Pointing brickwork? Choose the right scaffold.

The Altrex RS51, built slim at 75 cm, is the obvious model for this job. Pointing advances one panel at a time, which means the build gets nudged along six or seven times in a day. A narrow tower like that you push on your own, even when it has to pass between a fence and the brickwork or squeeze by a hedge you would rather not damage. You can hire a mobile scaffold by the day, and the full range of rolling towers is listed with the dimensions beside each one.

On the deck, pointing brickwork calls for a tub, a bucket of water, a pointing iron, a stiff brush and your raking tool. All of that stands happily on 75 cm, so long as you keep one tub up there at a time rather than your entire stock of sand and cement. Working close to the wall pays off in another way as well: you press the joint home from the shoulder instead of at arm's length, and after half a day your wrist will thank you for it.

If two of you work together, one raking out and the other filling, the wider RS52 and its 135 cm deck become interesting. On that you pass one another without stepping over the tub, and the second person can carry a bucket by the first. For a single elevation on a terraced house that width is usually overkill: more parts to haul round the back, a wider gap to get through, and you lose exactly the nimbleness this work rewards. Judge it on how many people share the deck at once.

The highest joint you intend to touch is what you order against. On two storeys the brickwork usually runs up to just below the eaves or to the underside of a fascia board, and a working height between 6 and 8 metres covers that comfortably. Your deck then finishes somewhere between 4 and 6 metres. Reach above the deck runs to roughly 2 metres, so platform height plus 2 gives the figure you book. The parts list that goes with it appears on the page for a six metre build.

Pointing asks for a little more reach than you would guess by eye. It is not enough to touch the top joint; you need to see it square on. A joint pressed home from below turns hollow or proud, and that difference shows across the whole elevation once you stand back on the pavement. So choose a build that puts the top course at chest height rather than above your crown, and count in a spare section if you are torn between two.

Set your tape on the firm ground under the build, not on a raised terrace, because a garden falling away towards the street can quietly cost you half a metre of reach. A threshold or a sunken light well counts the same way. If only the upper part of the wall is left, because the lower courses were done last year, take the build that suits first floor height and leave the rest of the wall alone. Height you never stand on is only extra parts to carry.

Pointing makes a mess in a way you have to arrange for beforehand. Every running metre of joint gives up a fistful of dry grit, and all of it ends up below, in the border, between the slabs and in the channel along the path. So before assembly starts, lay a long sheet that runs a metre past the feet, and drag it with you as you move a panel along. At the end you roll it up and tip the grit into a sack.

The legs of the build want a flat, solid footing. Along a brick elevation that is often a narrow run of slabs or a gravel bed, and that is precisely where the garden furniture, the water butt and the bike rack live. Clear those away over the whole length you plan to point, not just at the first panel, or you will be shifting things again at every move. Four stabilisers splay outwards and each wants its own patch of clear ground.

Spare a thought for the people around you too. Raking out with a cutter throws up dust and noise, so tell the neighbours, keep windows shut and cover an open rooflight before you start. If the build overhangs the pavement, leave a walking route open and check what your street requires of you. Agree a start time too, since raking from eight in the morning makes for a long fortnight next door. Where the strip under the wall is sloped or has sunk, the piece on uneven ground points the way.

Think in panels rather than square metres. A panel is as wide as your deck and about a metre and a half tall, and raking one out, blowing it clear, damping it and filling it completely takes a practised worker half a day to a full day. The elevation of a two storey terrace easily holds eight to twelve of those. That brings pointing brickwork out at four to six days of hire, and more on a corner house with a flank wall.

Some of those days are days when nothing happens. Fresh joints must not freeze through, and equally must not bake dry in full sun, so a heatwave or a night of frost pushes your programme back without asking. Driving rain against the wall washes a young joint partly out, and then you get to rake it again later. Build a margin into the hire period instead of gambling on a whole week of cooperative weather, and treat that margin as part of the job rather than as slack.

You can do that without worrying, because a long booking is not punished. Day one is charged in full and that is where the weight of the bill sits; every further day on the booking is discounted by 95 per cent, so a full week lands barely above a long weekend. What the rental price comes to for your build is set out on the page of rates per model. Two short bookings back to back always cost more than one continuous run, quite apart from putting the tower up twice.

The 245 cm deck length is your yardstick on this job. From one fixed position you point a band a good two metres wide and roughly a metre and a half tall, and that is exactly the size of a panel. Before you start, decide where the vertical joins between panels fall and put them on a natural line: the edge of a window, a corner, or the top of a soldier course. A seam in the middle of a clean field of brick always shows.

Work a panel from the top down and finish it before the build rolls on. That way the grit from raking lands on joints you still have to do rather than on your fresh work. Mix your mortar the same way every time, with the same bucket and the same measure of water, because a panel mixed wetter dries lighter. You only see that difference days later, when the tower is already several panels further along and the earlier work has dried out completely.

Carry everything a panel needs up with you: a tub you will use inside the hour, water, your pointing iron, a stiff brush and a hand sweeper. Anyone who has to climb down halfway for a forgotten bucket loses precisely the working life of the mix and is left with a visible join. If loose brickwork turns up in between, look at repairing the brickwork first, or the hired tower will stand at the same panel twice.

You do not receive a standing tower but a neatly counted stack of tubes, decks, guard rails and braces. Find that stack a spot clear of the sheet where your grit will land, and keep the way through to the back garden open if that is where you mean to begin. Orders logged before 15:00 on any working day go out with the next working day round. Which day that is, and when it all goes again, you specify yourself.

Choose the delivery day with the forecast beside you. Pointing starts with raking out, and a light shower is survivable, but filling joints through a wet week is not. Better to have the parts a day early than a day late: you assemble, hang your sheet, empty the border and start fresh on your first panel next morning. Putting it up is your own work, using the supplied manual and a video that walks through the order step by step.

Once the last panel is filled you take the tower apart and lay the parts together where our van can reach them. Wait until your fresh joints feel dry before you do. Knock the decks out and brush the sand off before stacking, because mortar that has dried onto a deck board is next to impossible to shift afterwards. The charge for carriage within your province is stated on the the page of carriage charges, VAT included and with nothing added on later.

EN 1004 sorts this type of build into load class 3, and that class lets a square metre of deck carry 200 kg, which is where your limit sits. On pointing you reach that sooner than on painting, because sand, cement and water together weigh a good deal and your cutter and hand tools come on top. So set the tub in the middle of the deck rather than in a corner against the rail, and take empty buckets down with you at every move instead of leaving them up there.

The grit thrown out by raking behaves like ball bearings under your soles and makes the deck treacherous. Sweep after every panel, even if it costs a few minutes at each position. Wear a dust mask and glasses as well, because a mortar cutter blows dust straight up the wall and therefore into your face. Brake the castors before you climb, and only move the hired tower when nobody is left standing on it. Gloves matter too, since a raking tool that snatches will take your knuckles into the brickwork.

Underneath the build is no place to be on this job. Grit comes down continuously, and sometimes half a brick that the cutter has taken with it. Keep that zone empty, fence it off if children are playing in the garden, and let nobody walk beneath you while you are raking. If it is blowing hard, stop cutting: the dust then goes everywhere at once. The rest of the agreements are gathered in the overview of safe work at height.