Choice of Weapon - Fence Panel

Choice of weapon - Fence panel 

Window cleaner who used a fence panel to attack his friend is sent to prison for six months: The victim of a bottling attack, who then assaulted another man, has been jailed for six months. Window cleaner Thomas Phillips was left covered in blood after being slashed over the head and shoulders, Bristol Crown Court heard. But he then attacked Joseph Youhill with a fence panel, as Mr Youhill screamed: "I haven't done anything!"

Phillips, 26, of Locking Road, Weston-super-Mare, pleaded guilty to affray in August last year. Judge Julian Lambert told him: "The offence of affray is directed at the protection of the public. "It was a wild, wild scene. It was very grave disorder and it would have been terrifying for people watching this."

Neil Treharne, prosecuting, said in August last year police responded to a report of a fight in progress at the rear of Courtenay Walk, Weston-super-Mare. Officers arrived to find a topless Phillips covered in blood, having been stabbed by a broken bottle, the court was told. Police spoke to witnesses who saw Phillips being struck, and how Phillips was kicking another man on the ground and struck him with fence panel.

Phillips told police he had been out drinking and was "six out of ten drunk". He said Mr Youhill was also drunk, they argued and there was some pushing and shoving. He said he was then bottled and he went into "defence mode", utilising the fence panel as a weapon.

Phillips had seven previous convictions for 15 offences, including public order and battery as a juvenile and two charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Farah Rashid, defending, said: "He comes to court ready, knowing the likelihood of receiving an immediate custodial sentence."

Miss Rashid urged the judge to give her client credit for a timely guilty plea. She said it was "cloudy" as to how and where trouble started, and who was involved. Miss Rashid said: "He fully accepts he was violent. He picked up this fence panel and hit it at his friend after he had been stabbed."

Window Cleaner Puts House Up For Grabs

Write an essay & win a window cleaners house.

Contest: "This is a regular home for a special family! We know that there is nothing really amazing about our house and that it would never make the cover of a magazine. Thats not what this is about. This is a lovely little home in a quiet neighborhood where everyone walks their dog and you see children playing in the yards. We needed a way to "sell" our home that was not typical because we cannot sell in the typical fashion."

"So by doing it this way it has become our goal to help another family out. There are so many deserving hardworking families out there that are not able to own their own home due to a variety of circumstances."

"This is for all who have a dream of owning their own home, getting out of a bad neighborhood or those who have lost their job or lost their home to foreclosure. Where death or sickness has affected the family and they can no longer afford to live in a nice home. This is for you! It is our hope in that having a lower entry fee (of $85) it would allow those families to enter and tell us their story. On a national scale the number of entries is going to be on the lower side so the chances of winning are very good."

We wish everyone who enters the very best and we really look forward to hearing your stories and finding a deserving family! To enter please follow this link "Download Entry Form" and follow instructions from there. That will also clearly outline all the rules. Also keep in mind that there is a Subject/Theme to the Essay: A Chance to Start Over.... How this would help/ or change my life.

The property is a lovely 2 story colonial located in a quiet neighborhood in Bristol, CT.  It has 3 bedrooms, a large master bedroom and very large spa master bathroom.  It also has a great front porch that begs to have a bench swing.  There is a large deck off the back that leads to the detached two car garage with a built in shop.

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Cycling Window Cleaners Dog Kills Cat

An unleashed Staffordshire bull terrier owned by a window cleaner whilst on his rounds caused death of a cat.

Cycling window cleaner's dog blamed for death of cat: A dog belonging to a window cleaner who rides around on a bike with a ladder has been blamed for killing a cat in Horfield. Eddie Heatley, 65, was shocked when he was told by a neighbour that their cat Minxsy had been attacked by what he believes to be a Staffordshire bull terrier at around 2pm on Thursday afternoon.

A Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) attended the scene and was joined by a police constable as residents were spoken to. It is understood the man who owned the dog was also spoken to. Mr Heatley, who is retired, told the Bristol Post he learned that the window cleaner had left after the incident. He said: "The attack was observed by a neighbour who informed the police of what happened. "This man has been in the area with his dog and cleaning windows. "I have seen him several times and I know he has been warned by other people around here that he should have his dog on a lead."

