Professional Or Novice?

Bill Thomas, the owner of Northern Illinois Windows, stands outside the Hidden Pearl Café in McHenry. Hidden Pearl is one of the customers that rely on NIW to keep their windows clean. 

Northern Illinois Windows – celebrates 25 years of cleaning area windows ‘one pane at a time’: They call it the Silver Anniversary. That's what McHenry-based Northern Illinois Windows is celebrating this summer - 25 years of cleaning Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin windows for 25 years. How many window panes have they cleaned 'one-at-a-time' over the course of those years? That's a number that's almost too astronomical to consider. Suffice it to say that it's a lot.

"I started the company with a bucket, a squeegee and a truck," said owner Bill Thomas. "I would knock on the doors of businesses and ask them if they wanted their windows cleaned."

Today, Thomas has crews of window washers who do the window washing as he runs the business. He coordinates the routes, schedules window washing, which also includes washing the windows in private residences, and he does continue to do sales. In those early years, he also did the book keeping, marketing and all the other chores that are necessary to a successful business.

"I still knock on doors," he said. "And, I go out and do estimates. I like meeting with prospective clients so that they know who stands behind the quality and service we provide."

Shortly after starting the business, Thomas was joined by his son. Today, Thomas operates a window washing business in downtown Colorado. Father and son communicate often sharing ideas and suggestions. But, here in McHenry, Thomas has learned that he can't, or shouldn't do it all. He works with others to keep his business on track. This frees up his time to further develop the business.

Actually, window cleaning is only part of what Northern Illinois Windows offers, albeit a big part. They also provide home and office window tinting, gutter cleaning and power washing. They also install and take down Christmas lights during the holidays.

"We have several types of window film we install," said Thomas. "But, our 3M window film is the industry standard."

The window film comes with different levels of tinting. One thing that almost uniform about the film is that, whatever level of tint, most block 99.9 percent of ultraviolet rays. Over time, the UV rays can bleach furniture, flooring and stock that businesses keep in the windows. And after installing the window film, Northern Illinois Windows is available to wash the windows when they get dirty again.

Windows last November. The teenager plans to attend Boise State University to study human biology before going to medical school to become a cardiologist.

Area Teen Adds Shine With 7B Windows (Sandpoint): There are plenty of Bonner County teens who are happy to wile away their downtime from high school hanging out at City Beach or staring into the screens of mobile devices. Nathan Roe is not among them. The 17-year-old opened 7B Windows last November. It was initially slow going because November is hardly the peak of window-cleaning season.

But Roe’s persistence began paying off. “I went door to door downtown and was able to drum up some business for it,” said Roe, who will be a Sandpoint High School senior when the new school year starts this fall.

Roe is now cleaning windows for Pita Pit and Trinity and City Beach. “I was really happy to get the Trinity job,” said Roe. Roe also picked up some residential clients, although his services don’t include cleaning windows on buildings more than a story high.

Roe said he picked up some advice from a high school custodian, who gave him some of the basic equipment needed to restore the lustre in people’s windows. “I didn’t really see any downside to doing it,” Roe said of 7B’s launch.

Roe said the business allows him to market himself while taking pride in doing a thorough job. “There’s no hiding the work you do,” he said.

Roe plans to attend Boise State to study human biology before going to medical school to become a cardiologist. Roe’s business venture is not impinging on his academic career. He is among the top 10 percent of his class. “The kid maintains a 4.2 GPA,” said Roe’s father, Mark.

Don't Tell The Mrs

Jogram Chaudhury and Ali Husain don’t mind the heights as they clean high-rise buildings. His family back home though doesn’t know his job entails him getting onto metal platforms suspended mid-air.

Their families don’t know what work they do: “It takes us one month to finish cleaning a 40-storey building, and 10-12 days to complete a 14-floor building,” says Ali Husain, 35, window cleaner from Bangladesh (Right, in pic). “So in a month on an average we do two buildings.”

