Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: Duke on February 18, 2005, 06:32:00 pm
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>:( looks like snow's on the way chaps ! More fun and games.... :-\
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Monday I think? I remember going out years ago in about 8in of the stuff. We took it in turns at footing the bottom. The chill factor was -15, I shiverd till I stoped shivering. Bring it on a day off or even better a lie in. :) :)
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hope it lasts for about a week i am knackered.dont know about you lot but i have been busier this winter than the past 6 years must be doing something right eh!
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could be worse,,,,,you could stay in my area,its been cold sinse september
:)
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well, I don't know where that is...best of luck, personaly I'd have moved if it's normal...lol
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This winter has been exceptional for us too. Due to the weather we are about 3 weeks behind which is worse than this time last year and we are working our bo**ocks to catch up.
We've some jobs that havn't been done since December.
I agree with Aztec. If it snowed for a week I would spend it in bed.
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I'd be interested to know what source everyone uses for your weather forecast. I look on digital ceefax, watch the national forecasts after the news, and look on aol's 5 & 10 day forecasts on line, and cant believe how they vary. This weeks a good example. according to ceefax, i'll be working my nuts off till wednesday,whilst according to aol I may as well stay in bed all week. Anyone found a fairly reliable source their happy with apart from sticking your head out of the window in the morning ? ??? Cheers Nick
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I USE ROBINS WEATHER, HERE IS THE LINK FOR YA
http://www.fly13.f2s.com/Weather/
lots of info there.
happy snowball fights
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I belong to the UK WeatherWorld Forum and as yet, I've found the forecasts there are about the most usefull I've used so far.
http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=18808&posts=2
They also have 'severe weather' alerts if any severe stuff is coming this way.
http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=18814&posts=1
The link on the previous posting looks pretty good too.
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My weather reports are customer based. I always keep cleaning untill 3 people complain, then stop but you dont get Three. So you get a full day every time. :)
Pluss you train the customers to expect you no matter what. :) :)
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Hi Roy
Interms of the weather, rain and the like is not a problem.
I live on the coast and most of our work is within a mile of it along a long stretch and a lot of it is near cliffs and a few miles inland are the south downs. It's the wind, or rather 'gusts', that are the problem especially if the weather comes from the south west or the south east as we're on the south coast.
Last Saturday I ignored weather reports stating gusts upto 40 knots for the shipping and one of was up a ladder, 100yds from the sea, when the wind came from nowhere and blew a gale for a short while. Had the ladder not been clamped to the window ledge both the person and the ladder would have gone sideways.
Generally, inland you don't get these problems in quite the same way.
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Hi a lot of my work is rural on high hill ect and it catches the wind from the brecon beacons ect. But it would not be as bad as the coast. :)
However when I first started years ago I went up 35ft in a force 9 gale got up there and wet the window, and it blew so bad had to hold the window sill both ends and to frighted to let go. Bit wiser now, and to stiff to get up that hight. :) :) :)
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Hi Roy again
I have done the same thing - got up the top and ended up hanging on the the window ledge with an grip like iron but not at 35ft. This was just a first floor but that was high enough for me. I sh*t myself. My hands and arms ached for days.
We have a kiddie now to do that higher stuff. I may be getting old in the tooth, (and a bit stiff also) but I'm bu**ered if I'll take even the smallest chance. If he's cleaning the second floor - I can't watch.
The highest I go is on an 7ft A frame. ;D
Having said that, my hobby is rock climbing which I think is a lot safer. Last month a friend and me were doing absailing from near Beachy Head (320ft) and I felt safer than I do on a ladder.
The Brecon Beacons are beautifull. What a great place to work. Last time I was there walking it was seriously windy.
It's Sunday at 00.15 and it's snowing here in Brighton (and -3) Yippee.
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I am glad I live and work in the area that I do, snow may be forecast for the whole country, but we never seem to get any of it :'(
Daft isn' it? The last thing I really want is bitterly cold weather and thick snow that will stop me working, but I do ::)
Ok, I only want it for a couple of days, but I still want to see it, I love driving in snow, yeah I know, even dafter, all stems from a misspent youth I guess.
