Alpine Window Cleaning & A Rescue

The Job Picture: Window washer.

Adrian Deines’ new window-cleaning tool is no little squirt. The British-made, carbon-fiber, $3,000 scrub brush — known in the window-washing trade as a water-fed pole — weighs only nine pounds. But get this: it stretches more than six stories high to reach windows that are way, way up. Deines and his crew from Alpine High Window Cleaning used the scrubbing import for the first time this week to reach upper windows at Garden Terrace, a senior apartment complex at Fifth Street and N. Emerson Avenue. Yes, it’s six stories high.

“We wouldn’t have been able to bid on this job if we didn’t have this pole,” said Deines. “The ground in the back isn’t level enough for safe use of a lift or cherry picker. And ladders pose their own safety problems.” Garden Terrace has more than 350 windows that haven’t been cleaned in two years, he said. “So they were really happy we had this thing.” Deines first learned about the pole — the Gardiner Super Max 61, oh yeah — at a window washer convention last winter in St. Petersburg, Fla. More than 500 window washers from around the country gathered (we’re guessing) to test new soaps, attend squeegee seminars and generally rest their arms. “We knew pretty soon that we’d want the 60-footer,” said Deines. “We were excited.”

Fully extended, the pole rests against an upper window while purified water runs up an interior tube to the brush. Before gushing up the pole, regular tap water from the building is run through a purification tank that removes minerals and chlorine that might streak the glass. “At six stories above the ground, you don’t want streaks,” said Deines. “You want clear, beautiful glass.”

SEATTLE - firefighters came to the rescue of a window washer Thursday who was dangling 60 feet above the ground at Seattle Center's McCaw Hall. The man reportedly was cleaning windows on the buildings' top floor Thursday when his supporting ropes slipped. One rescue team deployed to the roof of the building to stabilize the man while a second team extended a ladder to him from a fire truck. The man was able to walk down the ladder safely with the assistance of a firefighter.

Seattle firefighters rescue tangled window washer: A window washer was rescued by Seattle firefighters Thursday after he fell off his seat and dangled from his safety harness about 65 feet above the ground outside McCall Hall at Seattle Center. The man was not injured, but "he's being checked out by a medic unit as we speak," Kyle Moore, spokesman for the Seattle Fire Department, said at 12:17 p.m. The accident was reported at 11:47 a.m. and the Fire Department's technical rescue team responded to the Seattle Center's performance venue, Moore said. The man, who appears to be in his 30s or 40s, was washing windows at the front of the building when he fell off his seat "but his safety line caught him," said Moore, who couldn't say how far the man fell. Firefighters went onto the roof and dropped a rope to keep the man, who was about 15 feet below the roof line, from falling any further, Moore said. Another firefighter then climbed a ladder that was brought to the front of the building and helped the man climb down, he said. "Everything worked properly," Moore said. He said all of the man's equipment was left on the building's roof so that investigators could examine it to determine what went wrong.