Husain has been in Dubai seven years, and he’s been cleaning high-rise windows for six. “No I don’t get scared”, he says. His family back home though doesn’t know his job entails him getting onto metal platforms suspended mid-air. “If they knew, they would ask me to come back home and not risk my life.”His partner at work, and in the suspended air platform, Jogram Chaudhury, from Nepal, says he doesn’t want to tell his wife that he cleans windows of tall buildings as she would fear for his safety.

What about heights? Are either of them scared of being so high up and looking down? Doesn’t it make you giddy? No, not scared, they say. But they concede that not everyone can do their job, not all the men in their accommodation are inclined towards climbing tall buildings. There’s only some of us who are not scared.

What about Dubai? Do you like Dubai? Yes, very much, what’s there not to like? Dubai is great, they both say without an eyelid batted, just smiles, and they look at each other. They’ve never done a mall, but that they say it is not so dangerous because it’s usually not too high.

Windows Soon To Become TV's

Lead investigator Kenneth Chau develops new glass technology by coating small pieces of glass with extremely thin layers of metal. 

Researchers discover new glass technology: Imagine if the picture window in your living room could double as a giant thermostat or big screen TV. A discovery by researchers at the University of British Columbia has brought us one step closer to this becoming a reality.

Researchers at UBC's Okanagan campus in Kelowna found that coating small pieces of glass with extremely thin layers of metal like silver makes it possible to enhance the amount of light coming through the glass. This, coupled with the fact that metals naturally conduct electricity, may make it possible to add advanced technologies to windowpanes and other glass objects.

"Engineers are constantly trying to expand the scope of materials that they can use for display technologies, and having thin, inexpensive, see-through components that conduct electricity will be huge," said UBC Associate Professor and lead investigator Kenneth Chau. "I think one of the most important implications of this research is the potential to integrate electronic capabilities into windows and make them smart."

The next phase of this research, added Chau, will be to incorporate their invention onto windows with an aim to selectively filter light and heat waves depending on the season or time of day.

Kenneth Chau (left) and and Loïc Markley (right) coated small pieces of glass with extremely thin layers of metal. 

The theory underlying the research was developed by Chau and collaborator Loïc Markley, an assistant professor of engineering at UBC. Chau and Markley questioned what would happen if they reversed the practice of applying glass over metal—a typical method used in the creation of energy efficient window coatings.

"It's been known for quite a while that you could put glass on metal to make metal more transparent, but people have never put metal on top of glass to make glass more transparent," said Markley. "It's counter-intuitive to think that metal could be used to enhance light transmission, but we saw that this was actually possible, and our experiments are the first to prove it."

Changing Color With Smart Windows

Nanoparticle based windows could switch colors on demand.

Nanoparticle-based windows could switch colors on demand: One day, you might not need special bulbs to give your room's lighting a different hue -- you'd just tell the windows themselves to change. Rice University researchers have discovered that you can change the colors transmitted through glass by sending a voltage through pairs of gold and silver nanoparticles, which you frequently find in stained glass windows. Jolt a window one way and you'd get a bright red; reverse the voltage and you'd get blue. All you're really doing is forming or removing chemical bridges between the particles.

The technology is still far from production, so don't expect to renovate your home just yet. However, you only need tiny amounts of the precious metals to achieve dramatic effects. As such, you might well find yourself upgrading to color shifting smart windows around the whole home, not just in one or two prime locations.

Medieval artisans unwittingly used nanotechnology when they mixed gold chloride into molten glass to create richly hued stained glass windows. Soon we could have full-color displays or stained-glass windows that change color at the flick of an electrical switch, thanks to the same kinds of light-scattering nanoparticles.

We’re one step closer to such wondrous things with a new method for connecting metal nanoparticles via teensy “drawbridges” of thin layers of silver, developed by researchers at Rice University. This lets them link pairs of nanoparticles that scatter different colors of light together to form simple color displays. The scientists described their work in a new paper in Science Advances.

