This afternoon, we decided that we needed to build a fixed scaffolding framework around the back of the house as our mobile scaffold tower will not be able to navigate down the back as the gap between the house and swimming lane is barely 1200mm wide and the tower itself is 1300mm wide in the first place but also we have tight corners and we won’t be able to move the steel scaffold tower around these corners either. So instead, we are going to build a fixed semi-permanent wooden framework of legs and struts to hold up a sheets of 8feet by 4feet plywood, and join them together to form a walk-way at about seven feet off the ground (about 2 feet below the Fascia level). We would be able to go from the “I” section at the start of the back of the house, along “J”, “K”, “L”, “M”, “N”, and “O”, the other end of the house. We using old CLS timber we have recycled from other jobs and cut them into the various parts to make 30 twin-leg modules to make five 8feet long platforms and three 16feet longer platforms. They will be connected together and also fixed to the building in lots of places to ensure that the whole framework is good and solid for maximum safety.
This scaffolding will probably be there for most of the rest of the year while we work on the roof, getting all the elements done, including the Skylight. we will only take it down when the slate tiles are on and the guttering is all complete and fully working. It might take a few days to build it all but it will save many hours, or even days in not having to keep moving the mobile tower around all the time. We can afford this because we had recycled timber to hand and spare plywood boards but doing it properly using steel equipment would have cost many thousands to hire or buy, as we can only work so quick and we rather spend the money on buying materials like Oak Timber instead.
Tomorrow, we will carry on preparing the old recycled timber, chopping it down into 30 pieces of 900mm lengths and 60 pieces of 2100mm lengths. Also make 60 triangular plywood pieces plus 60 flat “foot” (using more plywood leftover pieces) and then long 16feet (4.8metres) CLS timber, three of them for each long platform module which will have two full size sheets of plywood screwed down. All the platforms will have safety edges on them to provide some protection against walking off the edge or kicking a box or trug of tools over the edge too!
