Cleaning Windows in the 21st Century

When faced with a building with dirty windows, cleaners need to assess all kinds of variables to come up with a plan of action. Some buildings are particularly challenging with regards to height, shape, the situation at ground level and the overall design and engineering of the structure.

Every day is different for a window cleaning company that has trained staff to work with all the tools available. They have a range of equipment, from the most mundane to the highly unusual. Not every option is right for every job, and some jobs require an unlikely combination of several methods.

When working with unusual buildings, there’s access to consider as well as safety. Some tools may be more economical to use than others, and some may just not work. Often, a fairly simple job can be complicated by difficult access (for example, the inability to get a cherry picker close to the side of the building). And some buildings and structures have such intricate shapes that they’d damage them unless they used abseilers to clean.

The following are the different equipment and methods used in window cleaning tall buildings:

Water Fed Pole

A ladder-less window cleaning service up to five and six storeys high. This ladder-less cleaning uses the latest technology, incorporating carbon fiber and water-fed poles with filtered water. This system can be used internally, up to three storeys, and externally, up to seven storeys, with no squeegeeing or chemicals needed. Safety issues are dramatically reduced when cleaning office buildings as no scaffolding equipment or ladders are required.

Cherry Picker

Cherry pickers are simple platforms that can be lifted to different heights by means of a hydraulic system. Also known as a boom lift or basket crane, a cherry picker can be utilized for a number of different tasks, not just picking fruit. Some lift rental models require two people to operate the machinery, but many modern designs allow one person to control the hydraulic system using controls that are mounted on the platform.

Window Cleaning Using Cradles

Using a cradle system to clean windows can be an effective way to maintain a high rise building where other window cleaning methods are not possible.

Specialist access equipment

For windows that are more difficult to reach the use of specialist access equipment will be necessary. Examples include rope access, travelling ladders and gantries on the premises exterior or suspended access equipment (SAE).

Rope access

The advantage of using rope access methods lies mainly in the speed with which workers can get to or from difficult locations and then carry out their work, often with minimal impact on other operations.

Abseil Equipment

Most people are familiar with the cradles used on large offices. However, most buildings don’t have them and sometimes it’s not possible to fit them. How then to clean the windows? The only safe way of doing it is to use fall arrest equipment which allows window cleaning abseilers access to the external face of a window from inside or on top of a building.