Cleaning brickwork? Choose the right scaffold.

For cleaning brickwork on an ordinary house you get furthest with the Altrex RS TOWER 51, which measures 75 cm across. The reason is mundane but decisive: the dirty wall is often the north face or the back of the house, and the route there runs along a fence, through a gate or down a path barely wider than a wheelbarrow. As a model it goes to 14.2 metres, though that figure says nothing more than how many frames may be stacked at most.

Over two storeys the build you order tops out somewhere around 6 to 8 metres. Little goes up with you: a bucket of suds, a soft brush on a short handle and the hose you pull up from the tap. Much more will not fit either, and on a job like this you have no use for much more. Do make sure the bucket stands square and not half over the edge, because a toppled one makes the whole deck slick. The towers we hire out by the day show which other versions stand ready.

If two of you will be brushing at the same time, or you want to keep a jerrycan of product up there, the RS52 at 135 cm is the comfortable choice. You then have deck left over for somebody to pass behind you with a wet brush in hand without knocking the bucket over. Set that against the passage it has to fit through, since the gap is fixed and the tower is not. How the types compare is described briefly in the overview of scaffold sizes.

Dirt is rarely spread evenly. Green growth gathers low down and on the shaded side, while staining from a leaking gutter starts high up instead. So do not measure to where it looks filthy but to where the masonry ends: under the roof trim, under the gutter or below the eaves. From that point downwards you work everything through, because a strip you skip stays visible after drying as a lighter or darker panel, and raking light across the wall shows it up at once.

The height you enter consists of the deck you stand on and the arm length above it. Count on some 2 metres of reach on top of your platform height; take the 6 to 8 metre range and your feet end up between 4 and 6 metres. That is enough over two storeys to brush the top course of bricks without going up on your toes. On the page about a build of eight metres you can see how it is put together.

Choose too tight and a second round is your punishment. That top metre then has to be done from a separate setup, and by that time the product on the panel below has long since worked out and dried. On such a transition a faint edge remains that only appears once everything is dry, and brushing over it afterwards rarely takes it away completely. So order one frame more instead of a build that falls short of the roof edge.

Here you choose the standing place not only on flatness but on drainage. Whatever you brush onto the masonry has to come down somewhere, and it comes down exactly where the wheels and the stabilisers of your tower are planted. A terrace with a slight fall towards the garden is fine; a sunken corner where water stands is not, because you would spend the day shuffling about with wet feet on a slick slab. Walk that ground before you settle on a position.

Think in advance about where the rinse water goes. If you are using a cleaning product you do not want it simply running into the border or the gully; lay sheeting or a channel along the foot and catch it in a tub. Planting growing hard against the wall you either cover over or move aside for the duration of the hire. Standing on a path that falls away, level the build with boards under the wheels, as set out in the approach for uneven ground.

Finally, reckon on the surroundings getting wetter than you expect. Ground floor windows, a bicycle leaning against the wall, the neighbours' washing and an open cellar light all catch some of what comes down the brickwork. Walk those points on the day the scaffold is delivered, so before you mix the first bucket of suds. It costs ten minutes, it avoids an awkward conversation over the fence, and it tells you straight away where your sheeting and your collecting tub have to go.

Washing takes longer than people estimate, precisely because you may not work with force. Per bay you put the product on, leave it the dwell time its label prescribes, brush the brick and the joint, then rinse the lot down calmly. Cleaning brickwork therefore means three passes over the same strip. For a wall of two storeys you arrive at two full days, and with a front and a rear elevation you hire the tower for three.

On top of that comes waiting you cannot speed up. The dwell time is fixed, and the weather settles the rest: in frost you do not work at all, in hard sun the product dries on the brick before it has done anything, and after a shower you begin with a wall already saturated. Grey, still and above freezing is the kindest moment, and such a day does not let itself be pinned to a fixed date months in advance. So keep the hire period on your booking supple rather than exact.

Happily, slack barely weighs. For the first twenty four hours you carry the full tariff, and after that each hire day counts for only a twentieth, since 95 per cent comes off those days. Booking an extra day is therefore far cheaper than stopping halfway with a part washed wall, where the line between treated and untreated masonry stays plainly visible until you hire again. Which periods suit which jobs is worked out in the overview of hire periods.

A deck of 245 cm sets the width of the bay you clean. That sounds narrow, but on this work it is an advantage: you take in the panel you have soaped at a glance and you see exactly where the product has already worked out. Put it on from the bottom upwards, so no streaks form from dirty water running over dry brick, then rinse in the opposite direction, from the top down. Cleaning brickwork within one position therefore means working the same strip twice over.

Count on going up and down several times within a single position. Refilling the bucket, swapping a brush, pulling the hose along: each of those is a trip on the ladder. So set the bucket, the product and a second brush ready on the deck before you begin. Drape the hose across the guard rail with plenty of slack, so it cannot slip under a wheel or wedge between two stabilisers while you are brushing.

Above all, do not underestimate the number of positions. A wall eight metres across already gives three or four standing places per storey, and at every move the deck has to be empty, the brakes come off, the stabilisers come up and then go down again after the run. Reckon on a quarter of an hour for every move of the tower, and place the seam between two bays on a corner, beside a rainwater pipe or against a reveal rather than in the middle of a closed panel where it stays on show.

For cleaning brickwork you receive a fully counted package of loose parts that you assemble yourself. Pick a dry spot for that package in advance and keep the strip along the wall free, because the rinse water will gather underneath it. The pavement, the drive or a corner of the garden will serve, provided you can still walk past it carrying the long parts on your shoulder. Whatever is booked on a weekday ahead of 15:00 will be standing at your address on the next working day.

When the set arrives and when it stops standing there are both yours to fill in. On washing work it helps to have it delivered a day before you begin: the build is then already up, you can lay your sheeting and connect the tap, and you start the next morning on a dry wall. Assembly is on your list; the printed manual and the film take the order of work in turn, and with a second pair of hands you are done in half a day.

Once the last bay has been rinsed, you take the build down and lay the parts together so we can carry them off. Rinse the tubes briefly where product has landed on them and let them drain before stacking, or else water will sit inside the sections. Counting as you dismantle stops a brace staying behind under the sheeting. What the transport comes to differs by province and is listed at the amounts for delivery and collection.

These towers answer to EN 1004 in load class 3, and that class fixes the deck loading at 200 kg for every square metre. Cleaning brickwork seldom takes you near that limit, except when two people and a full tub of water are up there at once. Water weighs more than it seems: a ten litre bucket feels light until three of them stand side by side. Distribute that load over the boards instead of stacking everything into a single corner of the tower.

The standing agreements hold firm. Put the brakes on first and climb up only afterwards, move the build solely when nobody and nothing is on it, and press the four stabilisers down again firmly after every reposition. When it blows hard you stop this work, if only because the product then drifts towards the neighbours' garden instead of staying on the brick where you have just put it. Waiting for a still morning costs you less than doing that bay twice.

The real danger here lies under your feet. Soapy water makes a platform mirror slick, and you notice that at precisely the moment you step back to look at your work. Wear footwear that keeps its grip, sweep puddles away and leave no brush on the walking line. Keep the zone below you clear as well, because a falling bucket breaks more down there than up here. See also the rules for working at height.