Gutters and all the exterior needs attention, can't put it off another year. What's the experience with cheap eBay scaffold towers? Any suppliers recommended? Three storey and need 7 m working height to get to the dormers. Am I better hunting for a second hand pro job? Too old now to be doing any serious building or roofing, so only need to cope with "decorating" type loads.
TIA
I bought a scaffold tower off eBay. £160 for a used steel version which puts the platform at around 5m. So I could easily reach 7m.
As for cheap 'alloy' towers...cheap wasn't the word when I was looking. More like £1000. For 7m, I think you would need two towers somehow bridged together as the swaying doesn't promote confidence.
mark
Yes, agree, especially if you don't like heights like me. Possible alternative: drill the house walls at suitable points and insert heavy-duty fixings to which you can lash a lightweight tower to increase stability.
£160 is very good for a solid 5m platform height though. What put me off buying used steel was weight, bulk and consequent difficulty with storage.
I got a steel one from here:
Around £260 delivered. Make sure you get adjustable feet, and side supports, not sure if they are included in the basic price. Well worth the money, I have used it 6 or 7 times now for guttering jobs, and find it really good. Fits in the back of an Escort sized van, or, just about, in my 5'x4' trailer.
Alan
From what I've see the lightweight towers are bulkier. The tubes need to be bigger to have the strength. Also a lot more nickable. If heights arn't your thing, who is going to erect it in the first place?
mark
Get a bosuns chair, lob the rope over the ridge of the roof, and attatch the other side to the local rugby team, shout over the roof 'pull' and up you go,
do your work, then shout to them to lower you back down, and scoot the rope over to the side a bit, and do it again.
I bought one of these from Screwfix:
I'm just a DIYer, but I find access towers really useful, and I'm thinking of buying one of the heavy-duty aluminium towers from Boss - I rented one of these once and the lack of wobble is very impressive.
Might be better off hiring one for the job, they are surprisingly cheap to hire & you don't have the storage issue.
That's very good advice. A tower from a reputable hire fleet should also be in better condition as they should be checked regularly for signs of wear or damage.
I ended up renting a garage to, among other things, store the larger DIY tools I had bought over the years. It would have been far, far cheaper to hire them as and when needed.
I have one of these;
========================================= Try your local Yellow Pages for local manufacturers. I have two 6' X 4' lightweight steel towers bought locally for less than £100-00 each and I can cover almost the whole house with them.
If you're anywhere within easy travelling distance of Wolverhampton you might give consider looking there which is where I bought mine.
Cic.
the tallest stacked on top of each other!
gazz coughed up some electrons that declared:
Of course Rugby players aren't at all known for originating jolly practical japes, such as, I don't know, leaving someone swinging from a bosun's chair at the top of a house overnight
;->>>
Can I have a copy of the video please :)
Actually, on a serious note, I had a couple of tree surgeons round yesterday to quote for dealing with a monster evergreen (12+m).
One said he would use his cherry picker that had a 14m reach.
I thought: how handy that would be.
I have no idea how much one of them is to hire, but it would make life very easy... I expect there are smaller versions.
Cheers
Tim
Consider having proper scaffolding erected. It was pretty competitive with tower hire last time I checked, and you can do whatever jobs you need to do at leisure and in comfort. The only problem's likely to be getting them to take it away when you've finished.
The Classic Extender looks to be really good value!
I suspect that scaffolders have no storage, and keep all their scaffolding on-site. If there's no work, then it sits on the outside of your house until there's another job to take it to.
I wouldn't frankly use anything less that full scaffolding at three storeys.
i felt unsafe enough on a tower at one and a half, frankly, even propped and laced to windows.
The cost of scaffolding shouldn't be huge, and it means the job goes speedily and safely.
I think you have to have a qualified operator for the bigger ones.
I've seen one that went up and over a 4-storey block of flats to clean out the gutters on the inside of the quadrangle.
Owain
I think you stick that on top of the Compact!
Have looked into that in fact, but I have access problems. Cherry pickers attached to Transit vans (as used for changing motorway light bulbs) are actually not that expensive, expecially if one were doing a reasonably serious renovation or extension.
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