Scaffolding erection and hire in Iver, Slough and London

The independent scaffold is the workhorse of the trade and the one on most houses and commercial elevations. Two rows of standards run parallel to the building, joined by ledgers and transoms, boarded out at each working lift and tied back into the structure so the whole frame acts with the building rather than against it.

The details that matter are the ones you cannot see from the pavement: base plates and sole boards spreading the load onto ground that can take it, tie patterns matched to the elevation and the sheeting, guard rails and toe boards at every working lift, and brick guards where materials are being handled over a public footpath. Height, exposure and whether the scaffold is sheeted all change the tie pattern, which is why the site visit matters more than the elevation drawing.

On new masonry a putlog scaffold uses a single row of standards with flattened-end tubes bedded into the brick joints as the wall rises. It is efficient on a new build gable or garden wall where the brickwork is going up anyway, and it uses less material and less ground space than a full independent.

It only works where the masonry is genuinely load bearing and being built in courses, so it is a new build and extension solution rather than a refurbishment one.

Chimney work needs a working platform at ridge level with a safe route to it, which usually means an independent up the elevation, a roof ladder or crawler section over the tiles, and a boarded platform around the stack with edge protection all the way round.

Roof strips and re-covers need edge protection along the eaves and, where the whole covering is off for any length of time, often a temporary roof over the top to keep the structure and the inside of the building dry while the work is carried out.

If materials are going up, the scaffold needs somewhere designed to take them. Loading bays are built with heavier duty standards and additional bracing, rated for the load, positioned where the wagon can reach and where the trade actually wants the material.

Getting the bay in the wrong place is one of the most common causes of a mid-job adaptation, so it is one of the things we ask about at the site visit rather than assuming.

Monarflex sheeting keeps weather off the works and contains dust and debris; netting does the debris job while letting far more wind through. The trade-off is wind loading: a fully sheeted scaffold catches significantly more wind than an open one, which means more ties and, on exposed sites, a heavier structure.

That is a decision to make at pricing stage. Deciding to sheet a scaffold after it is built usually means going back and adding ties, and that is a return visit nobody budgeted for.

Where a scaffold stands on or over a public footway, the local highway authority requires a licence, and on a busy street a pedestrian gantry or fan may be required so people can pass underneath safely.

We flag licence requirements before an erect date is set, because a licence that has not been applied for is the single most common reason a booked erect cannot go ahead. Terraced streets in Slough, Windsor, Uxbridge and the London boroughs are where this comes up most.