Friday Night Window Cleaning News

Glistening roof for tower: Copper roof to be surpassed as tallest ceiling in city Skylon's copper top. It's not just the autumn leaves that have turned from green to bronze. A recent makeover at the Skylon Tower has added some new lustre to a Niagara Falls icon. The top of the 520-foot tower now gleams like a shiny new penny, following a refinishing and sealing of its copper roof. Its look could last for decades, said the owner of a company that did the work in September. "What we're doing is restoring the copper to close to its original appearance, polishing it and buffing it up and putting a sealant on it," said Don Searle, the owner of Koala Building Maintenance. The Niagara Falls company that specializes in maintenance on high-rise buildings. It does maintenance work and window- washing for most of the high-rise hotels in the city.
The company had a dozen workers on the project from the end of August until the end of September refurbishing the copper roof on top of the 43-year-old observation tower. They stripped away the oxidization -the scientific term for rust -that had built up on the roof since the 520-foot tower was built in the mid- 1960s. Working high atop the iconic tower was an unusual job, though Searle said his employees enjoyed the view. "It's very relaxing -the best view in town." Despite the height, Searle said it was a very safe job because his company hired an engineer to prepare a work plan to keep workers safe in the unusual work conditions. They were working about fifty feet higher than the tower's observation deck level. The green appearance now stripped away had evolved over the years because the copper was exposed to rain and moisture in the air. It's the same process that gives the roofs on the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa their greenish look. When copper is left unsealed, the shine will turn to brown within a few months - think of how fast a penny loses its lustre. After years of being exposed to the elements, copper will turn green -think of the penny you find on the sidewalk. But the Skylon roof was treated with a sealant that should preserve the brighter copper colour for years to come, Searle said. People began calling the Skylon almost as soon as work began. As soon as 18-inch squares of green started to be stripped away, people began asking what was going on.
"We're taking down the 40 years of oxidization of that roof," Carr said. For more than four decades, the Skylon has been the tallest structure in Niagara Falls. At 524 feet from base to tip, the Skylon Tower is one of the tallest structures in Canada. The tower was built on a 13-acre site overlooking the falls at a cost of $12 million at the time. It opened to the public in 1965.
There are only about two dozen buildings in Canada taller than 490 feet (150 metres).
Most of them are office towers in downtown Toronto, including the 72-storey, 950-foot tall First Canadian Place. Toronto's CN Tower remains Canada's tallest freestanding structure at 1,815 feet and five inches. George Yerich has owned the Skylon since 1988. In the past 10 years, several high-rise hotels in the Fallsview area, including the Hilton, Embassy Suites and Sheraton Fallsview, each at 36 storeys have been erected. But the expansion of the Hilton Niagara, currently under construction on Fallsview Boulevard, will be 58 storeys. Once it's finished, the top of the new hotel will be higher than the Skylon's observation deck. Canadian Niagara Hotels has city hall's approval to build a 59-storey hotel tower on Falls Avenue, near the site of the old Oneida Tower that stands over Casino Niagara's site.

Team takes on new heights in rappelling training: CJ David peered up at the top of the Equitable Center in downtown Salem on Monday afternoon and watched Salem Fire Capt. Joel Malstrom rappel down the side of the building. "That's cool," said the boy, who turned 8 years old Monday. "I want to do that when I get older." Malstrom was training with the department's technical-rescue team, which includes 21 members, said Division Chief Reed Godfrey, who oversees safety and special operations.The team trains for high and low-angle rope rescue operations, confined spaces and vehicle extrication. Rappelling off the Equitable Center's 80-foot-tall roof was ideal for firefighters to learn from if they were ever sent to rescue, say, a painting crew or window-washing crew stranded by broken scaffolding, Godfrey said. Some of the workers who were repainting the outside of the Equitable Center stopped to watched the firefighters practice.
"Our painters are quite thrilled that they're being proactive in saving them," said Susan Miller, the Equitable Center building manager.

Memorial night for tragic young dad: A Memorial night is being held for a young dad who died after falling from ladders at work. Window cleaner Graham Clark, 21, from Tyne Dock, South Shields, fell 15ft at a house in Laygate, South Shields, on May 31. He suffered serious head injuries and spent almost a week hooked up to a life support machine, which was switched off after tests showed he was no longer responding. His fiancée, Katie McGovern, 18, was pregnant at the time and recently gave birth to their second child, Rhianna, a sister for 11-month-old Mason. A friend of the family is now organising a night in his honour at Whiteleas Social Club, Oswald Street, South Shields, on Friday, November 7, from 7pm to 11pm. Tickets are £4, available on the door, and funds raised will be donated to a charity of the family's choice.Dad Michael, 50, said at the time of this son's death: "Graham might not be around any more, but he will never ever be forgotten."
A mustached foreigner looking for love in New York City sounds like it could be the plot to Borat. Pussyfoot, the new comedy from first time writer/director Dusan Sekulovic, has already drawn comparisons to the 2006 comedy. This feature, however, began shooting in late 2005, a full year before Borat put Kazhakstan on the map. In Pussyfoot, resident alien Irwin (Dusan Sekulovic, also starring in the film) is looking for girls. Not women. Girls. Preferably Jewish ones with one leg. We find him at the beginning of the film pining over having business cards with an important sounding title in order to attract these girls, with something like Executive Production Manager (Irwin is actually a window cleaner for Transparency Inc.). He ends up with a box of misprinted cards (instead reading Produce Manager), and it's back to square zero in finding someone to love him for him in this "second coming-of-age" story.

