High Rise Window Washers: Risky Job With A Great View

High-rise window washers: Risky job with a great view - Cruz Guzman, Sergio Polanco and Jaime Polanco are window washers with Corporate Cleaning Services. They are working on top of the American Medical Association building in Chicago. (Alex Garcia, Chicago Tribune).

Cradle work is not child's play (South Wales Evening Post): Imagine getting paid to hang around. This lot do — 350ft in the air! 

The contractors have been at the top of Meridian Tower in Swansea Marina, replacing an important component of the "cradle", which encircles the roof and is used by window cleaners and for other maintenance work. 

Wearing appropriate safety gear, the contractors are installing a new cradle track. The 28-storey tower has striking views of the Bristol Channel, Mumbles, Swansea and Kilvey Hill, but — like everywhere else — has been buffeted and drenched in recent weeks.

The first 26 storeys comprise 123 apartments, while the top two floors are taken by the Grape & Olive restaurant. 

The building was part of the £46 million Meridian Quay construction project. It is the tallest residential building in Wales, but is dwarfed by the 1,016ft and £1.5 billion Shard in London, which opened among much fanfare yesterday.

Window washers battle the heat (Philadelphia)- Excessive Heat Warning in effect for most of the area. Workers endure sizzling heat in Norfolk - With temperatures in the triple digits, many of us have limited our time outdoors and take refuge in the air conditioning.  But some workers have to endure the dangerous heat. Window washers on Granby Street were even closer to the sun, along with the heat index of 111.  Our crews also spotted workers along Llewellyn Avenue putting in new curbs.  Maurice Wilson wears long sleeves and says he does this all the time. "Keep the sun off, then once you get wet, you get the breeze. It cools your body temperature down a litle bit," said Wilson.

Thrilling start as Jim cleans up at Curve: Window cleaning is rarely as exciting as this. Four technicians has been given the Herculean task of washing the 640 panes of glass which cover Curve's glazed exterior. Using abseiling equipment, it will take him about three weeks to squeegee the entire 4,500 square metres of glass at the theatre in Rutland Street, in Leicester's Cultural Quarter.
They have been at the site since last week and will use special harnesses and 30-metres of rope as they descend the building. Every year, the windows are cleaned inside and out, with the enormous surface area equal to the size of two football pitches. Stuart Alcock, site services manager at Total Access, the company which is carrying out the work, said: "The guys will actually abseil inside the building as well because it's not practical to take machinery into the theatre – it's quite loud and people don't want to hear it while they're watching things."

And finally... Test drive car ends up suspended from 50ft fourth floor window: A driver accidentally hit the accelerator instead of the brake when he was testing a new car in Liuzhou, China. Lin Hu was attempting to drive the brand new car out of the high rise showroom, but after mixing up the pedals he crashed into the glass wall of the fourth floor of the showroom. The car was left suspended 50 feet in the air, half in and half out of the building. Hu and the salesman managed to get to safety by climbing over the front seats and exiting through the car's rear doors. A witness at the scene said: "There was a bang like a shot from a cannon and the window fell out and the car's nose shot out."

Clean round that!