What bundling actually saves
It saves one thing: the cost of getting access, counted once instead of once per job. Everything else on the invoice is the same work at the same price whenever it happens. So the whole argument comes down to the access figure against what pulling each job forward destroys, and both of those are numbers rather than opinions.
On the opening list a visit costs $2,550 once disruption is counted. Five jobs done separately means five visits, $12,750 of access on top of $18,300 of work. Done together in year 0 that becomes one visit and $7,740 of discarded service life, which is a $2,460 saving — real, but a lot smaller than the $10,200 of avoided access suggests.
The job that should not be in the bundle
The $7,740 is not spread evenly. Four of the five jobs throw away between nothing and $750. The siding repaint throws away $6,000 on its own, because it is expensive work with a nine year life being pulled forward six years — two thirds of it goes in the skip.
Leave that one out and the saving goes from $2,460 to $5,910. The siding still gets its own visit in six years, exactly as it would have, so nothing about it is worse off. It just stops paying for everybody else's scaffold. That is the whole method: the bundle should contain every job whose discarded life is worth less than a visit, and no others.
The one rule worth remembering
A job is worth pulling forward for as long as the life you discard is worth less than one visit. Written out, that distance is the expected life multiplied by the cost of a visit and divided by the cost of the work.
The flashing work on the opening list has a twelve year life and costs $1,800, so it is worth pulling forward seventeen years, which is longer than it lasts — it should always ride along. The siding repaint has a nine year life and costs $9,000, so it is worth pulling forward 2.6 years and no further. Those two numbers explain the whole result without any of the totals, and once the ratio is in your head you can sort a list in the driveway.
Related pages
The materials for whatever ends up in the bundle are separate arithmetic: roofing squares, siding, caulk coverage, repointing footage and gutter and downspout sizing each take off one of them.
For the ordering question across the whole house rather than one elevation, the capital reserve timing calculator puts the schedule into years and finds the worst run of them. If one of the jobs is being put off rather than pulled forward, the deferred maintenance calculator prices that direction, and bid comparison makes sure the quotes you are bundling describe the same work.
Questions people ask
Is discarded service life a real cost or an accounting one?
Real, on one condition: that the job would otherwise have run its full life. A coating with four good years left that you strip off has taken four years of value to the skip, and you will pay for those four years again at the far end. Where it stops being real is when the remaining life was never going to be reached anyway, because something else is coming off in front of it. If that is the case, enter the shorter figure as the life.
What if one of the jobs has already failed?
Then it is not available to be scheduled and the premise of the page does not hold for it. This compares plans, and a failure is not a plan. Enter zero years until due for anything that must happen now, which makes it the anchor of the bundle, and treat the others as the ones being pulled toward it.
Why does the bundle happen at the earliest due year rather than a year I choose?
Because that is the only version where nothing gets deferred and every cost is countable. Bundling later means somebody waits, and waiting carries a risk of consequential damage that this arithmetic has no way to price. Keeping the bundle at the first genuine due date means the only cost being traded against the access is discarded service life, which is a number.
Does the access cost really not change with more work?
Mostly it does not, which is why the method works, but check the quote. Scaffold hire is usually priced by the erection and by the week, so five jobs that take three weeks instead of one job that takes three days will cost more in hire even though the erection is paid once. If your quote works that way, put the erection and strike in the access field and add the extra weeks to the cost of the job that needs them.
Does bundling need a permit or affect a warranty?
It can affect both, and neither is settled here. Some work needs a permit and an inspection whenever it happens; some product warranties require registration, a specific installer, or documented upkeep at intervals, and doing work early or out of sequence can matter to them. Read the manufacturer documentation and ask the authority that inspects work where you live before scheduling around a calculator.