Window Cleaning News & Video

A window washer near the Oak Bay/ Victoria border narrowly escaped injury this morning when a car plunged through the second storey of a building. Around 10:30 a.m. a 79-year-old man drove his grey Toyota Matrix over two parkade curbs through the glass at 1625 Oak Bay Ave., a three-story commercial building, and onto the street, said Const. Peter Lane. The car plunged into a concrete wall and flipped onto its roof. A window cleaner was on the ladder cleaning third floor windows adjacent to the exit site. “Had he been positioned just a few feet over we would have had a fatality,” said Lane. The driver was taken to hospital with what police say appear to be non-life-threatening injuries. Police say it appears the accident was the result of driver error and confusion.

Halloween trick is no treat for shop owners left to clear mess: A West Port shop owner targeted by Halloween vandals has slammed a police campaign aimed at cutting down on anti-social behaviour, writes Kenny Paterson. Operation Gremlin was launched last week with Lothian and Borders police officers asking shopkeepers not to sell eggs or flour to youngsters. But despite this, six Selkirk shops on Market Place and West Port awoke on Sunday morning to find they had been splattered with both substances. And one of the victims, Hazel Cowburgh, owner of The Needle Point, believes the high-profile campaign had encouraged the attackers rather than scared them off. Mrs Cowburgh suggested footage from a CCTV camera situated on West Port should be used to expose the trick or treat culprits. She added: “Why hasn’t footage from the camera been circulated to newspapers by the police? I’m sure the people who threw the eggs and flour would not do so again if they knew they had been caught on camera.”
A police spokeswoman said they have received no complaints about the shop attacks in Selkirk, and labelled Operation Gremlin – which also covers Guy Fawkes celebrations – as a success. She said: “Obviously it has been distressing for the shopkeepers involved but this was a one-off and as it was not reported it must be regarded as a minimal incident. “The campaign was made high profile by the media interest, not by the police. Whether this triggered these attacks in Selkirk we will not know. “Police officers were able to positively interact with youngsters during the operation and although we can’t stop every act of anti-social behaviour, we believe the numbers of calls received will be fewer than last year’s Halloween period.”

Cheltenham regulars strip for charity: With only a carefully placed bar to cover their modesty, at least it's all for a good cause. Bar staff and drinkers at the Five Alls pub, in Bath Road, Cheltenham, are following in the footsteps of Calendar Girls and getting naked in aid of the Psoriasis Association. They have stripped off in memory of pub regular Martyn Holder who died from a psoriasis-related disease. Several pictures for the 2010 calendar have already been shot at the Leckhampton pub, with the final photographs being taken at the end of this week. Close friend Jonny Hart, 41, said he was quite happy to peel off his clothes for the cause. The window cleaner can be seen exposing his derriere as he stretches to clean the pub's windows. Jonny said: "It was a great laugh. I didn't feel nervous because it was just a bunch of guys doing something for their mate. Martyn was a very close friend of mine. I'd known him since I was 17 years old.

Mourning the loss of soaping: Three days after Halloween and around town the windows don't look any cleaner than they did the last day of October. I guess kids really don't soap windows anymore. As the owner of more windows than Gayle can get me to regularly wash, I guess I should be grateful that this is one Halloween tradition that's gone the way of the stolen outhouse and free candy X-rays at the local ER.
The soap had to be Ivory. Softer than Dial or Lifebuoy, when dragged across plate glass, even on a chill autumn evening, it left a nice, thick, legible white line with no crumbling. No question, if you were going to go window soaping, the soap of the pros was Ivory. And there was the memorable year when someone took time and effort to write out a description of a cheerleader's alleged indiscretion in some intimate detail across most of the bank window, a civic embarrassment that remained legible for several days since the chronicler chose to use paraffin wax. Paraffin, on the other hand, demanded hours of scraping with a single-edge razor blade and even then "yer dum" could be discerned in the frost and fog until it was finally vaporized by the July sunshine. Wiser than we usually credited them, grown ups took steps to defend themselves and their windows against the annual assault by canning wax.
Downtown, store owners slopped their windows with a rich soap solution that kept wax from sticking and washed off in a jiffy before the start of business the next day. Throughout October, Milton Graf simply wouldn't sell wax to kids - at least not to me. With a particular target fixed in my mind, I did once attempt the never fail "Mom sent me" end run ... What worked for cigarettes didn't make the grade when the grocer sensed his display window might be at risk. What kind of jam was she making, he wanted to know, just four months after the last strawberry had been picked? He took my money, put the Parowax back on the shelf and got me a double-size bar of Ivory with the suggestion I give it to my mother to wash my mouth out for telling fibs. I left with the soap, but he was on my list.

