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in Chinese) scaffold used, for example, to project out over a street to repair, say, a signboard.22 The main types of scaffolding, however, which surround a building, are what are known as 'single platform' or 'double platform' (double row scaffolding). 'Single platform' consists of just one layer of scaffolding surrounding a building. This means that, although it is easy to erect and less expensive, scaffold boards cannot be laid out on it to form a continuous working platform. The single platform scaffolding, therefore, really becomes a 'scrambling unit' over which men clamber and hang on to, with hands and legs, in order to work.
'Double platform scaffolding', on the other hand, is made up of an inner and an outer frame of scaffolding surrounding a building. Such a scaffold is more substantial, it can carry more weight, and it is safer because scaffold boards can be laid out to form a continuous working platform complete with handrails and 'kicking boards'. These toeboards prevent materials, such as bricks, being kicked off the scaffold when they may fall on people below. The Department of Labour of the Hong Kong Government encourages the use of the double platform variety. The 1995 Code of Practice for Scaffolding Safety, drawn up in Hong Kong, was based largely on a version in China.
With each 'plane' of bamboo scaffolding surrounding a building, two types of bamboo uprights are used. First, there are the thicker maao chuk (lance bamboo) which form major 'empty' squares about 10 feet or so across. These provide the main supports. Then, between, are the thinner and lighter ko chuk (tall bamboo), spaced at about 2 feet 6 inches apart, to form the secondary, intermediate frame.
Up until the latter half of the 1970s, bamboo uprights (standards), ledgers (horizontals), transoms, braces, and other members used to form scaffolding, were lashed together with strips cut from the sheaths of bamboo. These strips were often mistaken for rattan. These were pre-soaked in water and used wet so they were flexible. In the late 1970s, there was a switch to seven-foot-long nylon lashings which, as before with bamboo strips, dangle in an accessible position from the belts of the scaffolders working aloft. After the plastic lashings have been cut through, when the scaffolding has been dismantled, the lashings are often left lying about. Unfortunately, they are not biodegradable as were the old bamboo lashings. For structures which
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