Pointing a façade? Choose the right scaffold.

Of all the jobs at a wall, pointing puts the most weight on your deck. A tub of mixed mortar, two buckets of water, a jointer, an angle grinder with dust extraction, a hand brush and a sponge all lie there at the same time. On the Altrex RS TOWER 52, whose deck measures 135 cm, you put that lot down on one side and keep a free walkway on the wall side. What else there is to hire in mobile scaffolds is set out with the dimensions.

The narrow 75 cm version pinches sooner on this job than on other work at the wall. Once the tub is standing you stand beside it and not past it, and you feel that at every movement with a loaded jointer. Even so that narrow size is sometimes the only option, for instance if the wall lies behind a gate that 135 cm will not pass. Measure that stretch out completely first and count on working with smaller quantities more often.

Watch the difference between the type and the build when you commit. The RS52 as a model is good to 14.2 metres and uses platforms 245 cm in length, but you do not get that high at a terraced house. You hire the build that fits the highest joint due for renewal, and at three storeys that lies between 8 and 12 metres. The sizes of every version are set out clearly in the piece on scaffold measurements.

First settle how far up the pointing runs. Sometimes it is only the bottom few metres where the brickwork has weathered, sometimes the whole wall up to the gutter. That difference easily saves you two platform layers in your build and half a day of assembly. If the work runs on to just under the roof edge of three storeys, you come out between 8 and 12 metres of working height. Count a gable or a chimney in if that is due as well.

The height you order you calculate by adding a good two metres of reach to the height of the deck. For nine metres of working height your platform therefore stands at around seven. Unlike painting you can barely use that reach: pointing is done with force and with short tools, so you want the joint between hip and shoulder height. Choose your platform on the high side for that reason. The build to nine metres of working height is described on that page.

Measure from the point where the wheels will come to rest and not from a raised patio. A garden that lies a step lower than your back door takes half a metre off your reach just like that. Come up short and you finish the top joints with your arms raised, which goes wrong quickly on chopping work and wrecks your wrist besides. If the brickwork carries right on to the second floor, order one platform layer too many rather than one too few.

Pointing a wall asks for more space at ground level than you would think at first sight. Besides the setup itself, with the four stabilisers angled outwards, you need a mixing spot: a tub, a bag of mortar, a bucket of clean water and a place for the drill with a paddle. Put that mixing spot beside the scaffold and not under it or between the legs, because then you need not move the tub and the bags as soon as you shift a bay.

The ground has to be able to take the weight. Setts and concrete carry fine, grass and topsoil give under the wheels, certainly with a full tub above and a second person up there as well. If there is a path with a fall along the wall, adjust the legs per position; on that adjusting there is the article on uneven ground. Look as well for manhole covers, gullies or loose slabs you would rather not rest a stabiliser on.

A great deal comes down under the setup on this job. Raking out produces sharp grit, old lime mortar and dust that creeps in everywhere. So lay a sheet you slide along per bay, keep the windows below shut and warn the neighbours who have washing out, because brick dust travels far. If the tower stands partly on the public road, check with the council beforehand what is arranged in your street, and do that well before you let the delivery be scheduled.

Pointing counts in square metres of wall, but the number of days you hire follows from the number of rounds. You pass the same bays twice: first raking out and brushing clean, then pointing and finishing. An ordinary front wall of a terraced house costs about two days per round when you work with two people. That brings you out at four to eight days of hire, depending on how hard the old mortar sits and how much wall goes under the hand.

The weather decides besides when you can point at all. In freezing cold you do not work mortar, and on a wall roasting in the full midday sun the mix dries out so fast that it does not cure properly. Rain during or just after pointing washes part of the fresh joint out again. You almost always lose a few half days that way, and they usually fall not neatly at the end but somewhere in the middle of your planning.

That is why reserving generously is sensible here. You settle the full rate over the first 24 hours; what you add in days after that counts towards your total each time with 95 per cent off. Two days of slack for frost or a heavy shower therefore cost you little, while stopping halfway means leaving a half raked wall open while you wait on a new delivery. There are rules of thumb for judging such a period in the explanation of the number of rental days.

The platform under your feet is 245 cm long, and that length is exactly the width you work in. Divide that strip once more into bays of roughly a metre wide and a metre high, and mix no more mortar per bay than will go into it. Mixed mortar stays properly workable for a limited time only, so anyone who mixes a full tub and then starts three bays at once inevitably throws part away or works with a mix already stiffening.

Decide deliberately whether you do both rounds per setup or rake the whole wall out first. The first saves moves, the second keeps your tools apart: you then need not keep swapping the grinder and the jointer and you clean up only once a day. On a wall ten metres wide you are talking about four or five standing places, and that number doubles as soon as you pull the two rounds apart over the rental period.

Do not carry a full tub up with you. Send it up on a rope, or refill at the top from a bucket you can carry in one hand, because climbing with both hands occupied is the biggest risk on this job. At the end of every day clear all mortar residue off the deck, because hardened mortar on a platform cannot be got off later. If you combine this work with making good the loose bricks, plan those repairs into the same round.

The mobile scaffold turns up at the address in loose parts, counted through and complete to the last coupler. Reserve a dry place for that beforehand, preferably not on the strip along the wall, because that is where your mixing spot and your sheet full of grit are going. A drive, a carport or the side of the house works better. Book on a weekday with the reservation in before 15:00 and the delivery may fall on the very next working day, at the moment you chose yourself.

Building the tower is your own affair. The manual comes along with the set and the instruction video is there to watch; two people are busy with it for roughly half a day. Put that assembly in your planning a day before your first day of raking, so you start fresh at the dustiest work instead of after a morning of humping tubes and platforms. Note in your reservation where the van can unload, because the frames and deck parts for three storeys make a considerable stack.

Once the last joint is set and has pulled up, you dismantle everything and lay the parts out complete for the collection day you chose, after which we take them away again. Hose or brush the platforms down first: dried mortar on aluminium is next to impossible to shift. Count all the parts off while you dismantle, then you are certain no brace or coupler has stayed behind in the garden. What the run to your province costs is stated at the cost of delivery per province.

These platforms are rated at 200 kg for each square metre, which EN 1004 calls load class 3. Pointing is the job at a wall where you come closest to that: a filled mortar tub weighs a lot, and with two people, buckets of water and a grinder besides you add up fast. So do not put all the heavy things down by the hatch, but spread the weight over the length of the deck. What that class means you can read in the notes on this standard.

The basic rules weigh extra heavily on this job. Brake all the wheels before anybody goes up the ladder, never move the setup with material or people on it, and come off it once the wind gets up in earnest. Because you shift a bay so often when pointing, clearing the deck before you roll soon starts to grate; do it anyway, because a tub tipping while you drive cannot be caught. Set the four stabilisers fully out again before you go up with a new bucket.

The particular risks of this job sit in the dust and the grit. Chips of old mortar drop straight down, so keep that zone clear and wear goggles, gloves and a dust mask yourself. Wetted brickwork lets water run over your deck, which makes the platform slippery and makes mortar stick to it. So wipe the deck dry a few times a day, under the tub as well. The rest of the agreements you find at the guidelines for working safely at height.