Describing what his neighbour told him of the attack on Minxsy, who is his son's cat, he said: "The dog broke her neck while he was cleaning windows at another property and there were puncture wounds on both sides of her body. "Police arrived and we were talking to them just when he came up the road again. "He admitted that his dog had killed the cat. He said the cat had come out into the garden a couple of doors down from where he was cleaning windows.

"Police spoke to him but he apparently would not tell them where his dog was. "He should not have the dog loose anyway and when he is cleaning windows he should tie it up so there are not problems like this." Police confirmed they attended the scene and had spoken to residents. A spokeswoman for Avon and Somerset police said that the case was now in the hands of a dog warden at Bristol City Council. The Bristol Post was unable to locate the window cleaner.

More Window Cleaners On Bicycles

Joe's bike trailer. Click to enlarge.

Joe's bike trailer: Joe runs his window cleaning business from Waltham, a western suburb of Boston and goes around his jobs on his bike. Needless to say the dude is fit. This shot above was taken at a mobil station in Newton. Gas is expensive... Joe ain't playin'! After yesterdays blog on cargo bikes for window cleaners, here's more of the same. The next big thing could be this.

Antony Cairns cycles to work with all his window cleaning equipment attached to his bicycle.

Cycling makes environmental and economic sense for local window cleaner: Antony Cairns has been selected as a Green Streets champion for Fitzrovia. Antony is a window cleaner and travels into Fitzrovia by bicycle from his home in Somers Town. The Green Streets campaign is part of Camden Council‘s plan to encourage more walking and cycling in Fitzrovia and was officially launched yesterday (Tuesday 21 February 2012). For Antony cycling not only makes environmental sense it also makes a lot of economic sense. “I can get around quickly and cheaply and easily carry my buckets and gear,” says Antony.

He was asked to be a green champion because his work brings him into contact with lots of businesses and people in Fitzrovia and he is an ideal example of someone using cycling as a way to get around. “As a window cleaner I get to meet a lot of people and a variety of businesses in Fitzrovia. I’m also able to put people in touch with each other through my work,” says Antony who runs his own business.

“I got chosen as a green champion through these connections I have in the neighbourhood. I clean windows all over Fitzrovia. Lee Lyons of the Fitzrovia Partnership had seen me and said that Woof London, a marketing agency, were looking for suitable people to be green champions for a campaign that Camden Council were running. Lee thought I’d be good at this because I was using a bicycle to get around.

“It’s easy for me to promote cycling because riding a bike is so necessary for me to do my job. People are often impressed that I carry all my gear on the bike including a folding ladder,” says Antony. Most of his work is in Fitzrovia, but Antony also cycles to do a number of window cleaning jobs in, Regent’s Street and across the river in Waterloo. Antony has been a window cleaner for five years and has always got around by either walking or cycling.

George Williams, seen in Westmont in 2005, washed the storefront windows of businesses in South Jersey for over 20 years and was friends with many of the business owners. He had a passion for music and often sang as he worked. Click to enlarge.

For more than 20 years, George Williams made his living by washing windows — riding his bicycle from wherever he was living to shopping centers and homes stretching from Pennsauken to Deptford. He was a free spirit whose life was pretty much a mystery to the people he met, providing them with clean windows, songs that came from the heart and conversation that revealed a simple yet deep outlook on life. And when Williams died last month, he left a void in the lives of those he touched.

Simple alternative.. Window washer's trike. Austin, texas.

The Pedal Power Warehouse is open for business. The business? Creating any bicycle machine the human mind can concoct. One is custom-made for a window washer. Many are trailers and three-wheelers. One is even a bicycle bus. But don't call the funky vehicles "weird." Free Cycles builds commuter bicycles for adults and children. The Pedal Power Warehouse will focus on more industrial uses. A window washer, for instance, wanted a bicycle that could haul the business around. So Joel Williams, who works at the warehouse and also operates The World of Bicycles, designed a bicycle outfitted to haul tall ladders, short ladders and window-cleaning supplies. The bike can take a beating, too. Williams hopped onto the back and jumped up and down as hard as he could to demonstrate its stability. The vehicle didn't rattle. "If it can take that, it can take anything," Williams said.

This is a feature story on a man who washes businesses' windows in downtown Bakersfield, all while riding his bicycle.

