Cherry picker for small soffit repair?

[Mike Halmarack]

This is for the repair of a small area of soffit on a 3 storey building. The justification was that zip-up towers on wheels are no longer legal in such a situation. Can this be true?

[charles]

They might be legal, but no-one will insure them

[Theo]

No idea, but I see cherry picker hire starts at £100 a day. Cheaper to do that than faff around erecting towers?

Theo

[Mike Halmarack]

Very good points Charles and Theo. I'm convinced, thanks.

[ARW]

What's a zip up tower on wheels?

Tower scaffold/PAV/MEWP?

[T i m]

Mate hired one to do some work on his mates two story bungalow design house gable end and it said it was unnerving wobbly, reverting to a frame / scaffold thing for subsequent works.

Not suggesting it got close to falling over but I think he said you have to pay very close attention to the stability and levelness of the ground and it's not that easy to rectify if it's not ideal (because of the weight of the thing and the fact that it's 'mobile').

Cheers, T i m

[Tim+]

I hired a towable one to paint the front and sides of my house and it was just brilliant. I did have one incident though. It had four extendable legs with feet that needed to be wound down firmly at each corner and motor cut-out switches in each leg to prevent you using it without winding the feet down.

I discovered that if you don?t wind the feet down really firmly, it was possible when the lifting arm was at full lateral reach, it reduced the load on the diametrically opposite foot enough to cause the cut-out switch to trip leaving you stranded up in the air.

It?s at times like these you bless the invention of mobile phones. ;-)

Tim

[williamwright]

If it's just a couple of days use a cherry picker. If it's going to be weeks use a tower.

Bill

[T i m]

<snip>

I think this was 'self propelled' and was delivered.

That sounds like a better solution. I'm not sure the one mate hired had that (as I think you could move it whilst being up on the platform).

Doh! The tower crane I wired allowed you to lower or bring a load in, not lift or extend a load, once the 'overload' was tripped.

Quite. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[Mike Halmarack]

I must be getting old, some years ago there'd be the ocassional person who knew what I was on about. Alas those days are fast receding into the distant past.

[tim...]

and you still haven't told us

[Mike Halmarack]

OK, for you I'll make the supreme effort. The cherry picker was a fixture on the back of a large lorry, not a toy diy version.

A zip up scaffold was what they were called in my story. They had integal clips on the poles that just clicked into place and preformed floor panels that did the same.

One of those... on wheels.

What got me going was that the soffit panel was entirely 8 feet above a balcony. So a small set of step ladders would have sufficed.

[Andy Burns]

Still exist, now with out-rigger legs

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

I'd imagine it would depend on the stability of the ground in both cases. Having once been up in a cherry picker I actually felt seasick when I moved around. Not exactly rock solid. I guess whatever you used could be secured to the building in some way. A cherry picker should be faster than a tower. Don't see the safety angle as long as when you climb up you make sure you are secured to the tower and that its stable. Brian

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Just take your sea sick pills with you... Brian

[Mike Halmarack]

At the risk of disqualifying my original question, I'm not doing the job myself, just paying for a proportion of it and wondering how many bottles of vino I'll have to deny myself to cover the cost.