Maintaining pointing? Choose the right scaffold.

For maintaining pointing on a two-storey home the narrow Altrex RS51 is the better fit. A width of 75 cm lets you past everything, and on a maintenance round that weighs heavier than on any other job at a wall, because you cover the whole elevation and usually turn the corner as well. A frame like that slides along a garden path, between the bay window and the hedge and past the shed without emptying a border first. What stands ready is listed in the hire range of mobile scaffolds.

Up on the deck you never miss the extra width. Little travels up on an inspection and patching round: a scratch nail or a worn screwdriver, a hand brush, your phone for the photographs and a tub of mixed mortar for the spots you come across. What you do notice is the deck length of 245 cm, since that is how much wall you have within reach per position. Hiring wider mostly buys you more components to carry through the gate and store somewhere.

The wide RS52 only enters the picture when two of you work together, one scratching while the other fills, or when a bucket of mortar has to go up as well. For a round where you mainly look, note and close the odd hole, that is overkill, and you pay back in carrying what you gain in deck area. On most ordinary homes the decision is quickly made, and the narrow frame wins on access every time. Sizes are compared in the overview of scaffold dimensions.

The highest point of this job is nearly always the top row of joints, tight under the eaves or behind the gutter. That is where the brickwork catches the most driving rain and that is where you see least from the lawn. Your measurement therefore ends at that row and not at the head of your bedroom window. Two storeys of maintaining pointing therefore ask for a build between 6 and 8 metres, which is the figure you pass on at the booking.

From that reach you count back to the build underneath it. Your deck ends up at something like four to six metres, since the height of the platform and about 2 metres of reach above it together put your hands at the top row. The nought point of your measurement lies at the castors, not at the front door. If the back garden lies half a metre below the pavement, the rear elevation needs a taller build than the front while the brickwork is the same height.

Hiring short feels thrifty and costs you the metres that matter. Come up just under the top row with your scratch nail and you either skip it or judge it through binoculars from across the road. Your damage map then holds an assumption instead of an observation, which is the one thing maintenance has no use for. The joints under the eaves fail first as a rule, so a top row left unchecked hides the defect you came for. How that build goes together is covered by the guide to an eight metre working height.

Unlike a repair, maintaining pointing does not keep you in two places but takes you everywhere. During the round the set-up travels the full front elevation, round the corner to the side and usually to the back as well. So walk the whole route before you hire a mobile scaffold, instead of looking only at your first standing position. Where the brick path stops and the lawn begins, the ground under your castors changes, and with it the way you level the tower and lock it down again.

At its foot the scaffold asks for more room than the frame itself occupies, because the stabilisers reach out at an angle. On an ordinary house that runs into something almost everywhere. That means the water butt beneath the downpipe, a hose reel by the tap, the bike rack leaning on the brickwork, planters on the pavement or the low wall around the front garden. Shift that lot before the components arrive, since mid round you will never feel like it.

Look at what is growing up the wall too. Ivy, an espaliered fruit tree or a trained hydrangea sits right over the joints you want to judge, and that greenery has to be freed or removed before the scratch test starts. Where part of your route sinks into the grass after a shower, put track mats or thick planks under the wheels and check the level again after each move. Ground that is bumpy or falls away is the subject of the article on an uneven surface.

Maintaining pointing right round an average house fills two to three days. Count on three or four standing positions per elevation per storey, and per position on about half an hour of scratching and photographing, plus the time for the spots you close straight away. The front is usually finished first because you build from the pavement there. Round the back it mounts up, if only because every component has to come through the gate. Count that carrying as half a session.

There are pauses in such a period that you cannot make up. Clean a bay down with water and a brush and it has to dry before you can judge colour and adhesion fairly, since wet mortar always looks sounder than it is. Rain stops the scratching altogether, and a wall soaked overnight is only fit to look at later in the morning. So do not fill your last hire day to the brim and check the forecast each evening.

The way the days count works in your favour here. The full amount is due for the opening 24 hours and no longer, while every hire day beyond it is cut by 95 per cent, so a spare day held for bad weather is barely felt. Fixing one extra day now saves a second delivery later. Choose the collection date too sharply and half your wall stays unchecked. What a period comes to is shown on the page of hire rates.

Maintaining pointing from a deck 245 cm long leaves you a good two metres of brickwork to cover from each position. Treat that piece as a bay and work through it methodically: start at the top, drop row by row and set your scratch nail into the mortar every few joints. If everything is still sound you hear and feel that at once in the resistance. Where the mortar crumbles away or the point sinks in without force, that spot belongs on your map.

Make that noting a damage map you keep rather than a loose scrap of paper. Photograph every bay before you move on, with a window frame or a downpipe in shot so you can see later where you stood, and chalk a number on the plinth beneath it. After a few hire days you own a series of images to set beside next round's photographs, and only in that comparison does a spot show whether it is really going backwards.

Cleaning belongs to the round, but with judgement. Green growth and dust come off with a soft brush and low water pressure, so that you can see what you are judging. A hard jet blows old lime mortar straight out of the wall, and then maintaining pointing creates the very damage it came to prevent. Keep the open perpends at the bottom clear and leave them open, since they drain the moisture running down behind the outer leaf.

You choose the day the scaffold pulls up and the day it goes again. With a booking settled on a working day before 15:00, the components are on your pavement the following working day. That plans nicely for a maintenance round, because you want to start at the head of a dry run of days. Otherwise you lose the first morning waiting for the brickwork to dry off after the shower that went over in the night. Look at the forecast, then pick the date.

A set of loose parts comes off the van, counted item by item, so no ready made structure. You put it together yourself with the manual that comes along and the video in which the steps are demonstrated; with two people this build stands within an hour at this height. Point out a place in advance where the bundles can go: a drive, a strip of pavement or the path beside the house, close to your first standing position.

As soon as the round is done and your damage map is complete, you take the tower apart and lay all the components back in the same place, counted through once more. We come to collect them on the date you picked when reserving, so there is no driving for you and no trailer to borrow. If that morning you spot one more bay you want to check, it is better to move the collection date than to rush the last few metres of wall.

On the deck, load class 3 out of the EN 1004 standard applies: a spread load of 200 kg on each square metre. On a maintenance round you stay well under that, because you, a tub of mortar and some hand tools weigh little together. If two of you go up because a whole run has to be filled, add the weight of the tub and the full buckets before you start and spread the load across the deck.

The brake goes on the wheels as soon as the set-up is in place, and it stays on for as long as somebody is above. You move it with an empty deck and nobody aboard, even when the next bay is only two metres along and it seems not to matter. In strong wind you postpone the round; a scratch test is not work worth taking a risk for, since that wall will still be standing there the same next week.

The risks of this job sit mainly in what comes down. Pick a smeared perpend open again and grit falls loose, straight onto the path where somebody has just come to see how you are getting on. Tape off that strip below and warn the neighbours when you are close to the boundary. Sweep wet sand off the deck after cleaning, because it turns greasy under your soles. Further points are gathered in the rules on working at height.