Window Washers Work in Rarefied Air

Andy Bierman's (pictured left) office has the best view in the city. What separates his tableau from those of the top floor-dwelling high-powered executives downtown is simple: a pane of glass. Bierman has been washing high-rise windows for Bob Popp Building Services for eight years, after picking up with the crew following a short-lived career in criminal justice. "This is just more exciting," Bierman said as he adjusted the mounds of rope on the roof of the Denver Newspaper Agency building April 2. "It was the best move I ever made." Crews from Bob Popp clean nearly every high-rise window in the state, including Republic Plaza, the Qwest building and Wells Fargo "cash register" building twice, and sometimes three times, per year, Bierman said. Most people think that to be a window washer, you must be some kind of daredevil, but Bierman said that isn't exactly how it goes down once you're on the building. "We use so much equipment and it gets replaced so often that sometimes I feel safer up in the air than standing on the roof," he said. A building like the DNA building, 101 W. Colfax, takes about 295 man-hours to clean, or roughly 2 1/2 weeks for a two-man crew, Bierman said. "The window washing is easy, it's moving all the stuff around on the roof that takes the time," said Andres Sifuentes, a Bob Popp supervisor assigned to the DNA job. "But it's not speed that's important - it's efficiency." An average day for a window washer runs from 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in the spring and summer, to avoid the afternoon heat made worse by the reflecting glass, during which time each man should wash about 250 windows. Working on the other side of so many windows over the years has resulted in some interesting moments. "I've seen some stuff," Bierman said with a smile, "but mostly we just end up scaring a lot of people." "We did get accidentally flashed at a radio station once," Sifuentes added. "She covered up pretty quickly." As for what is in the buckets, Sifuentes said, "Everyone thinks there is something special in there. It's just soap and water, whatever's on sale."