 

Window Cleaner On A Bicycle: Window washer cleans up pedaling around Downtown: Phillip Prado is building a window-washing empire one storefront at a time. A gregarious businessman with a bucket of soapy water dangling from his handlebars, Prado washes the windows of more than 100 shops a week, many of them Downtown. Beside the clear benefits of the job — no boss, no overhead — there’s another boon that some people don’t realize: the money. “You wouldn’t think a guy like me with a bucket on his bike has a boat and antique cars, but it’s a good business,” Prado said as he swabbed the windows of the Reade St. Animal Hospital on a recent morning. “Window-washing does OK for itself.”

Prado, 45, started Squeaky Clean Windows five years ago, after selling a similar business in Staten Island. Since then, his electric bike has become a familiar sight on Lower Manhattan’s streets, even on the coldest days of winter. While many window-washers take the winter off, glass accumulates grime year-round, so Prado works year-round, too. He wears waterproof gloves from Alaska and a battery-operated heated suit that keeps him at a toasty 78 degrees. “Even when it’s snowing, I’ll go out with antifreeze to wash the windows,” Prado said. Full story here.

Window-cleaner's Bike. Interesting bike trailer, that features the ladder it transports as part of the design, a space between the rungs in the rear of the trailer makes a handy space to store your bucket. Click to enlarge.

St Paul Minnesota, Marshall Ave' -Window Washer on bike pulling ladder and gear. Click to super enlarge.

Kevin, Window Washer. He is a self-described wanderer... Homeless by definition, but he has many window cleaning contracts throughout Alberta and B.C. that he travels to, using Calgary as a home base. And also a very interesting character too... he was proud to show off his cover story in the U of C newspaper, The Gauntlet. Click picture to enlarge.

Beckon Call is owned by Jim Ordway.

Sustainable Window Cleaning: Beckon Call is reducing it’s carbon footprint. Sustainable processes need to be… well sustainable.  Cost can’t outweigh benefit and so on.  In a previous post I talked about the challenges I had with the first generation green cleaning chemicals and I really did not want to repeat that.  It is counter-productive to implement new processes or procedures that do not work, no matter how good it might sound in theory.

Our current cleaning process uses less water than traditional methods.  Pretty cool, but I wanted more than that.  Yesterday we rolled out a new process, and I think it is going to be great! A customer gave it the name of “Beckon Call à la carte” and it is our bicycle/trailer set-up. This is being used in place of gasoline powered vehicles to service business accounts in the downtown core and other flat areas in Corvallis.  The Beckon Call à la carte will be expanded to other areas we service as leg strength and cardiovascular improves… it’s a work in progress.

Beckon Call à la carte is great for the environment.  It reduces fuel consumption, one less vehicle taking up space at our customers location and it’s great for maintaining a healthy body. There are so many positives to doing this, the only regret I have is… I did not do it sooner! It was first put into use on Monday March 7th (2011) and so far I have heard a lot of positive comments and appreciation for doing the right thing.  I would like to hear what you think and any ideas that you might have!

Local Window Washer Pedals Down Gas Bill: Beckon Call provides service for residential, commercial and retail customers in Corvallis, Albany and Eugene.  With rising prices and a push for more sustainable practices, Beckon Call has started using a bicycle and trailer to service a large portion of their retail customers. "It just makes sense," Ordway said.  "It's really great for the environment, the MPG is literally infinite and I'm getting into shape." The bicycle and trailer set-up, dubbed Beckon Call à la carte, is not practical for all the jobs Beckon Call performs.  Any job that requires ladders taller than a 4-foot step ladder or heavy tools still requires a non-human powered vehicle.  "I've been told I can get a trailer that will haul some of the bigger ladders, but with safety a major concern for this type of work it's just not practical.  It would be very difficult to exert all the energy required in getting a big ladder to the job via bike and be ready to climb up and down ladders."
When asked what other sustainable processes Beckon Call is doing Ordway said, "Beckon Call has been utilizing a reduced water process for washing windows since we started.  In the near future we would like to start harvesting rain water to make that even more efficient.  It really is fun to work through all the different options and find practical ways to implement some great ideas." Ordway said he was surprised at the number of positive comments from community members, "I knew it would be well received, but I was not expecting people to approach me and thank me for doing this.  The fact that they are, well that's awesome!" So, if you notice the Beckon Call truck parked around town,  there's a good chance they are in sustainable mode, pedaling from customer to customer washing windows.

