damaged, as well as there being some minor rot to the woodwork)



Most of the house is probably manageable, but how the hell do you work above a conservatory without having to call someone in at hellish expense with masses of scaffolding ?


Denends on what sort of a head you have for heights - but the local hire place out here (South-West Ireland) will rent you a trailer with a 'cherry-picker' (hydraulic platform on the end of a long arm) mounted on it.

Park the beast close up against the conservatory, put the legs down and off you go (allegedly)...

Ask your local hire shop ..?

Adrian

I was surprised how cheap scaffolding was in the peak of the economic boom. I rather suspect it might be even cheaper now. I needed to replace some of the roof and had it erected for that. Also took the opportunity to replace facias, guttering, bottom strip of felt, and fit felt support trays. All a complete doddle with the scaffolding there.

I need to do some facias and guttering on another side, and I'll probably get scaffolding again. This would allow me to go further and also replace the bottom strip of felt, and fit felt support trays on that side too.

========================================== Use a tower, a few lengths of scaffolding pole and an assortment of clips:

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laying boards across between the two :-}

I don't think the access gap between the houses would allow for a cherry picker :-(

I fixed a couple of steel brackets to the wall which were long enough to support two scaffold boards. I only needed two brackets as the conservatory is seven feet wide; the brackets were just over four feet apart.

When I needed to work at height I placed the scaffold boards on the brackets and tied them down, then gained access to the resulting platform with an extending ladder. When on the platform I hooked a harness on to a safety line secured to the wall with Rawlbolts.

Depends on the shape of the conservatory and what the roof is made of. With mine, it's lean-to at the back of the house, with a polycarbonate roof. I have in the past used crawling boards to distribute the weight of people & things on the conservatory roof, while working above it.

If the poly's old, it might have gone brittle, but if so then it probably needs changing as part of the work.

In message , Colin Wilson writes

IIRC You can get smaller cherry pickers that will go through a normal sized doorway

Interesting - thanks :-)

I like that idea - might be worth a go !

Not sure what shape you'd describe it as - it protrudes from the back of the house by about 8 feet, and has a corner lopped off for the doors to the rear.

Not sure of the age, it was a repossession :-}

If you have access either side of the conservatory then ask for painters cripples at your local hire shop. They are steel brackets that fasten to a pair of ladders and you put scaffold boards between them.

-- Nige Danton

If you ask for Staging Brackets they're less likely to say "huh?"

The crucial thing is that it isn't glass.

My roof looks a little like the one in this picture:

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opposed to the pitched roof in this picture
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polycarbonate sheets are bolted to a large beam on the outside wall, so there's sufficient load-bearing to support a man's weight - provided that weight is distributed across a couple of rafters and that it is close to the wall of the house - not in the middle of the conservatory roof. Therefore it isn't applied directly to the roofing material. So long as the poly isn't damaged or cracks under the load, it's possible (with care) to walk on the crawling boards, so you don't need scaffolding.

Nice picture... as if working at heights wasn't dangerous enough!

If you have access either side of the conservatory then ask for painters cripples at your local hire shop.

Is that politically correct in this day and age ;-)

John

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Colin Wilson saying something like:

Use one of these...

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In that picture it isn't the working at height it's the coming down to ground that would be the problem

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