Window Cleaning News

Jarrow cleaning company has high hopes of wiping out the opposition: A window cleaning company hopes to more than triple turnover after picking up a number of large contracts and is now looking to become a fully fledged facilities management business. Quayside Cleaning Maintenance was set up 18 months ago by ex-serviceman Simon Clare and has already secured contracts with Brentford-based construction and support services firm Carillion and Doncaster builder Frank Haslam Milan. The firm, based in Jarrow, has begun to specialise in high access service, with two of its six staff trained to abseil larger structures, providing a cheaper and less invasive cleaning service to customers.
The company, which has benefited from around £20,000 of funding from South Tyneside Means Business, hopes to land even larger contracts after being signed up to clean The Gate entertainment complex in Newcastle. Mr Clare, who worked as a window cleaner for 10 years after leaving the Army, said: “We have been fortunate enough to win contracts cleaning for the likes of The Gate, Carilion and Wynyard Park. The feedback we have had from these clients shows that we are able to offer safe, innovative and cost efficient services, focused on customer care.”

Rain-Gutter Maintenance: It’s a winter tradition: husband on the roof in the rain, pulling leaves out of the gutters and trying not to fall to his death. So far, he’s been successful. I hate to make him do it, but, as Tory Marino at Elite Window Washing (619-634-9580) says, “If you don’t get your gutters cleaned, then the debris from leaves and pine needles and the debris from your roof will build up. The gutters will start to sag from the weight. Eventually, you’ll have to replace them. And if the downspout gets clogged so badly that it can’t be flushed out, it too will have to be replaced.”
Marino knows, because Elite doesn’t do just windows. “A 2000-square-foot home might have 130 lineal feet of gutter and might take us around five hours to clean at $3 to $5 per lineal foot, depending on how bad the gutters are. If there is over an inch of sediment in the gutter, we’ll take a gutter scoop — it’s like a hard-plastic hand shovel — and remove the sediment manually. If there’s only a half-inch or less of sediment, we’ll use a pressure washer to flush the sediment through the drains. If the downspout is clogged, I have a tool that looks like an umbrella handle that I put on my pressure wand. I feed it in from the ground up, and the pressurized water flushes things out pretty well. Then we start cleaning the gutters by hand, using rags and a cleaning solution. It whitens up the exteriors of the gutter — and it makes dark colors brighten up, too.”
For future protection, Elite can install “a product called Rainflow [$10–$15 per lineal foot]. It’s not a gutter guard or gutter screen…something that sits on top and changes the look of your house; it’s inserted into the gutter. It looks like fiberglass-mesh insulation, and it strains out debris. Leaves and pine needles will stay on top of the mesh during the rain, but after the rain stops and they dry out, the wind should blow them off. It comes with a lifetime guarantee, and if you have it in, your gutter should need only minor maintenance every five or six years. All I would need to do is take the Rainflow out at your gutter’s high spot and send pressurized water toward the downspout to flush out any dirt. A homeowner could even do it with a hose.”
That is, if I wanted to send my homeowner up there. I have some scary-hilarious visions of Patrick teetering like a circus clown, 20 feet up. “We follow OSHA ladder-safety guidelines,” Marino assured me. “When the ladder is fully extended, it should rest at a 45-degree angle from the house. And there’s the three-point rule: you must have three points of contact with the ladder at all times. Both feet and one hand.”
Like Marino, Jim Hamilton at Any & All Rain Gutter Cleaners (619-444-0041, rainguttercleaners.com) is a stickler for safety. “We work from the roof, and if a roof has any kind of pitch, we’ll use a harness. And there’s always a ground guy and a roof guy in communication.” Unlike Marino, Hamilton doesn’t put anything into (or on top of) his gutters. “We used to install gutter screens but found that the leaves lay on top of the screen and biodegraded to form a sort of lid. When the water hit it, it skipped right over the gutter and onto the ground. And when the leaves finish decomposing, they drop through the screen as sediment.…
“We’ve been doing this for 16 years,” continued Hamilton. “When we started, we scooped gutters by hand or we used blowers, but we found it didn’t work for downspouts and roof drains. So, we’ve devised a water-jetting system; when we’re through, you could eat out of these gutters. We use a high-volume, low-pressure treatment. The machines on our trucks push eight gallons per minute — most washers only get two — and the higher volume carries everything downstream.” But not to the downspout. “You don’t want to send debris down the downspout. Some of them go underground, and you risk getting impacted sediment down there that will impede water flow. We block the downspout, blow everything out of the gutter into a receptacle, then unblock the spout and blast water through.” For that, “We use a spinning roto-jet nozzle that we can crank up to 4000 psi or down to 200 psi as needed.”
Hamilton’s prices start at around $175 per house and go up from there, depending on size. “We perform a flow test; if we see leaking at the seams, we’ll seal them. If necessary, we’ll readjust spikes to improve the angle of flow. We remove debris, clear the roof, and do a free pressure rinse of the home’s exterior.”

