Window Cleaning Trade Tales

Window washers keep buildings clean whether they are small commercial buildings or touring skyscrapers.

Trade Tales: Washing tall buildings in a single bound: Fear of heights is not a common job complaint, unless the job includes dangling 30 stories above the ground cleaning a window. Fear of heights is not a common job complaint, unless the job includes dangling 30 stories above the ground cleaning a window. "It was a natural progression for me," Mike Draper said of how he got into the window cleaning business. "I had done some work for a buddy in high school and we did some window cleaning. I started here in Bloomington in 2000 and it has led to bigger and better things. They put glass high up in the air and so we clean it."

Draper's company, Clearly Windows, cleans windows in Peoria, Bloomington, Champaign, Springfield, Decatur and other places in central Illinois. "We do anything from storefronts to retail restaurants all the way up to the big buildings," Draper said. "We do the Twin Towers in Peoria even."

Making ends meet for the company typically finds the window washer cleaning a variety of buildings, Draper said. "It's a mix of buildings, especially in the area," Draper said. "There are not as many big buildings as smaller buildings. It's not like Chicago where you have all those skyscrapers to clean."

To get up and down the buildings, the washers are seated on a plank of wood which is counterweighted for balance and suspended on two ropes. "Most of the work we do we do from a bosun chair," Draper said. "It's basically two ropes coming off a counterweighted teeter-totter, if you will. The counterweights keep the focal point to where you won't tip over." Being suspended on a plank of wood a little more than seat length can give even the most seasoned window cleaner nervous at times, Draper said. "Sometimes you do (get a fear of the height)," Draper said. "You try to stabilize yourself the best you can when you are up there. You can do that with a suction cup."

Cleaning the windows is a process similar to how someone cleans their car windows at a gas station.

"We soap the windows down with a commercial window cleaning agent then squeegee it clean," Draper said. In a unique business like professional window cleaning, Draper said longstanding relationships are key. "We have contracts with people and, more than that, we have relationships with the property owners," Draper said. "It's a big process." How long a building takes depends on the size and amount of windows. "Cleaning times can depend but most of our buildings we can do within a week," Draper said. After all these years in the business, one might still find Draper in a variety of places, high above the ground. "I am more of the organizational side now but I sometimes get out there," Draper said. "Yesterday for instance I was hanging about the University of Illinois football stadium."

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Daredevil Photographer Rappels Down Skyscrapers For the Perfect Shot: Even window washers can be scary when you don’t expect to see them outside your office window. But a camera-wielding man dangling from a single rope goes beyond the pale. Caracas-born photographer Carlos Ayesta has freaked out thousands of Parisians over the past few years, rappelling down the side of Paris’s skyscrapers to shoot remarkable images of the city's towers.

Ayesta is an architectural photographer and urban spelunker: With the help of his team, he’s rappelled down the sides of the tallest buildings in Paris, including the Eiffel Tower and the shell-shaped Center of New Industries and Technologies. He calls the ongoing project Vertical Visions of La Defense, the Paris business district that’s long been at the center of a city-wide scandal over the construction of new skyscrapers (basically, companies want them and Parisians don’t).

Ayesta’s photos are less about the contentious politics of the neighborhood and more about capturing the contentious buildings from a unique perspective. "My approach of taking photographs whilst abseiling and from hanging platforms shows the architecture in another dimension," Ayesta told Dezeen recently. "I can take pictures of hidden things. No-one on the ground or on top of the buildings can see what I see.”

Check out the video below to see Ayesta dangling from the top of La Grande Arche, the monumental Mitterrand-era rectangular monument designed by Johann Otto von Spreckelsen in the 1980s—and make sure to peep the surprised building occupants in several of the images.