I lived in an area known as the Forest of Dean (only live just outside that area now) and if I woke up and looked out the window at 2am in the morning and saw 6 inches of the white stuff, me & me mates would be out in my Escort drifting along on snow covered roads where my tracks where the first to make their mark.
You have a little control in thick scrunchie snow, unlike ice where you have none at all.
I spent a fair bit of time racing and rallying, and still used the road as a racetrack.
There was (and still is) a couple of miles of twisty road from a little village called Littledean, down to a junction called Elton corner. (Put that in just in case anyone from the area is reading this)
I had an Austin Healey frog eye sprite, for those that don't know, its an old 1950's sports car. It had been beefed up to a fair degree, by todays standards it would be pretty tame, but it held the road like glue.
Well in the dry my speed along this stretch of road wouldn't drop BELOW 80mph, this was usually at something like 3 in the morning, when it was dark you could see which corners you could take a full racing line on because of car lights (or rather the lack of them) coming in the other direction.
In the wet I had got it up to 70mph as a minimum speed.
I look back and I cannot believe how I managed to survive.
Like Roy, I have been out to work in thick snow, brushing the stuff off the windows so I could clean them.
Thick snow falling, climbing ladders....raving mad :o I can't believe how customers allowed us to clean their windows. Not that snow makes a lot of difference, it doesn't generally land on the glass.
There was a time when every winter the water would be freezing as we used our applicators, where the ssuds were freezing on the handles of the squeegee and applicator, and on the bucket on belts.
When it was that cold we would use rag mop chamois, clean with chamois, polish with scrim, but really quick so the damp edge didn't have time to freeze!! ;D
So far this winter it hasn't been cold enough to prevent me using my WFP, there are only a couple of weeks left of the winter before the likelihood of weather that severe will be past, so I'm hoping the forcast is wrong for the coming week......................but I'm hoping they're right too :o ;D :o
Ian
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You want Snow Ian just drive up to Merthyr and follow the main road to Brecon (A470) you'll see snow!
My six year old says she never sees snow so between Xmas and New Year I took her and my other daughters up there we drove that road stopped in a laybay at the base of Penyfan and had a snowball fight in the trees!
Two days later I walked in the same area (white out!)
Go on you're only an hour away!
Gotta go to work now!
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Snowing like hell here in monmouth at the moument. :) :)
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no snow in bedfordshire as yet :'( i wanna go sledging
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I live close to Ian_Giles and it's been really nice here. We've had a couple of spells of sleet, but no more than five minutes worth at a time, and for three or four periods I was working in just a tee-shirt and polo shirt.
As for weather forecasts, I'm sure we've all listened to them, thinking 'well, tomorrow's a day off', then when tomorrow arrives - it's been great. So I just take it as it comes. I'll work in damp and drizzle - cats, dogs and strong winds - no. But this winter has been really mild.
Global Warming is obviously not good for our planet and the future of our kids; but it definately has some fringe benefits!
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carried on working today in small snow storm
that lasted 10 mins customer, not sure what they
thought but offered me to step inside till it
past, carried on then beautiful sunshine glad i
did. God knows what the rest of the week will
bring so treat each day as it comes, always have
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Tosh is one Geordie who must be going soft, he actually kept his polo shirt on, and it was only a bit of snow ;D
2 degrees above zero first thing, sun was shining, most Geordies would have been out in their shorts and sunglasses trying to top up their tans......on the exposed bits of skin that aren't covered in tattoos 8)
From what I have seen on one forecast, we can possibly expect a little snow for our area on friday.
It's pathetic isn't it, we see so little snow nowadays, with the threat of a little of the white stuff we are all eagerly scanning the skies, and pretending we don't want to see any of it :-\
Did you know that January was one of the warmest since the fifty's? Think about that, in the 1950's there was a January as mild as the one we just had....Global warming?