Hope fades of finding missing Padiham man alive: The family of an Alzheimer’s sufferer who has been missing for 19 days say they have all but given up hope of finding him alive. Jesse Shaw, 83, was last seen leaving his home of 18 years in Ingham Street at around 4.30pm on October 17. Only hours earlier he had been seen “laughing and joking” at his grandson’s 18th birthday party, the last time many of his family saw him. Police, family, friends, and even total strangers have all helped comb the countryside of East Lancashire over the last two-and-a-half weeks, but they have failed to find Jesse. Jesse, who has suffered from Alzheimer’s for four years, has spent all his life in Padiham and worked down the pits before starting his own window cleaning business, as well as playing for Padiham Football Club. Julie said: “He was really well known in the town, mostly because of his business.

Keeping it local could be key to surviving crunch in Ludlow: At a time when many shops and businesses are fighting for their lives in Ludlow, one of the town’s best-loved centres of entertainment is plotting a course for others to follow. Ludlow shopkeepers are in many cases looking for salvation from the run-up to Christmas, which for some may be a make or break time. Local tradesmen are also employed where possible to carry out work on the building and also for maintenance tasks such as window cleaning.

Pressure Cleaner Injured In Chemical Explosion: ROYAL PALM BEACH, Florida: A pressure cleaner was injured after some chemicals he was mixing exploded. The incident occurred at about 11 a.m. outside 128 Derby Lane. Fire-rescue crews inspected the chemicals that were used at the time of the explosion. Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue District Chief Robin Herring said the owner of Kevin's Pressure Cleaning was mixing chemicals in a 5-gallon bucket when he was injured. Herring said it was possible the man was smoking at the time. "We don't know whether the chemicals mixed caused the reaction or the actual fumes from the chemical, plus the smoking," Herring said. The man suffered chemical burns to his chest and a laceration to his cheek. He was taken to Palms West Hospital.

Rotarians inaugurate clean windows project: The Rotary Club of Hot Springs Village is about to "brighten a few days." Earlier this month, the club's board approved a new, hands-on service project called "Clean Windows for a Brighter Day." On a designated work day in late October, Rotary Club members and their families will tackle window washing for Village residents who can no longer accomplish that task on their own. The idea originated with Paul Coy, associate pastor of Christ of the Hills United Methodist Church. As voiced by Coy, "There is no greater need in our community than for someone to help house-bound Villagers see the outside world through clean windows." The project is being led by Rotarians Leona Hess and Craig Blackburn.

Custodial staff adapts to $1.25M cut: Drastic budget cuts occurred in waves during the last 10 years at the University of Cincinnati, and the custodial department received the brunt of it. Working around a $1.25 million budget cut for the 2009-10 academic year, the custodial staff is adapting to the increased number of students on campus with a decreased number of maintenance resources. “We have lost vacancies through budget reductions for almost every year for the past 10 years in our maintenance, housekeeping and grounds departments,” said Rick Wiggins, director of facilities management. “This results in the reduction of service frequencies and increased deferred maintenance.” All window cleaning is contracted outside of UC.

THE only possible downer to Cuci The Musical is that it threatens to be more of a lengthy stand-up comedy routine by the funny leading cast, who have set their reputations as people who are able to tickle the funny bone. Cuci The Musical, is based on the film. The musical still revolves around the dreams of their family business in the small outfit called Cuci-Cuci Services being the best to count the Petronas Twin Towers as one of their contracts. A chance meeting later, the quartet are invited to participate in the Window Washing Olympics (WWO) – a competition run by, Citi Jasmin. Who would have thought Cuci could be so much fun, despite not having wet t-shirts?

World's tallest building Burj Dubai is crane-free: The last crane was down by the third week of October. The building, when completed, will meet all four criteria listed by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) – the body that classifies the world's tallest structures.
CTBUH measures the height of buildings to the structural top, the highest occupied floor, the top of the roof and the tip of the spire, pinnacle, antenna, mast or flag pole. Emaar said last month that the Burj Dubai tower has accomplished a world record for the highest installation of an aluminium and glass façade. Keeping the tower façade clean will be the next engineering challenge, it said. "To guarantee that every corner of Burj Dubai sparkles, 18 window-washing units are built into the tower," said the statement.

Terry "turbo" Burrows gets interviewed by the "Good Morning" team on British T.V.

Here's George Muir from Glasgow emulating Terry..

Mark Strange of "Beautiful View" from Toronto, Canada gives us another installment with a few more unbiased reviews of products from Window Cleaning Resource in the window cleaners workplace, this week he is trying out Sham Wow as an alternative to the traditional window cleaners choice.

Tony Evans of "A New View window cleaning" gives us another episode in the weather or not summer edition.

Tom Snyder gained national fame as the host of Tomorrow with Tom Snyder (more commonly known as The Tomorrow Show), which aired late nights from 1973–1982. It was a talk show unlike the usual late-night fare, with Snyder, cigarette in hand, alternating between asking hard-hitting questions and offering personal observations that made the interview closer to a conversation. Here he is with RCA building window washer Milton Gross.