It took Guinn a year-and-a-half to learn the cobbling trade, but he has also taken on another one, something he initially learned as a teenager: window washing. "It's been a good sideline," he said, acknowledging a school of thought which says achieving streakless windows amounts to something of an art. "Some people say it is. I just say it takes a lot of practice." This day, the tools of his window-washing trade were outside in the bed of his pickup truck. Meanwhile, the space inside his place of primary employment was crowded with the other goods of his livelihood, including his tools, hats like the one he was wearing, belts, polish, even moccasins for folks who prefer that form of footwear. Looking around, Guinn pronounced himself satisfied with his surroundings. As for the future ... "This is probably what I'll be doing," he said with a smile, "until I'm not."

15-Second Pitch-Bluebird Window Cleaning: Business: Bluebird Window Cleaning. Number of employees: Two. Contact: David Vogeli. The company's pitch: Bluebird Window Cleaning is an authorized dealer of the restoration process that removes moisture and condensation from in between window panes. We can save customers up to 70 percent over the cost of window replacement while eliminating foggy window problems and restoring windows' original R-value, the measure of resistance to heat flow.
3M Earnings Call, Third Quarter 2008: Safety, Security and Protection Services sales rose 27% to $1 billion with the recent acquisition of Aearo Technologies contributing 19 points of growth. Organic sales was 9%, led by growth in personal protection solutions, protective window films, and cleaning solutions for commercial buildings. Operating income rose 42% while margins increased 2.3 points year-on-year to 22.8%. Sales were strong across the globe, led by double-digit sales increases in the U.S. and Asia Pacific.

Cleland family compete at Idol 2008 final: A 12 year old school boy and a singing window cleaner from the same family in Cleland have snatched a spot in the regional final of the nationwide Idol 2008 competition. St Aidan's High School pupil Ryan Hardie (pictured) and his uncle Samuel Pratt (39) battled their way through auditions back in September and now they are in with a shot of reaching the grand final which could see them win a recording contract to release a single.Ryan impressed judges with his rendition of the Bob Seger track Old Time Rock And Roll and Samuel opted for swing classic Fly Me To The Moon by Frank Sinatra to bag a place in the regional final.Now the singers are practicing hard before they have to face the judges all over again at Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall on November 2.

A Warwick-based window washing and blind-cleaning service won the third annual Orange County Chamber of Commerce Business Idol Award for 2008. DirtyBlinds.com is owned and operated by the husband-and-wife team of Pete and Tammy Artusa. The firm has been in business less than a year, but beat 14 other local businesses for the award. The Orange County Business Idol competition was held as part of the Chamber’s Expo Business Trade Show at Anthony’s Pier 9 in New Windsor. Runner-up businesses included Wiles Chiropractic of Marlboro and Lippincott Manor of Wallkill. The Artusas will receive a marketing makeover for their business valued at more than $12,000. The grand prize includes a written business plan, design and printing of a new trifold brochure, free chamber membership for 2009, free booth at the 2009 expo, miscellaneous public relations and advertising consulting, and free advertising on radio and television.

Bugs 'at the cutting edge of solar technology.' Queensland researchers say insect wings could hold the key to better solar panels and self-cleaning surfaces. The researchers from Griffith University's scanning probe microscopy department have used advanced microscopes to observe and measure structures on the wings of about 200 common insects. They recreated the nano-structures - measuring in the millionths of a millimetre - on man-made materials such as plastic to either repel or attract water. Research leader Greg Watson said creating a surface that adhered to anything or a surface that nothing adheres to was one of the ultimate goals of material science. "Insects that lay their eggs in water such as dragon flies have super-hydrophobic (super water-repelling) structures on their wings in order to repel water," Dr Watson said. "This enables them to skim close to water bodies and fly off dry. "Others, such as certain termites, have super-hydrophilic (super water-attracting) structures that attract and adhere to water. "This ensures that when the insect comes into close proximity with a suitable damp nesting site the insect is immobilised at this location, forcing it to detach its wings, find a mate and nest."
He said while insect wings appeared smooth, they actually feature a landscape of highly specialised nano-sized structures, the depth, proximity and size and shape of which determine their special ability. Researchers have since managed to take nano-scale imprints of the wing structures to duplicate the structures on polymers to create materials with the same properties as the wing. "The possible applications of this research are enormous and varied," Dr Watson said. "If we could make fabrics with super hydrophilic and hydrophobic patterning, we could use these to collect and channel water from the air. "Self-cleaning water-repellent coatings on ships would save a fortune in fuel costs and minimise the use of toxic antifouls, and of course anti-reflective properties could be applied to everything from window glass and spectacles to solar cells and stealth aircraft. "Nature has provided us with a free proven technology that has been finely tuned through evolution over millions of years to aid species survival."