22 years a window cleaner, the last 2 of them I've been WFP.
I no longer climb ladders to clean windows. period!
Well, ok. perhaps there is and will always be the odd occasion when I need to work off a ladder.
Builders cleans and so on, for that type of work you have to get up close and personal.
Manky window frames can cause problems, but just how many of them do you come across nowadays??
As an example, the other day I cleaned a large and ancient house, it was last cleaned about 5 or 6 years ago.
There were windows that were badly oxidized, many of the windows were literally encrusted with cobwebs, the paintwork on all of them was dirty and grubby, so of the wiindows had all manner of gaps, they were covered in leaves and pine needles, spider eggs spun into just about ever corner on every window, dead insects abounded.
I really couldn't have had a bigger challenge for a WFP clean.
I still washed and cleaned up all of the frames as well as the glass and when I eventually checked back over the work (it took the best part of 3 hours to do, so many windows were dry after that time) and the results were good.
There were a few panes here and there that I had to go over again with applicator and squeegee, but this was a first clean on a very old house, and it came up to a very acceptable standard.
The frames looked like they had just been painted again when compared to the mess they were in when I started.
Bear in mind that you will frequently hear it said on the forum how it can take a couple of cleans before you begin to get a top notch result.
I almost achieved this on a first clean on a house that hadn't been cleaned in several years, and was also the kind of job that you would think you would dread doing with WFP.
WFP is not a magic wand, and I certainly would not recommend a WFP newbie to attempt the job I described above.
It is easy to screw up with WFP, but as you gain experience you learn how to ensure you get the desired results almost all of the time.
I won't say all of the time, because you
will get it wrong now and again.
I was watching another window cleaner do the local police station off a ladder...he made me wince to watch him!
A big wooden extension ladder (too big), no feet on it and he was cleaning the upstairs windows.
The windows are very tall, he was standing near the very top of the ladder, balancing on one leg, one hand was reaching up above his head to grab hold off the window, with the other he was reaching above that to clean the pane above, he was even on his tip-toes (toe
)
Talk about asking for trouble eh?
A job like this would have been oh so much safer had he been using WFP.
He didn't do that good a job either, and the frames looked really poor, something else he would have got to look 1000% better had he a WFP.
The firm was one of those big national companies that also do all the office cleaning and so on, so I've no doubt they also do all of the police stations in the county....hope he does a better job on the others
The plus points of WFP far outweigh the minus points, and by a big margin too.
Ian
