Trev,
You are quite right, a drop of rain is niether here not there, I've worked in the rain today...though I'm feeling guilty about the last account I did, it was exposed and really catching the wind and rain
If the rain is so hard its soaking the walls above the windows, it's highly unlikely you'll be cleaning windows in conditions like that...you'd be mad to in fact.
But the wind picks up debris from fields, fron passing cars, off trees and hedgerows , roofs and walls, it gets swirled high into the atmosphere, mixes with the rain and is driven onto the windows.
Now as every one knows, I am a keen advocate of WFP, but I'm also honest enough to look at things with an unbiased eye (that applies to trad too I'll have you all know!)
WFP does not cope well with windy, stormy conditons, yes, you CAN go out and work in conditions that would be madness off a ladder, but the trade off is the much greater potential for low standard work.
I do my local Spar shop, was doing it last week (in & out) WFP on the outside, but I squeegee the doors as they open out and get stinking, so better safe than sorry.
On calm days the windows on the outside dry out perfect, I can't fault them.
But on this day, the doors were good (not perfect because of the heavy wind and rain) and the big window to the one side of the doors was also nearly perfect (I'd squeegee'd this one off) but the big window the other side of the door had noticable spots when looked at from the inside after they had dried out. (the other window and the doors only failed on very close inspection)
The wet glass will hold onto crap, it takes a little longer for the squeegee'd windows.
I do lots of insides and I notice the difference between work done in squally conditions and that done in fine conditions.
I want the work I do to be acceptable by my own standards, I don't like charging for work that I know doesn't achieve those standards.
I did a house a couple of weeks ago, she wasn't in (I still haven't been paid either
) and as I called back on her to see if she was in at the end of the day, I saw a couple of windows that were not quite right, no one about So a quickly tidied them up and checked over the rest of the house.
They had all dried out perfect, was a bit windy but not too bad.
Last Wednesday I was going past the house and popped in on the off chance of making the collection, I didn't, she was out, it had been less than a week and the windows were minging
I was stupidily grateful to the fact that I had called back on the day I did them and found them spotless (bar a couple of panes on two windows) otherwise I would have been thinking I had done a terrible job, looked just like I'd done a slipshod WFP job.
But of course that was all down entirely to the weather.
We have to have some give and take, customers have to accept their windows are going to potentially get dirty very quickly in the winter, but I think we should also consider the fact there are some days when you have to just take it on the chin and not work.
Just lately the weather has been pretty exceptional, it's why the two threads on weather are getting so many hits!
And of course the pressure is really on us all to get as much work done as possible because of the financial pressure of Christmas (JW's notwithstanding of course!
)
These are conditions when shops are a real godsend
I have plenty of them (and offices, pubs and so on) so I can afford to be pusillanimous
Ian