Ladder Bike Trailer: Some bike hacks are elegant and you might not even notice them. Hornby Island is a small island off the east coast of the larger Canadian island of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The locals tend to be artsy types that live paycheque to paycheque. Typically they support their art habit and laid back island lifestyle with self-taught handyman skills. My wife and I recently encountered this sketchy set up that appears to part of a window washing business. The ladder does double duty as the trailer and holds the extension brushes. The front end is attached to the bike via a couple of strips of strapping and cannibalized bike tubing that swings (and grinds) the seat post and the main frame. The re-purposed bike trailer at the far end holds the smaller stuff. The rear end makes use of the ladder's hollow rungs and the cross piece of the trailer. A second cross piece prevents the trailer from "rocking" fore and aft.

This guy using a trailer for his window cleaning business. Click to enlarge.

Cargo bikes: “A growing number of businesses are using cargo cycles, a move towards sustainable and free-flowing city traffic that is now strongly backed by public authorities. Research indicates that at least one quarter of all cargo traffic in European cities could be handled by cycles. And, by using special distribution hubs, larger vehicles and electric assist, this proportion could be even larger. A cargo cycle is at least as fast as a delivery van in the city – and much cheaper to use, giving a strong economic incentive to make the switch. Cargo cycles also bring important economic advantages to tradesmen, artisans and service providers.” When I as visiting a couple of weeks ago, I was very interested to see that Christchurch already has some entrepreneurial businesses taking advantage of these opportunities.

Team Aquaduct was declared as the winner of the first "Innovate or Die" Pedal-Powered Machine Challenge that took place earlier this month. Google, in collaboration with the bicycle maker Goodby Silverstein & Partners, held this competition in order to encourage innovative pedal-powered solutions to environmental issues. The Californian team Aquaduct, who won the challenge, developed a pedal-powered water transportation and filtration vehicle designed to aid families in developing countries. Could this be the next innovation for reverse osmosis powered bikes?

Winter Cycling in Copenhagen. Click to enlarge.

Cargo Bike Winter: There is, however, an interesting detail that reflects the utility-minded Danish relationship to bikes. This chap has spent about 15,000 kroner (€2000/€2600) on a cargo bike - probably a bit more with that box with a lid - and yet look at the fenders. He hasn't bothered to peel off the blue, protective film. It's a good bike, an expensive bike, a useful and practical bike but hey... it's just a bike.

Clive Donavon from Bristol says "We filter water from your tap, when we use the bicycles, this works out about 1.8 pence for 25 litres" "So about six barrels for one pence" "We have work that is close to the exits of the Bristol cycle path, for when the weather is nice to use our bikes, needless to say we don't use our bikes often." Two videos to help you go wfp on your bicycle..

Mark Henderson in Italy of Window Cleaning Resources says "Word of mouth is the most effective way to advertise." "Things that are out of the ordinary get people talking." "The method shown in this video might not be practical for all window cleaners but it works well for me and it may give you some ideas." "It reduces stress, saves time, saves money, its green, it keeps you fit and it works great as an advertising medium."

No, no, no.

A Mexico City local with his entire window cleaning business attached to his bike. Yes, he does have a ladder strapped to his bike.

Magnetic Soap Could Revolutionise Cleaning

A droplet containing the soap is attracted to the magnet at left.

Magnetic soap could help in oil spill clean-ups: An international team of scientists has demonstrated the first soap that responds to magnets. This means the soap and the materials that it dissolves can be removed easily by applying a magnetic field. Experts say that with further development, it could find applications in cleaning up oil spills and waste water.

Details of the new soap, which contains iron atoms, are reported in the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie. It is similar to ordinary soap, but the atoms of iron help form tiny particles that are easily removed magnetically. "If you'd have said about 10 years ago to a chemist: 'Let's have some soap that responds to magnets', they'd have looked at you with a very blank face," said co-author Julian Eastoe of the University of Bristol. He told BBC News: "We were interested to see, if you went back to the chemical drawing board with the tool-kit of modern synthetic chemistry, if you could...design one."

