Impregnating brickwork? Choose the right scaffold.

For impregnating brickwork on a dwelling the Altrex RS TOWER 51 works most comfortably: a rolling tower measuring 75 cm across. That slim profile counts double here, because you have to get past a boundary, between two houses or along a garden path to reach the rear elevation. In the hire fleet the model runs to 14.2 metres, entirely depending on how many frames you stack on it; over two storeys you simply order the version that lands between 6 and 8 metres.

What travels up with you is limited. Usually that is a low pressure sprayer with a tank of a few litres, or a bucket and a broad brush if you are working by hand. Deck space is mainly needed to stand the tank somewhere it cannot topple over and to keep the hose from wrapping round your feet. A narrow build is more than adequate for that. The remaining types are listed among the the rolling towers in the hire range.

Working with a bigger tank, or with a second person following behind on the joints, brings the RS52 at 135 cm into view. It gives you deck to set a jerrycan down outside the walking line, which saves tripping while you refill. The drawback is that it will not pass many a back alley, and you discover that on delivery day itself, with the parts already at the door. Which scaffold suits which facade job is weighed up in the piece on choosing for facade work.

The surface being treated runs on to wherever the masonry stops, and that is usually under the roof trim or below the gutter. Measure up to that line, and start from the ground or the path on which the wheels of the tower will shortly rest. Do not skip the last fifty centimetres in your sum: a band of untreated brickwork high on the wall stands out after the first shower as a dark rim that will not go away again.

The height you order is made of two parts. First the deck you stand on, then roughly 2 metres of reach on top of it, and together they give the working height that appears in your reservation. Go for 6 to 8 metres and you are standing at 4 to 6 metres, able to take in a band of nearly two metres above your head without stretching. How many frames that involves can be checked where eight metres of reach is explained.

Cutting it fine punishes you straight away on this work. Fall a little short at the top and that last band has to be done from a second setup, by which time the coat below it has long since drawn away. On the boundary between those two moments a visible difference in sheen and colour appears. So take one frame more rather than one too few when you settle the build height. Where the masonry carries on above the second floor of a house, that margin matters more still.

The setup goes hard against the wall you are treating, and with masonry that is often the side where the garden begins. Reckon on a flat strip wider on every side than the tower itself, because the stabilisers point outwards at an angle. Borders, a gravel path, a settled slab or a tree root all make that strip unusable; a wheel that sinks a centimetre leaves you with a build no longer standing square to the brickwork.

Look at what is waiting underneath you as well. Fluid running down the wall ends up on the border, on the terrace and on the plinth, and not every planted edge enjoys that. Cover the lower strip with film or lay sheeting there, and move plants growing hard against the brick aside for as long as the hire lasts. A path that falls away is brought level with boards under the wheels of the tower, an operation described in the approach on uneven ground.

Finally, think about where your materials live. The jerrycans, the tank and the filling kit sit best right beside the foot, on a piece of sheeting, so that refilling does not mean stepping around the stabilisers with a full can. Do not put them against the wall, because that is exactly where the next position goes and you would then move your entire workplace at every bay. A couple of metres clear of the line the tower runs along is enough to avoid all of that.

Putting the product on goes quickly; the preparation does not. A wall has to be clean and dry before anything draws in, and loose joints are repaired first, or the fluid simply runs away through them. Add to that the test patch you make a day earlier in order to judge the absorbency of the wall. For a house with a front and a rear elevation that brings you to two or three hire days in total, of which only one is really spent putting product on the wall.

The waiting is mostly weather. Masonry that got wet yesterday takes up nothing today, and after treatment you want a spell without driving rain so the product can draw away in peace. Frost and full sun on the wall are both unhelpful, which makes a grey, dry day your best moment. So do not book your hire days tight against one another, but with room to slip a day when the forecast turns or the wind swings round.

Booking generously weighs light in the cost. There is one day at the normal amount, covering the first twenty four hours, and a 95 per cent reduction runs on every further day of the booking, so waiting for dry weather barely counts in the total. What does count heavily is a half treated wall on the morning the build gets collected, because that seam never comes out. Choosing a realistic period is described in the explanation of hire days.

Your deck measures 245 cm, and that measurement sets the width of the bay you treat per position. Work such a bay from below upwards and keep the edges wet, so the next part joins on before the previous one has drawn away. Run it from the top down instead and surplus fluid trickles over dry brick, leaving streaks that stay visible once everything dries. Across an elevation eight metres wide that works out at three or four bays in a row.

How thirsty the wall is decides how often you refill. On weathered masonry or on old joints far more disappears into the wall than you estimated beforehand, and then you are down at the jerrycan more often than up at the brick. So top up before you climb, and where you can, take a full spare can up with you and stand it on the deck out of the way. That saves two descents per bay, and those add up across a whole elevation.

What people underestimate is the join between two positions. Put your vertical seam somewhere sensible, at a corner, a downpipe or a window reveal, and not in the middle of a closed stretch of masonry. Move the tower straight away afterwards and start the next bay, rather than breaking for tea or tidying your tools first. The transition then stays wet, and later nobody can see where one position ended and the next began. On a closed stretch of masonry that is the difference between invisible and irritating.

What gets delivered is a fully counted set of loose parts: uprights, decks, braces and stabilisers. Agree where they may be put down, and do not choose the strip beside the wall, because that is where you want a clear run. A drive, a piece of lawn or a quiet corner of the garden suits better, certainly if you want the parts in the order you need them. A reservation that comes in ahead of the 15:00 deadline on a weekday puts the parts at the given address the following working day.

Both ends of the period are yours to fix: the morning the parts appear and the morning they leave again. On this treatment a spare day at the front is handy, so that you can build, set your test patch and start the next morning the moment the wall feels dry. The building is yours to do: the manual and the instruction film run through the sequence step by step, and with two people that costs half a day which you count as working time.

Once the last bay is finished you take the build apart again and lay the parts together, after which we come to collect them. Do that only when the product has drawn into the wall, since packing wet tubes works against you. Count the parts off while you dismantle and nothing will be short later, which keeps the handover on collection day brief. What bringing and fetching costs per province can be read at the fixed amounts for delivery.

These towers sit in load class 3 of EN 1004, and that class draws the line at 200 kg per square metre of deck. Impregnating with one person and a tank stays well under that, but as soon as a second man and a full jerrycan join in it starts to mount. What goes wrong more often is the distribution of it: a heavy can belongs near the centre of the boards, not tucked into a corner against the guard rail.

The ground rules do not change. Brake the wheels before you climb on, never roll the build along a stretch with tools or a person still aboard, and set the four stabilisers down firmly after every move. When it blows hard you stop: with a fluid that atomises, the mist travels with the wind and lands on windows, cars and the neighbours' hedge instead of in the stone. Still mornings are simply the best hours to be up on the tower for this work.

Two things belong specifically to this job. The deck turns slippery the moment product lands on it, so mop spills immediately and work in footwear that keeps its grip. And the zone below you is seldom empty: plants stand there, your cans lie there, and now and then somebody walks past. Rope that strip off, keep it covered and put nothing on the edge of the deck that can roll away. Further arrangements sit at the rules on working at height.