Nanoparticles are special because they straddle the boundary between the macroscopic and quantum realms, where classical physics and quantum mechanics hold sway, respectively. It’s their size that matters: a nanometer is equivalent to one 25-millionth of an inch, and nanoparticles range in size from a few nanometers to several hundred nanometers. That gives them unusual properties not found in the same elements at the macro scale.

This includes optical properties, notably how metal nanoparticles in particular scatter light. Scientists have analyzed medieval stained glass windows, and found gold and silver nanoparticles are the key to the deep reds and yellows found therein.

The gold nanoparticles absorb blue and yellow light; red light, with its longer wavelength, reflects off them and passes through the glass. Something similar happens with silver nanoparticles; only bright yellow light scatters off and passes through the glass. Make gold spheres a bit larger, and you can get green or orange. Make the silver nanoparticles smaller, and you get blue.

They have interesting chemically reactive properties, too. In 2008, for instance, scientists at Queensland University of Technology found that some stained glass windows actually helped purify the air when the sun shone through them. The secret ingredient was gold nanoparticles. Sunlight activated the nanoparticles so they could destroy volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) — the source of that new car smell, for instance, but toxic if inhaled in larger quantities.

The properties of medieval stained glass are so unique, Welsh scientists recently used their own versions of the material to build a special 3D panoramic camera for the European Space Agency’s 2019 Mars rover mission. In that case, the useful property was the way the glass resists fading — even after hundreds of years of exposure to the sun’s UV radiation. By blocking UV radiation, the nanoparticles in the stained glass chips will capture the true colors of the red planet.

Soon We Could Have Displays and Windows That Change Color with the Flick of a Switch. But it’s proven challenging to induce metal nano particles to switch colors, a critical ability if you want to build a color display with them. Past work has managed some slight shifts in hue by linking nanoparticles with nanowire bridges. The Rice scientists improved on those techniques to make the color shifts stronger via a kind of chemical bridge.

First, the Rice team fixed pairs of gold nanoparticles to a glass surface coated with conductive indium tin oxide, or ITO (it’s in your smartphone screen, for instance). They used the ITO to coat the surface of the gold particles with a silver electroplate. Then they immersed them in saltwater electrolyte with a silver electrode to form a circuit. Zap the nanoparticles with a negative voltage, and a conductive silver “drawbridge” forms. Reverse the voltage, and the bridge withdraws.

“The great thing about these chemical bridges is that we can create and eliminate them simply by applying or reversing a voltage,” group leader Christy Landes said in a press release. “This is the first method yet demonstrated to produce dramatic, reversible color changes for devices built from light-activated nano particles.”

Unlocking Cities’ Dirty Secrets.

Unlocking cities’ dirty secrets.

Grime is found on every surface in urban environments. Buildings, statues, street signs and pavements are all covered with a grimy layer of chemicals from cars, factories and other polluting sources.

We’ve always thought that once this layer has been deposited on a surface the complex mixture of organic and inorganic chemical pollutants contained within it are locked in, remaining in their resting place until a window cleaner or street sweeper scrapes them off.

New observations suggest this isn’t correct. James Donaldson from the University of Toronto, Canada, and his collaborators in Leipzig, Germany, now believe sunlight can cause nitrogen compounds to be re-released from the grime and recycled back into the atmosphere. Here, these compounds once again contribute to ozone and smog.

The researchers have carried out a series of lab and field – or in this case, city street – experiments that support their claim. First, grime collected in Toronto was examined using infrared spectrometry to determine its composition. It was then exposed to artificial sunlight in the lab, and its composition reassessed. Nitrate components in the sample were observed to rapidly leave the grime when it was exposed to light.