Soap is made of long molecules with ends that behave differently: One end of the molecule is attracted to water and the other is repelled by it. The "detergent" action of soap comes from its ability to attach to oily, grimy surfaces, with the "water-hating" end breaking up molecules at that surface. The soap molecules then gather up into droplets in which all the "water-loving" ends face outward. Prof Eastoe and his team started with detergent molecules that he said were "very similar to what you'd find in your kitchen or bathroom" - one of which can be found in mouthwash. The team found a way to simply add iron atoms into the molecules. The droplets that the soap formed were attracted to a magnet, just as iron filings would be.

The soap could make for a far easier means of gathering oil from spills.

But single iron atoms would not behave as tiny individual magnets, so some other process had to be at work. To get a look at what was going on in the chemical process required a view at the molecular level. So the team sent their samples to the Institute Laue Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France, where an intense beam of the sub-atomic particles known as neutrons shed light on the matter. They saw that the iron particles were clumping neatly together into iron nanoparticles, tiny clumps of iron that could in fact respond to a magnetic field.

Prof Eastoe said the research was still at the laboratory stages but was already the subject of discussion. "The research at the University of Bristol in this field is about how we can take the ordinary and give it extraordinary properties by chemical design," he said. "We have uncovered the principle by which you can generate this kind of material and now it's back to the drawing board to make it better."

Scientists Produce World's First Magnetic Soap: Scientists from Bristol University have developed a soap, composed of iron rich salts dissolved in water, that responds to a magnetic field when placed in solution. The soap’s magnetic properties were shown with neutrons at the Institut Laue-Langevin to result from tiny iron-rich clumps that sit within the watery solution. The generation of this property in a fully functional soap could calm concerns over the use of soaps in oil-spill clean ups and revolutionise industrial cleaning products.

Scientists have long been searching for a way to control soaps (or surfactants as they are known in industry) once they are in solution to increase their ability to dissolve oils in water and then remove them from a system. The team at Bristol University have previously worked on soaps sensitive to light, carbon dioxide or changes in pH, temperature or pressure. Their latest breakthrough, reported in Angewandte Chemie, is the world’s first soap sensitive to a magnetic field.

Ionic liquid surfactants, composed mostly of water with some transition metal complexes (heavy metals like iron bound to halides such as bromine or chlorine) have been suggested as potentially controllable by magnets for some time, but it had always been assumed that their metallic centres were too isolated within the solution, preventing the long-range interactions required to be magnetically active.

The team at Bristol, lead by Professor Julian Eastoe produced their magnetic soap by dissolving iron in a range of inert surfactant materials composed of chloride and bromide ions, very similar to those found in everyday mouthwash or fabric conditioner. The addition of the iron creates metallic centres within the soap particles.

To test its properties, the team introduced a magnet to a test tube containing their new soap lying beneath a less dense organic solution. When the magnet was introduced the iron-rich soap overcame both gravity and surface tension between the water and oil, to levitate through the organic solvent and reach the source of the magnetic energy, proving its magnetic properties.

Once the surfactant was developed and shown to be magnetic, Prof Eastoe’s team took it to the Institut Laue-Langevin, the world’s flagship centre for neutron science, and home to the world’s most intense neutron source, to investigate the science behind its remarkable property.

When surfactants are added to water they are known to form tiny clumps (particles called micelles). Scientists at ILL used a technique called “small angle neutron scattering (SANS)” to confirm that it was this clumping of the iron-rich surfactant that brought about its magnetic properties.

Dr Isabelle Grillo, responsible of the Chemistry Laboratories at ILL: “The particles of surfactant in solution are small and thus difficult to see using light but are easily revealed by SANS which we use to investigate the structure and behaviour of all types of materials with typical sizes ranging from the nanometer to the tenth of micrometer.”

Up, up and away: This photo shows the magnetic soap rising up through the test tube.

The potential applications of magnetic surfactants are huge. Their responsiveness to external stimuli allows a range of properties, such as their electrical conductivity, melting point, the size and shape of aggregates and how readily its dissolves in water to be altered by a simple magnetic on and off switch. Traditionally these factors, which are key to the effective application of soaps in a variety of industrial settings, could only be controlled by adding an electric charge or changing the pH, temperature or pressure of the system, all changes that irreversibly alter the system composition and cost money to remediate.

