kev007 wrote:
I'm planning to paint the gable end of my Victorian terrace with
siliconce water repellent to stop penetrating damp. Anyone any
experience of this?


Yes, lots, and the main thing that causes it is cracked pointing...don't
waste money on a fast cure like waterseal unless the pointing is 100%
perfect as it will very likely make it worse.
Water hits the brickwork and flows downwards, obviously.
some of it soaks into the face of the brick, so during light rain, hardly
any will run down the wall - if the pointing has cracked and failed in the
horizontal joints, the water seeps through, soaking the inner brickwork
behind your plaster.
If you apply a waterseal, *no* water will soak into the brick face and all
of it will come through the mortar - get it repointed first and allow a few
weeks for the mortar to completely cure and for most of the retained water
to evaporate, then apply the waterseal, although it probably won't be
required.

I'm looking at some repellent from Sovereign which is meant to be
good. Best applied with a coarse droplet low pressure spray.If I'm
hiring one of these from HSS, what exactly am I looking for?

Any other tips would be great.

As the others have suggested, a garden sprayer would suffice - you don't
have to do it with a sprayer at all, it's just that more will get wasted
than if you do it with a brush and then you'll have to go and buy more,
hence the reccomendation.
The consistency of it is similar to turps, IE, like **** - if you do it on a
windy day with a sprayer, it'll be all over the place