The next series of experiments took place over a six week period on a street in Leipzig. The team collected grime on glass beads (made of the same type of glass as windows) stored on a two-tiered structure that resembled takeaway pizza boxes stacked on top of each other. The beads in the top tier were exposed to natural sunlight, while those in the lower tier were shaded from the sun’s rays.

The team then took both sets of beads back to the lab and analysed the chemicals deposited on them. The beads kept in the shade contained 10% more nitrates than those exposed to the sun, supporting the earlier lab-based findings that nitrogen compounds can escape grime with the help of light. An extended year-long version of this study is still running in Toronto.

Back in the lab, the Toronto arm of the team have analysed the gas phase products released when artificial sunlight is shone on real grime, finding that nitrogen dioxide and nitrous acid are both released. Both are important air pollutants.

These findings may eventually lead to improved models for estimating the quality of urban air, but there remain a number of questions – such as the effect of humidity or varying amounts of sunlight – to be answered first.

Efforts to reveal the secrets of urban air pollution, and therefore improve our models, are vital for enabling policymakers to make good decisions about keeping air pollution at safe levels. The end goal is, of course, to ensure we can all breathe easily when spending time in our cities.

Halloween Window Cleaning & Eggs

Window cleaners, Frankenstein (Horemo Reyes) and the Wolfman (Jorge Estrada) pictured as they worked their way down the Wells Fargo’s Duke Energy Center.

Window washing monsters: A team of window washers from Scottie's Building Services celebrated Halloween by dressing up as Frankenstein (Horemo Reyes) and the Wolfman (Jorge Estrada) as they worked their way down the Wells Fargo’s Duke Energy Center on Friday October 30, 2015. Reyes, who has washed high rise windows for about 10 years says this is the first year he decided to work in costume.

How to clean egg off windows - Halloween Window Clean - Year after year our phone starts ringing after Halloween because trick or treat often means “give us a treat or we will egg your windows!”  Is a very sad state of affairs but don’t despair, here is our guide to cleaning egg from your windows.

How to clean egg off windows: The first point to make is that egg is like glue. When it drys it really takes some shifting.  So if you see egg on your windows the first thing to do is to clean it off before it drys.  This can be done just by squirting your window with a hose pipe.  It will leave a horrible drying mark, but at least this will come off easily when your windows are next cleaned by your regular window cleaner. If it is a downstairs window that you can reach, use soft sponge and some washing up liquid.  Allow it to dry a little then buff up the window with some kitchen towel.

If you are unfortunate and the egg has dried onto the window then it is going to be a little more tricky.  If the window is downstairs and you can reach, the best tool to use is a decorators glass scraper.  These are available from most DIY stores for about a pound.  Scrape the glass and finish by cleaning the window as described above.

If the window is upstairs and you don’t want to risk getting the ladder out, then wait for your window cleaner to arrive.  To be honest once the egg dries on the glass then it will no more tricky to remove the egg from the glass if you wait days or weeks.  Good window cleaners will have a professional window cleaners scraper that fits onto a pole. The window cleaner can then remove the egg from the glass safely.  It isn’t worth purchasing the tool your self as a pack of blades for a professional window cleaners scraper will set you back £20.00 and in many cases this alone outweighs the price of the window cleaner removing the egg for you.  The window cleaner will also be more used to using a scraper at a distance and will more than likely do a better job.

Eggs are difficult to remove from a home's exterior, especially when they dry. However, with some elbow grease and proper preparation, you can simplify the egg removal process.

How to Wash Egg off a House (Wall):  Egging a house has been a longtime prank of vandals. As anyone who has been the victim of egging can attest to, eggs are difficult to remove from a home's exterior, especially when they dry. However, with some elbow grease and proper preparation, you can simplify the egg removal process. Here are some suggestions for how to wash egg off a house. 

1. Start cleaning your house as soon as possible. The longer the eggs are on your house, the more they will stick to the exterior surfaces. Due to their high moisture content, eggs remove somewhat easily when the egging is fresh. Prepare cleaning supplies as soon as you notice that your house has been egged.