Its magnetic properties also makes it easier to round up and remove from a system once it has been added, suggesting further applications in environmental clean ups and water treatment. Scientific experiments which require precise control of liquid droplets could also be made easier with the addition of this surfactant and a magnetic field.

Professor Julian Eastoe, University of Bristol: “As most magnets are metals, from a purely scientific point of view these ionic liquid surfactants are highly unusual, making them a particularly interesting discovery. From a commercial point of view, though these exact liquids aren’t yet ready to appear in any household product, by proving that magnetic soaps can be developed, future work can reproduce the same phenomenon in more commercially viable liquids for a range of applications from water treatment to industrial cleaning products.”

Peter Dowding an industrial chemist, not involved in the research: “Any systems which act only when responding to an outside stimulus that has no effect on its composition is a major breakthrough as you can create products which only work when they are needed to. Also the ability to remove the surfactant after it has been added widens the potential applications to environmentally sensitive areas like oil spill clean ups where in the past concerns have been raised.”

2012 Motivation Lesson from Window Cleaner, Simon Arthur

Simon Arthur with wife, Steph and son, William.

Courageous Simon’s cancer battle is over: A man who defied a rare and crippling form of cancer to raise thousands for charity has died just two days after his 31st birthday. Simon Arthur, formerly of Lockerley, passed away at his home in Bristol, where he lived with his wife, Stephanie and three-year-old son, William. In November, 2009, Simon, who had been suffering migraines, was told he had astrocytoma, a spider’s web of cancer growing across his brain. The condition was inoperable and he had three years to live. From then he decided to “be positive and enjoy what life I do have left” he told the Advertiser in March, 2010.

Simon’s father, Colin, said he was immensely proud of the way his son had coped with his condition. “He was so brave and so positive. Even when he did get down, he would soon pick himself up,” said Colin. “He said he would live life to the full and that’s just what he did. I didn’t realise he had that sort of courage in him.” Simon organised a number of charity events and even though the condition made it difficult for him to walk, he completed the Bristol half-marathon with the aid of Stephanie.

In 2010, he helped raise £6,000 which was shared between Macmillan Cancer, the Willow Foundation and Sherfield English Recreation Project. Last year, he organised a charity walk between Lockerley and Awbridge primary schools for the Starlight Foundation, which grants wishes for seriously and terminally ill children. Colin said that his son had drawn strength from the fact that he had no chance of recovery. “He would say: ‘I know what the outcome is and I’ve got no false hope.’”

Colin said that his son’s condition had deteriorated rapidly over the last month as the cancer began to grow again, but he had held on to see Christmas with his family and then his wedding anniversary, on December 29, and his birthday on January 2. He praised and thanked the care Stephanie and Simon’s mother-in-law, Diane Mead, had given Simon.

Simon’s life began in dramatic fashion when was born two months premature, weighing just 4lbs and spent the first two weeks of his life in an incubator at Salisbury District Hospital. He was brought up in Lockerley and went to the village primary school and then attended Test Valley School, in Stockbridge. After school, he trained as a chef and then worked as a builder and ran then his own window-cleaning business.

Son Slays Window Cleaning Father

BRISTOL MAN 'KILLED HIS DAD AFTER ROW.'
A Bristol man cut his father's throat after being taunted as a paedophile for having a 14-year-old girlfriend, a court heard. Billy Hunter, aged 21, launched the sustained knife attack on 47-year-old Ian Hunter after a row at the older man's maisonette at Brandon House in Hotwells, Bristol Crown Court was told yesterday. A jury heard the window cleaner suffered 31 cuts, 25 to his head, neck and shoulders, one of which completely severed an artery in his neck. Billy Hunter, of Highbury Road, in Bedminster, denies murder in November last year. Peter Blair, QC, prosecuting, told the court Hunter was staying temporarily with his father. Mr Blair said tenant Anthony Warrener had gone to bed but woken up at 3am to use the toilet. Mr Blair said when Mr Warrener crossed the landing, he noticed a light had been left on downstairs and went to turn it off. "When he went downstairs, he saw Ian Hunter lying on the living-room floor with what appeared to be his throat slashed," Mr Blair said. Mr Blair said police later pieced together what had happened.