Keep Above
Buy or hire the scaffolding
Scaffolding is hired by the job or the week far more often than it's owned — but owned towers exist for a reason, and the arithmetic is the same two-sider. Buying — price, upkeep, eventual sale — against hiring per job, over the same years and jobs a year: each lands on a cost per year and per job, with the break-even stated and no winner declared.
Not counted while this is $0
After 5 years
Delivery, membership, deposits — not counted while $0
Put in what buying one would cost, and what one hire would cost. Nothing here is read from your budgets, and nothing is saved.
| Owning | Hiring | |
|---|---|---|
| Paid up front | — | — |
| Value lost | — | — |
| Hire fees | — | — |
| Other costs | — | — |
| Total over 5 years | — | — |
| Cost a year | — | — |
| Cost a use | — | — |
What does a scaffolding hire include that owning would not?
A hire price usually covers getting the scaffolding to the job and away again, and the quantity that arrives has been judged against the job by whoever supplies it. Owning means making that judgement yourself, and a tower that turns out to be a lift short is short at the point the job needs it. Standards, boards and fittings also have to live somewhere between jobs, and on a domestic property that space is a real cost rather than a nominal one.
The other thing owning carries is time. Scaffolding has to go up and come down at every single job, and where a hire includes erection that work has been moved into the fee; where it does not, the hours are yours and this page has no field for them, because it counts money only.
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
Owning and hiring separate over years rather than weeks, so the useful question is what a balance would look like that far out — which budgeting apps forecast your balance, and how far ahead.
About this calculator
What counts as upkeep for scaffolding?
What a year of owning it would take — replacement fittings and boards, inspection or tagging where it applies, and the space to store it between jobs. One yearly figure; $0 means it isn't counted.
What would one hire include here?
What one job would actually cost — the hire for the full period the job needs, delivery and pickup, and erection where it's charged. That whole per-job amount is the per-use figure; anything yearly belongs in the extras box.
What is the crossing point?
The number of jobs a year at which the two totals would land on the same figure, over the years you set — a position in the arithmetic and no more than that. Because a scaffolding hire is priced per job rather than per day, the count it refers to is jobs, not days on site. Where owning nets to nothing, or hiring's yearly extras alone pass owning's total, the page says so rather than printing a number.
Does the hire price include putting it up?
Sometimes it does, and where it does that labour is already inside the per-job figure this page asks for. Where it does not, the time is yours and nothing on the page records it, because the totals are money and only money. An owned tower is erected and struck by its owner at every job, so that unpriced work sits entirely on one side of the comparison without ever appearing in it.