2. Prepare a bucket of warm water. The water should not be hot. Hot water will cook the eggs and make them stick even more to the exterior of your home. Eggs are protein-based, so they cook quickly (and stick quickly) when exposed to heat. A bucket of warm water from the faucet will give you a good start in removing the egg from your home.

3. Hose the eggs off the exterior of your house. Get out the garden hose and spray the area below where the eggs are present on your siding or other surface. By washing down the area below the eggs, you are creating a surface that they can run down once they are removed. If you don't hose down the area below the eggs, they may stick to the siding. After washing below, spray directly above the egged area. Many times the water running down the surface of the siding is enough to remove the eggs. If you choose to directly spray the egged area without spraying anything else, you run the risk of splattering the eggs and making a worse mess on your home.

4. Use a cleanser with a high alkaline base to scrub the eggs. Sometimes the eggs won't come off any other way than scrubbing them. A cleanser with a high alkaline base works well to break down the protein structure of the egg. Many household cleaners or de-greasers are effective. Look at the pH level in each product. The higher the pH level, the higher the alkaline content.

5. Scrub the area with a brush. Dip the brush into the cleanser or spray the cleanser on the scrub brush, then rub the eggs off of the house's exterior. If necessary, use a long-handled brush or a ladder to reach stains. Rinse the area with warm water. If the stains persist, scrub harder. If the eggs have dried, you may have to scrub and rinse several times to remove them. Repeat this step several times, if necessary.

Dilapidated Government Buildings & Their Windows

How bad is the California state building where you work? Mechanical failure has kept one building’s windows unwashed for 10 years. Some office structures lack fire sprinklers, contain hazardous materials, suffer from leak.

Fun fact: The windows on the Resources Building in downtown Sacramento haven’t been cleaned in more than a decade. “The window cleaning platform is not functional,” the California Department of General Services stated in a new report on the 51-year-old building. “The windows have not been cleaned in over ten years, and without an operable platform, the exterior tile joints cannot be maintained.”

Other problems inside and outside the building include asbestos in the walls, ceiling and floor tiles, exterior joints around windows that allow water to seep in, a “spongy” roof the verge of leaking and fire-safety systems that aren’t up to code. Those troubles and others gave the 17-story structure at 1416 Ninth St. the ignominious distinction as the most-dilapidated office building that the state owns or leases among the 29 assessed by HOK, a well-known architectural firm.

HOK figures that fixing everything, from replacing restroom exhaust fans to seismically retrofitting the Resources Building’s exterior, would cost $148.8 million. Lawmakers commissioned the first-ever survey of state properties last year. The Brown administration has said the results will guide policy for repairing or replacing government buildings. Want to check on the state building where you work? General Services has posted the results all the state building assessments by HOK. You’ll find them here.

Part of the problem is that many of the building’s 3,000 windows in the Houses of Parliament of the building on the banks of the River Thames in central London will not close properly

Deteriorating Houses of Parliament could catch fire again, warn Parliament officials: The Palace of Westminster is in such a state of disrepair that it could burn down for a second time, senior officials in charge of a major overhaul have warned. MPs are getting stuck in lifts and missing votes because of the scale refurbishment required at the Houses of Parliament, they said.

Part of the problem is that many of the building’s 3,000 windows of the building on the banks of the River Thames in central London will not close properly, further causing more damage to the fabric of the building designed by the architect Augustus Pugin. Richard Ware, the director for the Restoration and Renewal Programme at the Palace of Westminster, said the £50million a year work programme only kept the building working operationally. More fundamental work was needed to stop the building deteriorating further, referring to the last major fire in the Houses of Parliament in 1834. 

A report on the future of the Palace of Westminster concluded in 2012: “If the Palace were not a listed building of the highest heritage value, its owner would probably be advised to demolish and rebuild.” One of the major problems is that asbestos – a deadly substance which was used in the 1940s and 1950s to fireproof buildings - had been “liberally applied all around the building – not just as insulation but in light switches, toilet systems and as a sound suppressant”, Mr Barlex said.

