Fitting brick slips? Choose the right scaffold.

Slips go up from the bottom, and on two storeys the pleasantest way to do that is off the Altrex RS51, whose base measures 75 cm across. On a slip clad front the width you build to is settled at the narrowest gate on your route. Boxes of slips, a tub of adhesive and a jerry can of water reach the back of most houses through a side gate or along a path, and a wider build simply stops there. The model overview in our mobile scaffold hire range pairs each width with its reaches.

A deck of 245 cm holds more clutter on this job than it would on painting work. Tub, notched trowel, spirit level, rubber mallet, an opened box and a cutter for infill pieces fill that length quickly. Even so the slim version suits the work: you finish the wall at arm's length and shuffle sideways with whichever row is under your hands. The open box goes at the far end, the tub sits right beside your feet, and the rest of the boards stay clear.

You only reach for the wide RS52 at 135 cm when somebody passes slips up from below while you stay aloft, or when two of you work the same panel together. You save climbing, but you are left with a build that has to be forced through every opening, which disappoints the moment a garden gate sits on your route. Working alone, the slim version is calmer and quicker. What a board may carry is explained under loading and weight on a tower.

Your highest point here is the closing course of slips, and it rarely ends at the gutter; usually the panel stops at a capping trim or a profile sitting just under it. Reach that comfortably and the reach to book falls between 6 and 8 metres, the deck landing around four to six. The sum behind it is simple: deck height plus roughly two metres of reach from your shoulders. At eight metres of reach you see which build that takes and how many boards come with it.

Your zero point is wherever the castors finally come to rest, and not the threshold of your front door. Slips usually start just above ground level or on a sill course, and you divide the rows downwards from the top so the closing course stays a whole slip. If your drive falls away towards the pavement, the build stands lower than it did on paper and you genuinely need that extra metre up top for the closing course. Measure on site, never off a drawing.

Hiring tight gets paid back in the finished look. Work the upper rows with arms above your head and you press unevenly, so the joint width wanders row by row; sanding that out is impossible and cutting it out is not. Then that last half metre still costs you an extra stand, which is half a working day gone. Torn between two reaches on a wall with a storey above the ground floor, go up a lift rather than down one.

The strip along the bottom of the wall gets busier on this job than on any other kind of facade work. Four extended stabilisers live there, so does your tub of mixed adhesive, and so do the pallets you would rather not trundle about at every new stand. Keep a flat lane free along the wall that is wider on all sides than the build itself, and park the pallet beside your working area instead of squarely on the track you will roll along.

Before delivery day, look at where the castors will land. Block paving, concrete or a compacted gravel path carry weight fine; a border that softens after a shower does not. Watch the step between terrace and garden level, and everything that habitually stands against a house: water butt, cycle rack, outside tap and the one drain cover sitting exactly under a stabiliser foot. Clear that away first. On sloping ground, the approach to uneven surfaces helps.

Set aside room for your mixing bucket and your cutting station as well. Infill pieces and corner slips get sized with a diamond blade, and that fine stone dust travels on the breeze, so do not put the bench directly under a neighbour's open window. If part of the build lands on public pavement, leave a walking route beside it and ask the council what is allowed there. Sort that out the week before you hire for fitting brick slips, not on the morning of your first adhesive day.

Once the bottom rows are down and your spacing is right, the adhesive work moves faster than most people expect. The days go before and after: checking and priming the background, marking out the rows, sizing corners and reveals and finally cutting all those infill pieces. For the front of an ordinary terraced house that lands you on three to four hire days, even though the tub is open for only part of that time and the sticking itself goes along briskly enough once you find the rhythm.

Pointing counts as a separate round here, and it is precisely that which stretches the period you book. Joints can only be filled once the adhesive bed behind the slips has cured, and how long that takes hangs on temperature and on how wet the wall was. In the meantime you leave the build standing, brakes on and stabilisers out, so afterwards you walk the same stands back along the wall. Erecting twice for one elevation is wasted time.

Happily that waiting costs little. The opening twenty four hours carry the full tariff, and on each following day of your period 95 per cent of the price falls away, which makes slack for rain or a stubborn reveal barely noticeable in the total. So put your end date well behind the pointing round rather than on the afternoon the last slip goes into the bed. To sharpen that estimate, the guide to hire days per job helps.

A deck of 245 cm gives you a bay of a good two metres per stand. So do not set out your rows stand by stand; mark the whole division across the full elevation in one go, before the first slip touches the bed. Let the second stand wander by a couple of millimetres and the joint width visibly loses step where two stands meet. A line drawn on the wall stays put; a line on your deck board travels with you and helps nobody.

The open time of your adhesive decides how large a combed area may be. Never comb out more than you can cover inside that window, and keep the patches deliberately smaller in sun or in a drying wind. Corners and reveals come first: corner slips set the line for everything between them, and reveals around windows and doors need infill pieces you would far rather select dry than wet. Only once those fixed points stand do you fill the panels between them, so plan the corner stands into your day before the open runs.

Finally, always carry slips up from several boxes at once. Shade varies from pack to pack, and emptying one pack before opening the next prints that change into the wall as a panel of another colour, right on the seam between two stands. Shuffle them together below and load your carrying box mixed. Fitting brick slips over a whole elevation is paced by the adhesive rather than by your own arms. Want to give the wall a water repellent treatment afterwards, plan it inside the same hire period.

What gets dropped off is not a finished tower but a counted bundle of tubes, boards, braces and guardrails. Point out in advance where that bundle may land, because on this job your wall strip goes on pallets, tubs and a cutting bench. A corner of the drive you are not using serves better than the ground your boxes will need. Order before the 15:00 cut off on any weekday and the bundle stands on your ground when the next working day opens for business.

Arrival and departure dates go in the form yourself, and on a slip clad wall you match them to the thermometer rather than to the calendar. Adhesive and pointing mortar dislike frost, so look further ahead than your starting day alone. Better still, have the bundle brought a day before you begin: you assemble without rushing, hang your chalk line ready and start setting out first thing the next morning with nothing left hanging over you. Build it with the step by step assembly guide propped open beside you on a board.

With the pointing finished and everything taken apart, we come and fetch the load; you stack it complete and ready where the van can reach it. Anyone who would rather drive may collect a set by appointment at no charge from Zeeburgerpad 89, 1019 AD Amsterdam, though the longest pieces beat most cars and a trailer becomes essential. That is the practical reason people hire a mobile scaffold with transport included. Bringing and fetching is priced per province and listed with VAT in the delivery cost overview.

A deck board carries two hundred kilos per square metre, a limit written into EN 1004 as load class 3. On slips that is not a paper number. A full box, a tub of mixed adhesive and a jerry can of water together weigh more than most people guess, and if somebody steps up beside you to pass material along you sit close to the line. So work with half boxes and accept one more trip up and down the ladder.

Brake the castors before your weight goes onto the first rung, and never roll anything while material or a person is still on the boards. If the wind gets up, stop: a closed elevation catches plenty of it and a tub starting to slide will take you with it. After each move, check all four stabilisers press firmly onto the ground again, because on block paving one of them always settles a little. There is more on this at the rules for work at height.

What can fall on this job is the slip itself. A piece of fired clay sliding off the edge lands hard, and an angle grinder on a taut lead will drag itself off your boards given half a chance. Tape a line off or set a cone out while anyone walks along the wall, and keep that zone empty. Wipe spilled adhesive away before it grabs: a cured lump makes your footing slippery and is still there on collection day.