scaffold hire with cover

[zaffy]

I want to paint the outside of my dormer window including soffits and fascia. I need to hire scaffolding. Do scaffolders supply some sort of cover to work under for when the weather is bad? And if so, does it cost extra?

[arco_iris]

NO.

You can get cheap "tarpaulins" in various sizes on fleabay, then throw them away after.(

[Job and Knock]

If you are talking about full-size scaffolding, then the answer is that a scaffolding company can generally supply any sort of weather sheeting you require.

If, as I suspect, you are referring to a portable scaffolding tower then it's not permitted under H&S regs because a tarpaulin fixed to a lightweight tower which is not secured to a building in any way can easily be blown over in even a moderate wind. You may well be a DIYer, so the regs don't apply, but surely common sense dictates that you try to work safely. (I'm PASMA-trained and on a construction site this would never be permitted)

[OchAye]

If you need cover to paint your windows, it is too late in the year to paint them.

[Grendel]

If you are talking about full-size scaffolding, then the answer is that a scaffolding company can generally supply any sort of weather sheeting you require.

If, as I suspect, you are referring to a portable scaffolding tower then it's not permitted under H&S regs because a tarpaulin fixed to a lightweight tower which is not secured to a building in any way can easily be blown over in even a moderate wind. You may well be a DIYer, so the regs don't apply, but surely common sense dictates that you try to work safely. (I'm PASMA-trained and on a construction site this would never be permitted)

With a dormer the OP could be thinking that it would be conventional scaffold sitting on the roof as opposed to a free standing tower . Pretty much all those type I've seen are just the one small platform and I reckon to put some sort of cover would probably entail a bigger scafffold with beams spanning a much larger area of roof.
Your comment about wind affecting scafffolds is very true and brings to mind an incident around 15 yeas ago. We were working at Stowe gardens on a number of the follies and one tower or obolisk ( n't quite remember) had a scafffold around it with sheeting. High winds caused the scafffold to shift and there was a danger it , and the tower , could come down. Of course everyone had to come off it but the site agent went back up , not sure whether it was brave or foolish , and cut off the sheeting . It did save the scafffold from coming down but it subsequently had to be dismantled.

[Job and Knock]

With a dormer the OP could be thinking that it would be conventional scaffold sitting on the roof as opposed to a free standing tower . Pretty much all those type I've seen are just the one small platform and I reckon to put some sort of cover would probably entail a bigger scafffold with beams spanning a much larger area of roof.

I did an induction/training on a scaffolding tower a few years back where it was designed to operate as two towers tied together with a sort of Youngman board complete with handrails, toeboards, etc. The advice was that this was primarily aimed at internal jobs and if it were to be used outdoors both ends would need to be secured to the building using Rawl eyes at several points. Not something I'd want to sign-off TBH

As to conventional building scaffolding, it's become much more common in recent years to "wrap" buildings in town centres both to act as a sort of debris netting and to provide weather protection for trades working on the exterior of the building. Temporary roofing can also be produced with scaffolding allowing roofing work, etc to continue in all but the foulest weather (whilst keeping the interior of the building fairly dry - absolutely essential on some listed buildings). Seems a bit OTT for a domestic TBH. The material name I associate with this sort of wrapping is Monarflex

Monarflex Temporary Roof Scaffold 001_01.JPG (194.25 KiB) Viewed 2431 times

Just to be clear - it is unsafe to attempt this sort of weather sheeting on anything less than full scaffolding which is adequately secured to the building

[Grendel]

Yes the mono flex and temporary roofs arre one of the benefits of listed building work unless one really enjoys sliding around on a scaffold trying to prise apart timber frozen together or watching tools go rusty before your eyes in the pouring rain.
On one building , little Morton hall in Staffordshire , someone decided it would be possible to do it on the cheap and rather than the corrugated steel normally used they put an extra lift on with tarps nailed to it . Too low for one thing and it leaked so much we had to temporary cover up at night under it as well. On Birmingham cathedral the temporary roof was just a tad too low for when we put the cupola legs in place . We ended up cutting holes in the steel and gluing buckets over the tops of the columns . But all in all much better for working on a building.
Was very rare on anything but heritage work although I am seeing complete temporary roofs increasingly on domestic work .
I've done scaffold tower courses myself . One piece of advice I was given by at least one instructor was to always keep a "scaffold incomplete do not use" and hang it on it every time we left it just to cover our arses.

[Job and Knock]

This is one my old firm was involved in - the Monarflex wrapping spanned 4 storeys, 7 former shops and a former bank - so quite a bit of plastic was needed:

Monarflex Wrapped Aerial View 001_07.JPG (68.53 KiB) Viewed 2423 times

[Grendel]

This is one my old firm was involved in - the Monarflex wrapping spanned 4 storeys, 7 former shops and a former bank - so quite a bit of plastic was needed:

Monarflex Wrapped Aerial View 001_07.JPG

"Quite a bit of plastic" , perhaps we should add this to the plastic campaign thread as it was rare to see second hand plastic being used to wrap a building . On second thoughts perhaps not...
Where were or are the buildings in your picture? I mentioned we worked on some of the follies and what have you at Stowe gardens , the temple of concord and victory , the fane of pastoral poetry and cobhams tower to name a few, and eventually worked on the roof of the house itself. That was an impressive temporary roof and was the largest span ( at least at the time?) ever constructed , pity I don't have any photos of it .
Edit , google is your friend,
https://www.stowe.co.uk/house/latest-ne ... -structure
Picture under the roof of the dome
http://www.themortonpartnership.co.uk/a ... 8mgmDX.jpg

[Job and Knock]

That was in Halifax. The place was a bit of a wreck when we started (70-odd years of bodge work and neglect) and we needed to do a huge amount of structural repair work which wasn't on the original schedule (that's listed buildings for you). No temporary roof over it though, possibly because it was just too big (?) so we could only work on repairing roof timbers, putting in new roof lights, building new timber troughings (lead-lined), etc on dry days - and everything needed to be weathered-in at the end of every session with green membrane, Visqueen, corrugated steel, etc. Some days we'd spend more time exposing working areas and weathering in afterwards as we'd spend on actually doing the work. In that phase the site office was in the habit of watching the weather (they had a feed from the Met Office) and than contacting us on the walkie-talkie to warn of incoming rain. They could give us 1 to 2 hours notice and the local forecasts were surprisingly accurate. The first winter on there was still so cold and wet that I vowed never to work outdoors in winter ever again (well, I'm getting on a bit and all my old injuries have a habit of reminding me how stupid I've been over the years...)

[Grendel]

Thanks. I think I've only ever passed through Halifax once in my life and that was on a detour when the motorway was blocked so don't know the area at all.
I've worked on buildings where we've had to sheet up every night and agree it all takes time. We did a lot of lead gutter work and it was always a pain when the new gutters get higher than the exsisting and we ended up with a Heath Robinson afffair of scaffold boards and felt to keep it watertight.
We once had a job replacing gutters at Worcester cathedral . They were between the nave and a side chapel and were in efffect in a deep "valley" or gully between the two buildings . It gave a very narrow view of the sky. Before I got there one guy had started the job and was caught out by the weather. There weredownpipes from both main roofs and the rain came and he had the roof uncovered. It was estimated that over 50 gallons poured into the chapel.