As I mentioned in an early article in this series, my first two serious DIY purchases on arriving in France were a heavy duty extendable ladder and a set of easy-to-assemble scaffolding.
Along with the occasional use of a homemade roof ladder, these two pieces of apparatus have enabled me to get to all the high places on my property for the past 20 years.
The other day, I erected my scaffolding to its full height for the first time and I managed to work 7.20m off the ground, which is pretty good.
Finally, a month ago, I found myself height-challenged for the first time. My neighbour wanted help tackling the apex of a wall 1.5m higher than I could reach standing on tip toes on the top of my scaffolding.
It was only a small job – disguising some ugly cement mortar with a lick of more natural-looking lime – but we needed to get up there.
We considered all sorts of strategies including placing a stepladder on the platform of the scaffolding, or running a plank from the upper rung of the scaffolding to the ridge of a nearby roof. Both options, on sober reflection, were cartoon scenarios inviting accidents.
The only solution was to spend money hiring a raised working platform (nacelle élévatrice). There are several types available. Some are incorporated into small lorries; others are self-propelled. The choice depends on how good access to the work site is and the height needed.
We needed to reach 10 metres and to keep the price as low as possible. My neighbour managed to negotiate an autonomous machine that we could have from Friday evening to Monday morning for the price of a day-and-a-half’s hire. That still meant shelling out €280.
Oh, said the lady in the hire shop, you need to add another €60 for delivery.
Prices, I imagine, vary from place to place but this at least gives you a good idea.
At the agreed time, a truck arrived to unload the nacelle à mât vertical électrique, which was a most curious beast. The bottom part is a compact machine of 2.5 tonnes that acts as a counterweight.
The man who delivered it demonstrated how to operate it and warned: “Only drive on level ground. It has very little clearance.”
It took some practice learning how to drive it but my neighbour soon figured out that it needed to be manoeuvred backwards and forwards carefully on the ground, at the appropriate angles, before raising the platform – once aloft there is only so much adjusting you can do.
You have to remember to take all your tools with youNick Inman
It should go without saying but it is important to get everything ready in the cradle before going up to 10m.
By experience we learned to think ahead; to take all the required tools and enough mortar. We were also sure to take a mobile phone, just in case we got stuck up there.
We did the job and considered what else we could do while we had the machine.
That is when disaster struck. My neighbour, who I considered a capable driver of the nacelle, tried to get it into position beneath another wall that needed working on.
However, this entailed moving over some newly-laid gravel. The machine had minimal clearance. It grounded and refused to budge. Unfortunately, the hire company had removed the instruction book so we could not solve the problem. We tried to dig it out and coax it onto planks but to no avail.
All we could do was wait for the hire company to turn up the next day.
Until it stopped working it had been immensely useful. However, if there is a next time it is not going anywhere other than a perfectly flat, reinforced concrete surface.
