Impregnating a facade? Choose the right scaffold.

You hire the wide version here: an Altrex RS TOWER 52 with 135 cm between the uprights, and that has nothing to do with weight. Up top you need no more than a jerrycan and a spray lance. What the wide version gives you is freedom of movement: you can take a step left and right on the deck and still run the full band with your arm outstretched. On a narrow tower you turn round your own kit the whole time. The mobile scaffolds available to hire show both widths side by side.

On a wide deck two of you can also stand without getting in each other's way, and on this work that is a large advantage. One keeps the band wet, the other follows straight behind with a block brush along the joints, the edges and the places where the stone draws extra hard. That division keeps the pace up, and pace is exactly what impregnating turns on. On a deck of 75 cm it does not work: you stand waiting for the other to step aside.

The platform length of 245 cm matters more for your layout than the height of the build. That length is your band width: per position you treat a strip of facade about two and a half metres wide over the full height you can manage at that moment. A house seven metres across therefore falls into three strips, and that number decides how often a day you move. Which other sizes belong to the models is listed in the overview of mobile scaffold measurements.

Unlike painting work you begin at the bottom here. The product runs downwards, and whatever sinks along the facade has to land on a stretch already treated; on dry brickwork it leaves a tidemark. So you build low, do the bottom bands, and only then go higher. For an ordinary house a reach of 5.2 to 9.2 metres serves well: at the bottom your deck stands just above the plinth, at the top you reach the gutter.

Working height says something other than platform height. It is the height to which you can still work: the platform you stand on, plus the not quite two metres you add with an arm and a lance. Hire up to 9.2 metres and your top deck lies at about seven metres, and you take the edge under the gutter without stretching. Which build belongs with that, and which intermediate steps you use on the way up, is set out where a nine metre reach is explained.

Choosing tight shows up extra clearly with impregnating. If the top half metre stays untreated, the water simply sinks in there at the first shower and later you see a dark band standing above your work. That is therefore no cosmetic detail but the point of the whole treatment. Happily the RS52 reaches a working height of 14.2 metres, so a tall side elevation or a gable comes along in the same rental period; you just build the setup in more lifts.

Under your working band all sorts of things come down, because you apply until the brickwork is saturated and the rest runs out of it. The ground under the setup therefore gets wet, and that decides where you put it. On block paving or slabs that is no issue; on a border, a timber deck or a newly laid terrace it is. Cover the plinth, the ground floor frames and the planting before you start, and keep the foot of the scaffold out of the puddles that form under the band.

For the stabilisers the usual holds: they stand outwards at an angle and want more room on every side than the setup is wide. Along a front elevation that is often the pavement, and then you have to check whether you may take up part of the footway. Bikes, bins, a low hedge and the meter box vents together decide whether you get past everywhere with the full width or have to skip a position and take that strip from a neighbouring one.

Walk the facade once before delivery and count your positions. On a house seven metres wide there are three, and those three you walk again at every height level. If the garden lies lower than the pavement or the paving falls away, level the wheels afresh at every spot rather than leaving it at the first time. How to take up such a sloping surface is covered in the piece on a mobile scaffold on uneven ground.

Applying it goes quickly. A practised hand saturates a fair piece of wall in an hour, and the product only has to draw in afterwards; you do not have to wait for that. What costs time is the round about it: the facade must first be clean and dry, so cleaning and a few days of drying out belong to the job. For treating a terraced house count on two to four days that you hire the mobile scaffold, depending on how many elevations go with the round.

The forecast settles more here than your planning does. A damp wall does not take the product, bright sun draws it away too fast and rain within a day of application washes part of your work off. In doubt you skip a day and simply leave the mobile scaffold standing. Because you also go over the same metres twice where the brickwork draws strongly, a day of slack in your rental period is not a luxury but sensible planning.

Financially that is not bad. After the first twenty four hours every following rental day runs with 95 per cent off, so building in a spare day costs you almost nothing beside that first day. Put the collection date one day behind your last working day, so that in doubt you can go up once more to check a spot where the product drew away too fast. The rates per build height stand with VAT on the page listing the rental prices.

Per position you work off a band two and a half metres wide, and within that band you keep moving until it is completely saturated. Start at the bottom of your reach and work in horizontal strips upwards, with the next strip still into the wet of the one before. As soon as you let a strip dry off before the next runs alongside it, a line stands in the facade that you never get out again and that only shows at the first damp.

When moving the same rule holds as for the bands: you stop on a natural boundary. A vertical joint, a corner, a downpipe or the edge of a sill are good places to end a position. Take everything off the deck before you roll, because a toppling jerrycan of impregnating fluid on a terrace is worse than a knocked over bucket of water. Then lock the wheels again, reset the stabilisers and only then carry your material up.

What is often underestimated is how much a thirsty wall takes. Old weathered brickwork can ask double what the label says, and then you stand halfway across the facade with nothing left. So take more than you think you need and keep a note of the litres per position. After the first band you know fairly precisely what the rest wants and how many days you still hire the mobile scaffold; with coating a facade you count in buckets per square metre, here in litres per band.

Plan the delivery for the moment your facade is clean and dry, not earlier. If you have cleaned first, the mobile scaffold otherwise stands waiting for days while the brickwork dries out. Booked before 15:00 on a working day means delivery on the next working day, and you give yourself which day that must be and when everything is collected again. That way the delivery falls exactly on your first working day instead of you planning days around it.

The parts come as a complete, counted set and are put down where you point. Choose a spot beside your first position and not in the zone where the product will later run down. Building is your work: the manual is in the box and the accompanying video walks you through the steps. For this height you build with two, and allow a couple of hours before the first jerrycan is opened, because half a setup gets you nowhere.

If you would rather drive yourself, you collect the set free at Zeeburgerpad 89 in Amsterdam, by appointment; do consider that the uprights are long and that a build for nine metres asks a sizeable van. After your last working day we come to fetch the mobile scaffold again, on the date noted with your booking. Bringing it and collecting it are charged as one fixed sum, set for each province; the figures stand with VAT on the page with delivery charges.

What you take up on this job weighs little, and still it is good to know what you stand on: the deck is made for 200 kg per square metre, which is load class 3 within EN 1004. With two people and a jerrycan you stay well under that, even with a tool box beside you. The point here is rather the deck itself, because impregnating fluid that lands on the platform makes the surface slippery without your seeing it coming.

So wipe spilt product away at once and keep a dry cloth to hand up there. Take the internal ladder rather than the outside of the frame, and keep your hands free; the jerrycan goes up on a rope. Before you begin, put all four wheels on the brake, and never roll the tower along with a person aboard or kit still lying on the deck. That last is tempting when you shift only a metre, and precisely then it goes wrong.

Look at who walks below you as well. The product is not something you want to catch a passer by with, so fence your working strip off with tape or a cone and do not work above an open door. In wind the mist from a low pressure sprayer carries a long way, and then stopping is the only good option. Above nine metres you also feel every gust tremble through the build, and that is the moment to come down.