Big Buildings - Dirty Secrets

The CTBUH uses the term "vanity spires" to describe tops of buildings where a ton of extra height is added, even though that space isn't used for people.

The List: how big buildings are cleaned - How big buildings are cleaned – from the Burj Khalifa in Dubai to the Empire State Building in New York. This week, a specialist team ascended London’s Houses of Parliament to clean the clock faces of the Elizabeth Tower – home to the famous Big Ben bell. The hands on each of the clock’s four faces were frozen for the week-long task but its chimes still rang out and the workers on the 96m-tall tower wore ear defenders to protect their hearing. Kasia Delgado reveals how four other big buildings around the world are cleaned.

1. Burj Khalifa, Dubai

The 24,830 windows of the world’s tallest building are made from a million sq ft of glass. When the 830m tower was cleaned in 2012 a team of 36 people needed three months to wash them. They started from the top floor and worked down, standing on specially designed machines that emerged from cavities in the skyscraper and moved along rails skirting its curved towers. The project manager at Grako, the cleaning company that took on the task, said that coping with the height was “all about mindset”.

2. Empire State Building, New York

Window-washers at the 6,500-window Manhattan landmark have reported how, in winter, food and drink thrown out of windows of high-up floors often freezes on glass lower down – and that frozen coffee and yoghurt, for example, can be particularly difficult to scrub off. This is, of course, far from the only problem when cleaning a New York skyscraper. Richard Hart, head of the Empire State window-washing team in 1937, remarked casually that, “I’ll be working away, and a gust of wind will come screaming up from 34th Street and for a moment I’ll be doing a tap dance on nothing. Anyway, it keeps me interested.”

3. Petronas Towers, Malaysia

When the Petronas Towers were opened in Kuala Lumpur in 1996 there was a dispute over whether they were taller than the Sears building in Chicago (now called the Willis Tower) – the world’s tallest when it was completed in 1973. What is not in doubt is the cleanliness of the skyscrapers’ glass. The two towers are fitted with a total of 11 cranes that allow cleaners to move up and down between the 32,000 windows. It takes workers a month to clean the panes on each tower and, when they finish, they go back to the top and begin again.

4. Hearst Tower, New York

It took engineers three years to build a machine that would enable cleaners to wash Norman Foster’s 182m tall skyscraper, which opened in 2006. The windows, made up of concave diamond shapes, were impossible to access using ordinary means so a rectangular steel box the size of a small car was designed to move around the roof of the tower on an elevated steel track. The project’s construction manager described the car as “like a ride at Disneyland”.

The 10 Tallest Vanity Spires - click to enlarge.

The World's Tallest Skyscrapers Have A Dirty Little Secret - The Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the Bank of America tower in New York count among the worst offenders: Supertall skyscrapers aren't necessarily built to fit as many people inside as possible, sometimes they're just aiming to be, well, really tall. Large portions of these buildings are designed to increase height, but remain unoccupied. Wasteful!

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), a not for profit organization that tracks the world's skyscrapers, just released some data on that subject. Surprise! Some really tall buildings don't need to be so tall. The CTBUH uses the term "vanity spires" to describe tops of buildings where a ton of extra height is added, even though that space isn't used for people. By unused height, above are the 10 buildings with the most ridiculous spires (click to enlarge picture).

So the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the World at nearly 830 meters, has 244 meters of unoccupied space. To put that in context, as the CTBUH does, if that 244 meters were itself a building, it would be the 11th tallest in Europe. Pretty crazy, right? But it's also not new. Think about classic skyscrapers like the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, which were similarly designed with big spires. You might notice that the skyscrapers with the largest vanity spires were all built fairly recently (the oldest is from 1999) but there are also just more supertall buildings being erected. It would take a little more math to say buildings like this are on the rise, so to speak.

