Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: geefree on June 27, 2007, 01:37:00 pm
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Hi,
just nipped in for lunch,
i was doing a detached house , i was halfway through it using wfp,
two window cleaners pulled up next door, nice chaps, had i quick chat...... they were trad.... they got the ladders up and were gone in ten minutes flat !!!!... identical house, takes me half hour wfp,
I know i have not been doing w/c that long but did i feel slow and shamefull.... yes !.... and they had a conservatory and i didnt. ??? :'( :'( :'(
Gary.
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Don't worry about it m8 there was 2 of em! - they probably did a poor job anyway - as long as your doing your job to the best of your ability and your customers happy why worry about it! The neigbour will probably ask you to theirs next time your around there - also you got all your equipment to get in/out they only got bucket and ladders!
chin up :)
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Hi Gazza,
With what your saying I am convinced your doing too much detailing and scrubbing. A house shouldn't take you 30 minutes, maybe a first clean but not a regular house that 2 guy's can do in 10 minutes. That works out at 20 minutes with a ladder for a single man and you should be able to get that down to at least 15 minutes.
Ok, so your based in Wakefield? Well lets see if someone who is local can help you out for an hour or two and show you the ropes so to speak.
I would go home and clean your front downstairs window. Clean it with a flick over the frames and then up and down a few times over the glass and then rinse for about 10/15 seconds. Leave this to dry and look at the results. If your happy then do another window the same way until you get into the habit of a cleaning proceedure that isn't too long. Make sure you don't compromise your standards.
Now, if this works you can then build in every now and then a more thorough clean of the frames, say every 3 month etc... this will keep the windows clean and reduce your time.
Keep going at it until your getting a bedroom window cleaned in a minute or less, that should be your aim?
Regards,
Trevor
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let them try and beat you on a 3 floor house with lead glass 200 windows you will win hands down every time.
Sometimes trad will win over wfp on speed on residential but not over lager properties,flats ,lead glass etc let them be quicker than you don't worry get the more larger more profitable contracts
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LOL @ what they did just for you :)
Don't you see? They saw you with all your kit, and went hell for leather trying to put you down a peg. 10 mins on a detached house with a conservatory is fast, even for two guys. I'm new, I am slow, but so what?
I was even slower with a ladder. LOL!
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I was on an estate of leaded houses today. A window cleaner went up his ladder and he was scrubbing and drying like mad! I just swished the pole around at my casual speed ( i never go that quick) and still beat him.
You'll get quicker. A quick flick here and there and your done. Those guys have to go like mad to get done that quick, if you went like mad, you'd go the speed of both of them for sho!
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Splish splosh gimme the dosh
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Ah so wfp isn't so much about safety as speed.
You wfp guys will do 10 houses daily to my 6 trad. And you need to because apart from petrol (which is an expense we all endure) my costs are as good as zero!
Long live ladders, bucket, blade and scrim ;D
Oh and I can get away with a gallon of water a day...Ner ;D ;D
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Oh and I can get away with a gallon of water a day...Ner ;D ;D
Yeah, dirty water.
(That's what the wfp pole users used to say to me anyway... ;D)
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Dirty schmirty, who cares as long as the end result's ok?
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Ah so wfp isn't so much about safety as speed.
You wfp guys will do 10 houses daily to my 6 trad. And you need to because apart from petrol (which is an expense we all endure) my costs are as good as zero!
Long live ladders, bucket, blade and scrim ;D
Oh and I can get away with a gallon of water a day...Ner ;D ;D
OK Simon - so let's work on your figures - wfp does 10 for your 6 - lets say £10 each.
So wfp = £100 trad = £60 - your figures remember?
So that's £400 extra per week for wfp. (based on £200 per day wfp and £120 per day trad.) No way does wfp cost £400 per week!
If you're gonna quote figures then do it with some common sense - newbies might get taken in!
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I must admit that i have changed my mind at least 5 times since joining this forum about going wfp or not, and i still haven't got the foggiest whether to or not ::)
Richard
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I must admit that i have changed my mind at least 5 times since joining this forum about going wfp or not, and i still haven't got the foggiest whether to or not ::)
Richard
Yeah go on!
Actually don't.
But you could do... :-\
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But that's assuming 20 houses per day !
Obviously the more houses you clean the greater the disparity will be!
If you did 100 houses wfp a day you'd be on £5000 compared to my £3000....please God i should have that problem!
