What Happens to Your Scaffold When a Storm Warning Comes In

If you live in Devon, you'll know the feeling. The forecast turns amber, the wind picks up off the coast, and you look out the window at the scaffold on the front of your house and wonder whether it's going to be there in the morning.

The short answer is yes. A properly designed, properly tied scaffold is built to cope with British weather, including the sort of weather the South West gets every winter. But storms aren't something we just leave to chance either. Here's what actually happens behind the scenes when a warning comes in.

Why wind is the thing we watch

Rain doesn't trouble a scaffold much. Wind is a different story, and the reason is simple: anything that catches the wind adds load.

Bare tube and boards let most of the wind straight through. Add debris netting and it catches more. Add full sheeting or shrink wrap and the scaffold starts to behave a bit like a sail. That's not a problem in itself, as long as it was designed for it. A sheeted scaffold needs more ties into the building than a bare one, and that's worked out at the planning stage, not on the day of the storm.

This is one of the reasons we're fussy about getting the design right before a single tube goes up. If a customer later asks for sheeting to be added to a scaffold that wasn't planned for it, we don't just wrap it and hope. We look at the ties again first.

What we check when a warning lands

When a Met Office warning covers an area where we've got scaffolds standing, we look at our live jobs and work out which ones need attention. The ones we think about first are:

• Sheeted and wrapped scaffolds, especially on exposed and coastal sites.
• Anything recently adapted, where boards, lifts or ties have been moved for the next trade.
• Sites where materials are stored on the scaffold. Loose slates, tiles, buckets and offcuts are often a bigger risk in high wind than the scaffold itself.

Depending on the job, that might mean securing or tying back sheeting, checking ties, clearing loose materials off the boards, or speaking to the contractor on site about what they've left up there.

What you should do (and what you shouldn't)

If it's your home, there are a few sensible things you can do before a storm:

• Ask any trades working on the house to clear loose materials off the scaffold at the end of the day.
• Bring in anything in the garden that could get blown into the scaffold, like bins and garden furniture.
• If something looks wrong, ring us.

What we'd ask you not to do is go up and check it yourself, during or after the storm. We understand the temptation. But a scaffold that has been through severe weather hasn't been confirmed safe until someone competent has looked at it, and the last thing anyone wants is a homeowner on a wet platform in the dark trying to tie down a flapping sheet.

The inspection after the storm

This is the bit a lot of people don't know about. Under the Work at Height Regulations, a scaffold doesn't just get inspected when it's first built and then every seven days. It also has to be inspected after anything that could have affected its stability. Severe weather is the obvious example.

So after a big blow, the scaffold needs checking before anyone works on it again. Ties that have worked loose, boards that have shifted, damaged fittings, sheeting that's torn or pulling, and any signs that the base has moved, which can happen when the ground gets waterlogged.

If everything is as it should be, the inspection is recorded and work carries on. If something needs fixing, we fix it, and the scaffold isn't used until it's right.

If you're a builder or roofer working on one of our scaffolds, please don't send your lads up first thing after a storm on the assumption that it's fine. Give us a call and ask us to look at it.

A scaffold should never be the thing you're worrying about

A storm is stressful enough without wondering what's going on outside your bedroom window. The whole point of using a properly qualified, directly employed team is that this side of things is handled. We know where our scaffolds are, how they were designed, and what they're carrying.

As we like to say: we worry about the scaffolding, so you don't have to.

If you've got a scaffold up and you're concerned about it after bad weather, or you're planning work and want to talk about how to keep it protected over the winter, call us on 01803 867486 or request a quote. You can also read more about our weekly scaffold inspections.