It's also not clear how these spires change the buildings' environmental footprints, although we know at least one of them listed above, the Bank of America Tower in New York, has some pretty serious efficiency issues. One of the study's authors, CTBUH's Daniel Safarik, wrote in an email to PopularScience that "we did not explicitly look at how vanity height affects environmental footprint for this study, but that is clearly one of the most vital issues implied by the findings." Just having the title of "tallest" is a draw for a building, he says, it matters less what all that space is used for. So what to do? "If [a tallest building] criteria were based on 'highest occupied floor,' in theory, there would be less of an incentive to have the 'vanity height,'" Safarik writes.

Until that changes, more buildings may add vanity height just to top other structures. Or maybe we can keep things the way they are, and just have a skyscraper where you can't go above the lobby.

So the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world at nearly 830 meters, has 244 meters of unoccupied space. To put that in context, as the CTBUH does, if that 244 meters were itself a building, it would be the 11th tallest in Europe. Here, meanwhile, are those buildings broken down geographically. Click to enlarge.

From The Windows, Wires And Scaffolding

July 7, 1946: Robert Maxey and Stanley Medwid clean windows on the tenth floor of the Lexington Building. They are securred by their safety belts which are fastened to two little knobs on the sash frames. The squeegee, when not in use, is carried on the hip. (Photo by Albert D. Cochran). Click to enlarge.

From the windows, wires, steel and scaffolding: Acrobats with paint brushes. High riders. Steel painters. Window washers. Scaffolding climbers. No matter what you call them, these brave souls have challenged our photographers to create interesting angle-filled images over the years. Click all pictures to supersize.

Aug. 30, 1970: Charlie Carroll wipes one clean. (Ellis J. Malashuk). Click to enlarge.

Feb. 27, 1976: A precarious perch for the window washer cleaning the exterior of the Dept. of transit and Traffic at Calvert and Bath. (Carl D. Harris - Sunpaper) Click to enlarge.

No caption filed. (Baltimore Sun file photo). Click to enlarge.

April 12, 1957: Spring cleaning time for these window washers. (Robert F. Kniesche). Click to enlarge.

From Chicago to New York: Alex Henderson, window washer at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, talks in a microphone to a brother window washer at the Empire State Building in NYC. The radio conversation was arranged by the National Broadcasting Company as the Chicago window washer and the NYC washer touted their trade. Click to enlarge.

Oct. 8, 1972: Window washers require a scaffold to work on the First National Bank Building at Light and Redwood streets. With modern windows taking up more and more space in new construction a window washer's work downtown can keep him very busy. (Sun file). Click to enlarge.

June 4, 1964: Window washers Nick Murdich and Bob Cave, seen from the One Charles Center window, lean in at the 22nd floor. At the end of the scaffolding, railed enclosures called "buckets" hold motors, cables, and electric cord. Rollers fit behind beams to hold scaffold close to the building. (Ellis Malashuk). Click to enlarge.

When Is A Window Not A Window?

Traditional airplane cockpits may soon go the way of propellers, ashtrays, and free meals on domestic flights. Aircraft manufacturer Airbus has filed for a U.S. Patent for a new, high-tech “windowless cockpit” design that gets rid of the familiar glass windows at the front of the plane. Could this be the future for more secure houses as well? Star Trek led the way.

The answer is: - when it's a-jar. Christmas cracker jokes aside... so what's next? No more windows to clean in the future? A lounge with air conditioning, a secure house with no windows but cameras everywhere? This could be the start of the end for window cleaners everywhere. The house of the future may be without windows & security is king. Perhaps a camera cleaning service?

