There are several ways to save money when painting a home in San Francisco, the most common being to do the job yourself. But should your painter be building their own scaffolding to save costs on their end? It does provide for good entertainment watching them risk their lives painting though. Seems a ladder would be just as effective (dangerous).
In case you’re just not getting the magnitude of how rickety this structure (if you want to call it that) is, we have another picture for you.
What’s worse (we should have snapped a photo of this too), the base support consists of 4×4 blocks simply resting on the ground and the 2x4s you see holding this thing together are simply nailed into the sides of said blocks!
Crazy? Stupid? Common? Or all of the above? One thing’s for sure, you won’t find us up there…we’ll use the ladder, thanks.
Crazy & Stupid.
I’ve done that, it is not as dangerous as it looks. It is actually a good idea if you have a balcony to work from. Also, don’t be taken by the apparent safety of scaffolding, it is sometimes hard and dangerous to take down. I have also rented scaffolding and it is (or was) expensive, but so many people are going bust that you can sometimes buy it as scrap for what it used to cost to rent.
Why couldn’t you make scaffolding out of PVC? Would it be cheaper? More light weight than metal.
The engineer in me cannot resist the PVC comment.
Metal has many properties that make it superior to pvc for an application such as scaffolding. PVC cracks and splinters, fails after repeated bending, ect. It also will give you no warning before failing. (Crack, bang, OUCH!)
You do not see ladders made out of pvc for this reason. They can be made out of metal (steel preferably), wood or fiberglass.
Can you use steal plumming pipe to make a scaffold?