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Cheers Squeaky - Thats made it slightly easier for me to decide ;D
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wfp is excellent for commercial but for the picky customers we all have (and we all have them!) domestically you are better off with ladders, i spend more time explaining how it works than cleaning windows
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Ok spiceworld split it into three categories:
A) Do you value your life?
B) Do you want to earn more money?
C) Do you want to open up more business opportunities?
If you answered yes to any of the above, it's a no-brainer - WFP all the way
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I clean a block of 70 flats in 1 1/2 days how long on ladders trad....4 floors up and roof lights and georgean ???? £700.00 now tell me wfp isnt worth it
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oh come on you lot!! how long have you worked on ladders without giving it a second thought! then they say how dangerous they are and you squirm and say how you value your life!! PEOPLE WANT THEIR WINDOWS CLEANED AND DONT CARE HOW YOU DO IT!!! yes safety is important but you take too far how much safer wfp is, as the advert says GET SOME NUTS!!
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Thanks for all the input,
I love wfp and you are dead right about the leaded windows,... and they could have been playing a game with me,
To be fair to me, it was one of them houses where your hose gets caught on everything, normally i can do an average detached in around 20 mins,
Yes Trevor i do over do the detailing and i am a little too particular, i rinse too much out of fear of spotting too, but i do race on most houses without any thing in the way, but i could never do any house in ten minutes...... oh and by the way, the guys i met today were very friendly and even had a few helfpul words for me,
but i did go back and sneak a quick look .... only glass had been cleaned. !! :o
i suppose thats the norm , as a lot of trad guys charge extra for frames etc.... i chuck it all into one price as its near impossible to not clean the frames with wfp..... and much much quicker, i think lol ;)
Gary.
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I did 2 detatched houses today,they used to take 45mins each trad and there leaded.I did them this morning with the pole and they took me 35mins to do the pair and the quality of work is far better,on houses like this with scrims you can rub till your hearts content you wont beat WFP on these types of windows.
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You must have been half asleep if you got beat by two traditional window cleaners.
I took a local window cleaner out with me friday he has been asking for a while as he wanted to see what WFP was about.
Anyway after 30 minutes he said thats it im getting one of these you got through that last house in less than half the time i would.
Anyway after we finished he went home, had a phone call one hour later he brought a complete trolley setup from andrew mccann, freedom wfp.
He had it all delivered yesterday and was on the phone last night saying he has already done his house but used tap water as he could not wait for the water to purify.
I expect he will be on the phone during the week with questions.
I think if most window cleaners went out with a window cleaner experienced with WFP they would change over.
Paul
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You wfp guys will do 10 houses daily to my 6 trad. And you need to because apart from petrol (which is an expense we all endure) my costs are as good as zero!
This is correct. Exactly right.
However (you knew there would be one) the thing with WFP is it also allows you to do windows and houses for that matter that previously you could not. It allows you to build a much more compact round in my opinion. Trad or WFP for me is not really an issue. I am far to careful with a ladder and far too picky on my own work that it takes me forever using trad methods.
However, I am sure there are a lot of times we use WFP (downstairs easy access) when there is just no need at all. And it does hit us in the pockets.
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my costs are as good as zero! So are mine! my kit has paid for it's self!!!!!
Long live ladders, bucket, blade and scrim ;D not another one ::)
Oh and I can get away with a gallon of water a day...Ner ;D ;D I bet I pay less to produce 1000L of water then you pay to fill your gallon bucket!!!
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dont cost that much and my outlay has already been reaped,
and dont forget i was alone and there were two of them
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And your missus knows you are coming home safe every night, i bet their frames were mingin and their windows looked like they worked as crew on a ship!
They were playin wiv yer! Had it b4 too!
Funny though!
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GUYS GUYS GUYS....Don't get so defensive...I only expressed a tongue in cheek opinion about wfp...or isn't that allowed?
Blimey I thought I woke up this morning in Britain not bloody Red China where I had to be carefull what I said!....mutter mutter mutter ;D
For what it's worth if my round allowed the use of wfp I'd probably give it a go. But in Putney SW London wfp doesn't exist (in 20 yrs I've never seen it) because of severe parking restrictions so I'm forced to work trad.
And guess what? I make a comfortable living and am quite content. Sure there are houses that I can't do....ditto office blocks...so I don't take 'em on...easy!
