Equipment Guide
It's the most common mistake we see when someone hires access equipment: they order a machine by the wrong number, and it turns up too short for the job. The confusion almost always comes down to one thing — working height and platform height are not the same, and mixing them up costs you a wasted delivery.
Here's how to get it right the first time.
Platform height is how high the floor of the basket or platform goes — the surface you stand on.
Working height is how high you can actually reach. It's the platform height plus roughly 2 metres, on the assumption that an average person can work with their hands about 2m above where they're standing.
So a machine advertised as "12m working height" has a platform height of around 10m. If your job genuinely needs your feet at 12m, a 12m working-height machine leaves you two metres short.
Manufacturers almost always advertise the working height — the bigger, better-sounding number. That's fine, as long as you know that's what you're reading.
Don't guess, and don't eyeball it from the ground. Measure or establish the height of your actual work point — the gutter, the light fitting, the roof edge — from the ground it'll be reached from.
Then think about where you'll be standing, not where your hands need to be. If your work point is at 9m, you need a platform height of around 9m, which means a machine rated at roughly 11m working height.
When you're between two sizes, size up. A machine that's slightly too tall can be operated part-way; a machine that's too short can't be stretched — and reaching or climbing to make up the difference is exactly how people fall.
Height is only half the picture. If there's an obstacle between the machine and your work — a wall, a flowerbed, a parked vehicle, machinery — you also need horizontal outreach, and that's where the machine type matters:
A job that looks like a simple height question is often really an outreach question in disguise.
The height you need is measured from the surface the machine stands on — not from where you're standing when you order it. If the machine sets up on a slope, a loading bay, or a level below the work, factor that difference in. A metre of fall between the machine's footing and the base of the wall is a metre you have to add to your height requirement.
The safest way to get the right machine is to tell us about the job rather than order a spec. Tell us the height of the work point, what you're standing on, and whether anything's in the way — and we'll work out the machine for you. A two-minute conversation now beats a wasted delivery and a machine that won't reach.