3 Pitfalls To Avoid When You're Setting Up A Wheeled Scaffold Next To A Building

14 July 2015
 Categories: Construction & Contractors, Blog

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If you need to do a lot of maintenance work on the upper side of a wall or the edge of a roof, some kind of scaffolding is essential to ensure your workers' safety. However, especially if you only need a small scaffold on wheels for the work you're doing, it's easy to get overconfident and make a dangerous mistake. When you're setting up a wheeled scaffold next to a building, make sure that you avoid these three pitfalls.

Basing The Scaffold On Exposed, Uneven Ground Composed Of Sand Or Dirt

To be perfectly safe, all four of the scaffold's wheels need to be perfectly level with one another. Even if the dirt or sand ground under where you want to base your scaffold seems relatively even, it can still move around a lot from all the weight you'll be putting on it.

If you possibly can, choose an area to place your scaffold that has enough concrete or asphalt for all four of the wheels. If there's no concrete or asphalt available, get a large wooden or concrete slab and place it over the uneven ground.

Placing Large Stacks Of Boxes Or Containers Near The Scaffold

No matter how strong the brakes on the scaffold are, they probably won't be enough to stop a worker from falling if one of the corners of the structure is suddenly hit by a falling stack of boxes or containers.

If you need to store a lot of heavy equipment in boxes or containers outside the building you're working on for other maintenance work, make sure that it's all far away from the scaffold. Even better, don't get in the habit of stacking boxes at all when you have such a large outside space to work with. Instead, line up all your boxes in rows on the ground so that you can quickly access the equipment in all of them.

Pushing The Scaffold Right Up Against The Wall

Most small wheeled scaffolds are designed for use while they're slightly apart from a wall instead of right up against it. If you push your wheeled scaffold up against the wall as far as it will go, the brakes holding the wheels in place won't be as effective. This is because some of the weight from a person using the scaffold will be deflected toward the wall.

While you shouldn't leave so much space between the scaffold and the building's wall that a worker or a piece of equipment could potentially fall through it, there needs to be enough space to totally eliminate the possibility of the scaffold coming into contact with the wall while it's shaking from all the weight that's being put on it.