Safety? Well of course this is always an issue with trad but with a bit of sensible risk assessment I can reduce it to an acceptable level.
Speed? Again wfp would certainly beat me in a race doing fronts only. But back front and inside?... I reckon I'd give ya a run for yer money.
Quality of work? Trad is consistent....in the wrong hands wfp can be hit or miss.
Earnings potential? Of course wfp users can do twice as many houses as trad per day...but of course you'd need twice as many customers.
Reliability/Maintenance? Ladders, buckets, squeegies and scrims don't break down....nuff said!
Costs? Ex petrol mine are as good as zero!
Long term? As wfp becomes more and more the industry norm in the counties and suburbs the cost of buying will come down...to the extent where a newbie will be able to pick up a kit for £ hundreds rather that £ thousands. Price wars?
In a nutshell guys wfp is a great invention but it ain't the only way windows can be cleaned and it certainly isn't some divine system, ordained by God and thus cannot be questioned!
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Simon Knight - i agree with most of what you say except on the point of quality of work trad being consistant and wfp in the wrong hands not
It does not matter if trad or wfp if your method is wrong then the results will also be wrong
there are probably as many 'cowboy' wfp w/c as trad
And you are right wfp is not divine and most definately can be questioned
Too many people take offence when anyone questions wfp whether they are joking or not
we are all different and therefore have different points of view some valid and some not
wow i'm in a bad mood >:( ;)
;D ;D ;D
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Good point re para's 1 & 2 and I agree.
Rgds
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It's definately not as consistant working wfp.
I had two houses in the same road today mention the results.
They both said they wouldn't change me, but if they were honest it was better before.
These should be fine now, as they're on the 4th wfp clean.
But after examining them I could see why.
They did have runs from the tops of the pane.
If they open the little top window above while they're still wet you're stuffed, because dirt runs down that you couldn't get to when the window was shut. ::)
I ended up squeegeeing some bottom windows in that street just to be sure.
Never mind, it was still quicker than doing it all trad.
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Your right squeak, wfp is good from a distance but look at anyones window after it's dried and I'm sure you will always find some tale tale spots somewhere. What gets me are the windows already spotted with calcium (limescale) You do the tops, splatter the bottoms then you can't see the marks so you wash as normal and off you go.
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That tends to happen more with worn seals squeaky, too ,
there aint a thing you can do.... i know, i have 2 dotted lines each time i do my own lounge window, no matter how many times i do it... still 2 have a vertical dot to dot lines....
and as we clean faster and faster and leave the customers windows wet, we have no way of knowing unless they tell us or we sneak back to every house when dried.
Gary.
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there aint a thing you can do.... i know, i have 2 dotted lines each time i do my own lounge window, no matter how many times i do it... still 2 have a vertical dot to dot lines....
Gary.
That's so true.
My front window has been dozens of times, but I've also got 2 vertical lines of dots in the middle.
Customers can't be happy about that.
I know I wouldn't be. :-\
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We mustn't forget that trad work will often leave small smears after detailing, or lines from the squeegy when detailing not carried out, or more general smears if you are having to polish with microfibre or scrim.
You think you have done a good job (just as you will with WFP) but then the sun falls in a certain way at a certain angle that highlights these errors.
I agree that if you study the glass closely after it has dried out, on at least a couple of windows you'll find the odd row of little dots.
But you will also find mistakes if you check out your trad work, probably only tiny ones if you are good at what you do.
how often have you done the outside and the customer has asked you to do the insides...only to find you have to pop back outside to pick up on the odd mark or run etc??
I'll also agree that in general, WFP is less consistant than trad by the way.
But I picked up a job that was done previously by a team I know well, and they are good window cleaners too, but they are 100% trad.
They had obviously been rushing, not bothering to detail when they should have done, customer complained about the lines around the window frames, which wouldn't have been there if they had detailed.
she also complained about the state of her frames too, as they never bother to clean the frames, the cobwebs and spider nests had built up to a high level, so even when they cleaned the glass properly, the windows still looked shabby.
As you work your round you learn the windows that aren't suitable for WFP, some you'll never get right, well for me, if they are upstairs then tough, it's like it or lump it cos I won't work off ladders, but I will trad any downstairs windows that just won't come up right with WFP.
Actually, I'll still do them WFP, but I'll nip over them with my squeegee when I've finished the house.
Ian