Suspects Identified In Skybridge Vandalism: Two young adults from Davenport were issued citations Thursday for their part in a graffiti spree on the Davenport Skybridge. Police say 19 year old Justin Mitchell and 18 year old Joshua Young are both charged with Criminal Mischief. Police say both admitted to their involvement. Three other members of the group were also identified, but it is not believed they participated in the vandalism. Police say surveillance video provided key information in helping identify the suspects. The graffiti was discovered early Sunday. Words and images, some considered obscene, were scrawled over windows and railings inside the glass and steel pedestrian Skywalk. The city hired a window-washing crew to clean it up. Police say cost of the clean-up is estimated at $175.

Gone and (almost) forgotten: In the last year it’s estimated that somewhere between nine and 15 people have died in the local community because of poverty related issues. There is Lorne Clapper (pictured). A singing window washer who would plod his way up and down the main streets of Peterborough with his bucket and squeegee in hand. A man who was loved and hated all at the same time. He died of a heart attack, alone in his room. He was 42.

HALIFAX, N.S. - Nova Scotia's finance minister says people should be angry about an embarrassing political spending scandal that has cost one politician his job and dominated headlines across the province for two weeks. Graham Steele, speaking Thursday after a cabinet meeting, said he's received an earful from residents as he's travelled the province seeking suggestions on how the NDP government should deal with a massive budget deficit. "People are angry and they should be angry because their money has been wasted, and has been spent on things that should never have been bought with their money," he said. Earlier, the New Democrats released a list of members' expenses related to their constituency assistants, and services related to their constituency offices, including window cleaning, garbage disposal and snow removal.

Talking Trash: The psychologist B.F. Skinner suggested that in an ideal society, jobs would be differentiated according to their degree of unpleasantness. A window-washer, or a garbage man, might only have to work four hours a day because the job was so odious (or odorous). Meanwhile, a musician (or a newspaper columnist?) would be expected to labor perhaps 10 hours a day, given how much fun s/he was having. Although nobody paid any attention to Skinner’s proposal, one bit of fairness has developed over the years: Garbage men may have the worst job, but they tend to get decently compensated for it. Municipal garbage workers typically receive all the benefits of a government job, including health insurance, pension contribution, public holidays, sick leave, overtime, and job security. That’s the case in Falls Church (at least for the garbage workers – the recycling is contracted out to a private firm).

Elderly man attempts to chase down wallet thief: SPOKANE, Washington - A man in his late 80s was crying as he attempted to chase down the man who had just stolen his wallet, according to a witness who called Crime Check. Last Sunday, the man and his wife allowed the thief into their home after he told the couple he was a window washer. Once inside their home in the 8100 block of E. Upriver Dr., the man, instead of 'counting windows' like he said, grabbed the homeowner's wallet and ran from the home. The couple chased the man who drove off in what they described as a red station wagon with license plates similar to 5147110 of an unknown state. Minutes later, a passerby called Crime Check and reported an elderly couple chasing an old red mini-van with a Montana license plate 541770. He told the operator the elderly man was crying. The couple described the suspect as a 50 to 60-year-old white male who was about 6'01" tall. He had gray hair that was receding, a thin build and gray eyes. Police ran different combinations of the license plate numbers given but none came back as belonging to a mini-van.

Lunch with the Barenaked Ladies: Well, they weren’t bare naked. And they weren’t ladies. But during a snowy, cold Niagara Falls lunch hour Monday a multi-platinum Canadian rock band gave a whole new meaning to the term “ladies who lunch.” “I teach about the Barenaked Ladies,” said Voss, who teaches literacy to teachers. “Their lyrics are all poetry put to music.” As just one of many examples, she said, are the lyrics “crystal clear canvas” from their song “When I Fall,” about a window washer who relates to life being cleanable and renewable, just like a window. Huh?

Chu Lai Float Glass Plant put into operation: The Chu Lai Float Glass Plant was put into operation in the Bac Chu Lai Industrial Park in Nui Thanh district, Quang Nam province yesterday. The plant invested by the Chu Lai – INDEVCO Float Glass Joint Stock Company has a capacity of 900 tonnes of float glass a day, which comes up to Japan’s standard JISR 3020-1996. The first Chu Lai float glass products are expected to be available in market in early April. This is the first float glass in Vietnam produced with the advanced technology. The Chu Lai Plant’s operation will considerably meet the domestic and export demand for construction glass, especially for 12 mm thick glass which Vietnam has had to import so far.