Airbus patents windowless cockpit that would increase pilots' field of view: Imagine showing up at the airport to catch your flight, looking at your plane, and noticing that instead of windows, the cockpit is now a smooth cone of aluminum. It may seem like the worst case of quality control in history, but Airbus argues that this could be the airliner of the future. In a new US patent application, the EU aircraft consortium outlines a new cockpit design that replaces the traditional cockpit with one that uses 3D view screens instead of conventional windows.

Cockpit relocated into the nose frees up more space in the cabin.

There’s a reason why cockpits are traditionally in the nose of a plane – not the least of which is the pilot being able to see where they're going. In addition to flying, being up front provides a clear view forward and downward for landing and taxiing. That’s all very useful, but it does tend to ruin the aerodynamics of the aircraft’s nose, which would ideally be lancet shaped. As aircraft have grown larger and more complicated, the nose has come to also include the radome, crew rest area and the front landing gear, and the current cockpit design reflects this.

Another problem is that aerospace engineers hate windows. They may be popular with passengers who like to see outside, and pilots, who like to not bang into things, but engineers see them as nothing but points of weakness in what should, ideally, be a solid cylinder. If nothing else, they’ll point to the alarming Comet airliner crashes of the 1950s, which were traced back to poor window design fatally weakening the fuselage. Windows mean heavy reinforcements and multiple layers of glass and plastic to strengthen hull integrity. In addition, placing the cockpit in the nose reduces the cabin size, where every inch is measured in thousands of dollars lost per flight.

The virtual cockpit display widens the pilot's field of vision.

The Airbus patent shows a windowless cockpit that removes the windows or reduces them to partial views of the outside world. Instead, exterior views are provided by a display formed by back projection, lasers, holograms, or OLED imaging systems fed by cameras outside the fuselage. In addition, there are stereo cameras for taxiing and parking, and augmented reality can be used to highlight weather conditions, navigation beacons, air routes, hazards, and other information. There are even holographic displays of a globe displaying navigation and weather data, and a Star Wars like holographic projector that Darth Vader would enjoy.

Holographic communicator and weather display.

The idea of a windowless cockpit may seem a bit mad at first, but there are some real advantages if Airbus can pull it off and get the public to accept it. The proposed system widens the pilot’s field of view, which is always good, and provides more flexibility about what information is displayed and how it's displayed. It reduces the weight of the aircraft, therefore increasing fuel efficiency, and it increases the flexibility of aircraft design. Security can also be increased by making the cabin as hardened as possible – even separating it entirely from the passenger cabin.

At the moment, the windowless cockpit is just a concept, but if the public is willing to go along with it, the smooth airliner could be the plane of the future.

Also see:  Windows Made of Concrete

How To Wash The Windows At Frank Gehry’s

To get to the next floor, the crane moves the rig out from the curtain wall, realigns the basket, and drops.

How to Wash the Windows at Frank Gehry’s 76-Story Eight Spruce Street: Conventional window-washing rigs slide up, down, and side to side to get around a building, but at Eight Spruce, the apparatus has to contend with lots of curves and angles. (Only the south face is flat.) Starting on the roof, two washers load their low-tech supplies—squeegees, dish soap, a bag lunch—into a custom-designed rig comprising six “baskets,” which move individually. A telescoping crane lowers the rig to a fixed position. Then a basket—or baskets, depending on the location—is pushed snugly against the glass-and-steel exterior. To get to the next floor, the crane moves the rig out from the curtain wall, realigns the basket, and drops. The job is managed by R&R Scaffolding, which also handles other unusually shaped skyscrapers, like the under-construction One57. Business is up 500 percent over the last five years.

$1.5 million to $3 million: Estimated combined cost of system installation (sans rig purchase) plus one round of cleaning.
428,000: Square feet of surface area.
2,000+: Windows.
25 mph: Maximum wind speed at which the rig actually works.
6: Months to complete annual cleaning

“I’m not really afraid of heights, but the first few months were a little iffy. You’re just looking out at those cables holding you up, wondering, Is this going to be enough?” —Juan Portelles, R&R Scaffolding