Lobster wrote:
Tim Watts wrote:
On Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:31:18 +0100, "The Medway Handyman"
wibbled:

Tim Watts wrote:
On Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:18:08 +0100, "Dave Liquorice"
wibbled:

Need to repaint the outside of the house, the old masonary paint is
flaking off, though some bits are still sound. Manually scraping or
wire brushing two windowless, 8m wide, two storey gable ends and
another 10m wall doesn't appeal...

I'm thinking that a compressed air driven needle gun is the way to go
but not sure how vicious (or not) such a device is. The substrate is
stone and the pointing may well need looking at and chasing out in
places before repainting.

So is the needle gun a good idea or is there something better out
there?
Would a pressure washer work?
Even a big bugger would only take the flakey stuff off.

Isn't that's all that's needed - he's repainting it?

I'd say so - I originally bought my pressure washer for exactly this
purpose (crappy masonry old paint over crappy older pebbledash). TBH
the pressure washer was too powerful in that it tended to bring off the
render too... cearly that's shot and ideally wants redoing; however
pressure wash/stabiliser/Sandtex treatment worked miracles.

PS - something else I thought of - *against* the idea of using a
pressure washer: when I did our house, the entire garden (probably the
neighbours' too) was filled with flakes of white. It went everywhere,
all over the flowerbeds too, and probably took about a year or two until
all traces had finally disappeared. *She* was not a happy bunny.

David