This thread is timely for me, I was just on my scaffolding today and thinking how much I enjoy being able to access any point on any building on the property. I've used it three times in the past week.
Here's a picture of my sons painting the barn:
View attachment 758484
I have twelve frames that I bought from ScaffoldMart.com in 2019. There are several online vendors that all seem to be competitive, at that time they had the best deal but it was pretty close.
They are the standard frames that are 5' deep and 7' wide, but I went with ones that are only 5' high rather than the more common 6'8. The smaller frames are about 40 pounds and I find they're easy to set up with one person, you can stand securely on a platform while you lift the frame up shoulder high to do the next level. With taller frames you're lifting over your head to assemble and it gets dicey. I've been thinking about getting some taller frames to use on the bottom level. One drawback of the 5' frames is you have to duck to go under them which gets old if you're doing a lot of side-to-side work.
I got ladder style frames, so there are four levels that you can put a plank on each frame, and two levels where you can put three planks down and cover the entire floor. I bought three of the aluminum planks which I use for my main work areas. I also find it handy to have a bunch of 8' 2x12's as you can see in the picture to have a place to stand while going up and down, I don't like them for working from though. I put a piece of 1x2 on the end so they can't slip off.
Note that I have screw jacks on all of the feet. This allows me to get another 18" of lift in addition to making sure everything is level. In the foreground is a 2x8 with two screw jacks bolted to it, that's the way I like to have the base Note also the outriggers at the bottom which make it more stable. The ground around the barn is very uneven and the outriggers come in very handy.
In the picture the left side is on higher ground. I built a crib out of 4x4's to get even with the second level of the rest of the scaffold.
I bought one set of guardrails which is on the top in the picture. You can use regular frames as guardrails, but these are lighter and cheaper.
In 2019 the whole setup was about $1250 and shipping was about $450. I'm sure it's more now.
Once you get the base set it goes up pretty quickly. This barn is 35 feet to the peak so I wanted to be stable so I spent a fair bit of time on the bottom row. Once the bottom was set we moved frames around as needed. The next time I might treat myself to a few more frames so I don't have to move so much. On today's job I was fixing a soffit about 20' off the ground so it was simpler, it took about an hour to set up the scaffold, three rows plus the guardrails.