Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: macleod on December 20, 2006, 06:41:52 pm
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So whats the highest that you have cleaned windows?
and before any of you (squeaky et al) say cleaning your window on the plane to Spain, i mean real work!
today was my heighest - 12 floors up!! and I am actually scared of heights!
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72 meters that was about 20th floor.
On a training course in finland we went in a 100m hydraulic platform that was a real eye opener it seems so much higher when not against a building and doing work to take your mind of it.....
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cool, i knew you would have gone the higest! grr
are you mainly commercial work? how many sales people?
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i'm sure there is some of the london boys that have been a lot higher in cradles.
We are a family business that the old man started 37 years ago we only do commercial and industrial work.
I am the face of the company now and carry out all quotes and sales, have a great office team and opratives behind me though.
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it seems like half of hemel have worked for you at sometime in their lives...
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you a local lad then?
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I have work over a large area. Hemel to Northampton, to Tamworth to warwick to bicester.
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good what sort of work you carry out and name of company.
We have at one time or another employed i think every window cleaner in hemel guess you know a few of them. we have two lads that have been with us for 25 years.
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company is called MacLeod. just me and one other lad at the moment.
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72m on a cherry picker.200ft on a cradle :'( scary stuff ;D
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I cleaned the windows mid-flight on The Challenger Space Shuttle.
It was a blast. ;D
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Who footed your ladder
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I did the cockpit windows on Apollo13 so we could see the Moon's surface better.
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I did the cockpit windows on Apollo13 so we could see the Moon's surface better.
bet it was you that caused the blast that nearly doooomed them all
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490 ft abseiling in Boston
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Can't remember the exact number of floors, but many years ago I worked for a firm called "A.F.Cheese & Sons Ltd." We did only schools, all in the old ILEA (Inner London Education Authority). Some of the colleges were b****y high and we did them by "bosun's chair" - a single seat suspended from a rope hanging off a pole sticking out over the parapet. We had to rig it ourselves, so a two man team would work from a chair each. This meant one man on the ground would haul the first chair up to the roof. The man on the roof would climb down the rope, into the chair and then secure it so it couldn't slip down, and then climb back up to the roof. The man on the ground then hauled up the second chair and the one on the roof climbed down into it and started work, swinging from side to side as far as he could and lowering himself down floor by floor till he reached the ground. The man on the ground would go up to the roof and climb down into the first chair and start work as well, so both finished at roughly the same time, re-positioned the chairs and started all over again.
Climbing in and out of the chairs..................now that was scary :o
Cheers,
Ian
PS this was before WAHD ;D
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Can't remember the exact number of floors, but many years ago I worked for a firm called "A.F.Cheese & Sons Ltd." We did only schools, all in the old ILEA (Inner London Education Authority). Some of the colleges were b****y high and we did them by "bosun's chair" - a single seat suspended from a rope hanging off a pole sticking out over the parapet. We had to rig it ourselves, so a two man team would work from a chair each. This meant one man on the ground would haul the first chair up to the roof. The man on the roof would climb down the rope, into the chair and then secure it so it couldn't slip down, and then climb back up to the roof. The man on the ground then hauled up the second chair and the one on the roof climbed down into it and started work, swinging from side to side as far as he could and lowering himself down floor by floor till he reached the ground. The man on the ground would go up to the roof and climb down into the first chair and start work as well, so both finished at roughly the same time, re-positioned the chairs and started all over again.
Climbing in and out of the chairs..................now that was scary :o
Cheers,
Ian
PS this was before WAHD ;D
So you didn't have an old matress on the ground just in case then?
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So you didn't have an old matress on the ground just in case then?
You mean just in case we fancied a lie down? We should have been so lucky :P We were all on price work, and the guvnor was so tight we had to grunt and groan all day because he used to sneak up on us and if we weren't making it seem we were working our nuts off, he would put the rates down >:(
Oh happy days :D
Cheers,
Ian
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Cleaned the United Arab Emirates Bank in London, 35 Floors, not sure how high it was, all I know is the people below looked very small :D
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Trevor,
"I live in a small house but my windows look out onto a very large world" :) Chinese proverb.
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Trevor,
"I live in a small house but my windows look out onto a very large world" :) Chinese proverb.
;)
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Not as high as Pat and not window cleaning
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Just found a window cleaning pic
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Hey Chris ,if the photo appears, this was the first big one I ever did, theres a tv show called Boston legal this is the building they show at the beginning
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Pat , I don't watch telly very much mate but the football stadium in the background seems to get a lot of airtime on tv over here.
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Chris Im not well up on my stadiums which one is that, Judging by all the photos Ive seen I take it that helmets are mandatory over there
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he'd be nuts not to be wearing one!!
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JM123 ive been doing hi-rise 17 years, never once in that time have i worn a helmet or never have i seen somebody wear one
And I have never heard of an accident that would have been mitigated by wearing one
If thats the rule then you wear one that i agree with but i dont see why you would be nuts not to
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Pat, It's Old Trafford in the background (it's a s*^t hole)
Helmets are compulsory whilst abseiling, It's one of those things that you get used to, if for any reason you don't have to wear a helmet for example most cradle work it just doesn't feel right so we wear our helmets doing cradle work as well. I must admit that i've not heard of an accident due to not wearing a helmet but I suppose theres always a chance of getting a crack to the head, like I said once you're used to wearing one it becomes second nature. We got the sealing job in the pic after doing a builders clean on all the windows and noticing that many windows had not been sealed and seeing as though the scaffold had been taken down we got the job, £££££££'s :)
The buildings look pretty impresive in Boston, with the kit we use though it is only rated for a descent of 100 metres max, don't you find that there is too much bouncing about at the bottom of a long drop, especially when it's raining. I've made an idiot out of myself a few times while trying to look cool and then ending up on my arse in front of a load of women ;D
Chris
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Chris this is just an educated guess but im going to say the rope stretches between 1 ft and 2ft per hundred on a long drop, Yeah 300 ft is the legal limit here too but like your ladder law if there is no viable alternative then abseiling is allowed
This usually hapens on a building that has a roof top cradle which has a safety problm or just has not been signed off on by OSHA( our h&s)
i dont think I would have a problem wearing a helmet but with the amount of twisting and turning that goes on have you ever dropped it
as far as making an idiot out of myself trying to look cool been there done that ,I dont know how many times ive opened the rope and sailed down the last 50 ft or so only to land squarely on the cone i had set up to keep people out from under me
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The ropes we use stretch around 5%, our helmets have a pretty secure chinstrap so theres no danger of them falling off.
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the ropes we use are SKY Genie ropes which have a static kermantel core and are 1/2 inch, I guess it might be 5ft in a hundred its been a while since I did a really tall building, Have a nice Christmas
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Our ropes are 11mm semi static (about 1/2 inch i think) Do you use a different descender for longer drops? Have a nice Christmas mate.
Chris
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no, chris we stick with the same one , its old fashioned but iTs what im comfortable with,everybody raves about the rack system and I believ it to be a better system but if it aint broke and all that
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Pat, over here not many people have heard of the rack or genie, I've used the rack when working in Canada and didn't like it. The 'STOP' or 'ID' made by Petzl are the most common descenders over here as they are very user friendly and will stop or slow down the descent if the worker lets go of the rope completley, there is also a back up device, usually a shunt or a new one called the ASAP, all made by Petzl. Here is a pic of our set up, it's not very clear so I will try and find a better one after I've been for my christmas dinner