Another interesting side effect of global warming (I'm not denying its happening by the way, not so sure about our own part in it though) is that it could cause the land locked ice sheets (up above Norway somewhere?) to melt, thus screwing up the gulf stream and giving us winters as cold as Canada :o
Possibly even precipitating a mini-ice age within 10 years :o :o
Did you know that if you took all of the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere the global temperature would only drop a couple of degrees, life on the planet would cease of course, but the temp would only drop a little.
The single biggest greenhouse gas is..................water vapour, remove that and the temperature would plunge through the floor ;D
Not that we shouldn't be doing everything in our power to cut pollution of all kinds, we are still screwing our environment, even if we are not actually contributing that greatly to global warming :'( (arguably that is ;))
Ian
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well said Ian....and if global warming means that we can expect milder (non-existent ?) Winters in the future, well, it's got my vote. Of course sea levels would rise, and there'd be more flooding....but I live inland and I've got wellies too. :-)
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Global warning also means more tropical diseases here along with nasty tropical insects. It also means cooler, wetter summers but if you then take the average for the whole year, it's warmer overal. It's not all good news.
Bring back the winters I remember as a child. That means SNOW sometimes.
Last nights snow here in Brighton fizzled out after 10 minutes and this afternoons snow started promising but then went the same way.
Tonight they are promising a good few cm's but I don't think so somehow.
I want a good few inches of snow. Please.
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My missus is hoping for a few inches too, I told her it might be only an inch or two, for some reason she spluttered that she wouldn't be happy with just two inches, can't think why she would say that ;)
Ian
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My missus said a few inches would be fine.
Why would she say that?
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Just took the dog out for his morning constitutional, expected to be knee deep in snow after last nights forcast, not a sight of it and it's quite mild too. The lads should rattle off some windows today if it stays like this. Me...I'm inside all day cleaning carpets in a castle, nice and warm!!
Have a good day
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Looks a bit chilly round here (South East Wales) this morning, but nothing too bad too.
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;D we've had snow,sleet and hail showers here in Cheltenham and Tewkesbury....but it's not sticking...yet...still managed to get a reasonable day in...
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We had a few snow showers but not enough to really settle and it's freezing out..
No work today either - the wind was too strong.
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bit like that meself, after the Friday Night Balti....yummmm
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What a brilliant day! It was really windy this morning and I was considering finishing when I received a call from an elderly gent - a fellow Geordie and ex soldier - living in South Wales. He said he lives in a pensioners bungalow, one of ten, and they haven't seen their regular window cleaner in six months.
I called, quoted a fiver (it's only four windows and two doors) and set Wor Lass to work on it while I knocked on the others. They were all in, and I ended up with the lot of them. The only pensioner who was out works in the local shop and her neighbor took a walk there, asked if they wanted me, and I got that one too!
I've work, good quality, comming in from all directions and have an extremely hot tip for a largish, fairly affluent area without a window cleaner - their old one dropped out - consisting of around 300 homes. The calls I've received suggest the tip is true!
I've just been and paid for 1000 leaflets, so I'm up really early tomorrow morning to push them out in my new target area.
What a difference to two years ago when I first started!
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well done....sounds good !
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Tell me were they are and I will drop some in for you Tosh :) :)HaHa :)
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It would be perfect for WFP work. But not telling! Not yet!. I'm there tomorrow morning at 6.00 am before someone else gets their oar in.
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lol...oh go on....???
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If you want a hand handing out leaflets give me a call, tell you what, let me know the area, give me ALL of your leaflets Tosh, you can have a lie in and I'll pop around and deliver them all for you ;D
(ever tried typing with one hand, and the other with crossed fingers behind your back ;))
Ian
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It's Shirenewton Ian. Race you there! Apparantely there's more lottery winners who live there, than any other part of the country. Honest.
I might be talking a load of the brown stuff though! I'll tell you once I've claimed the area!
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Hey, don't tell Roy, he works that area too :o
err, so does Matol (Ollie And Mat) and Roger too.............all three who have worked for me in the past :-\
In fact, I used to work that area too......until I sold it off first to Mat and Ollie, and then later to Roger :'(
Wishing I hadn't now :-[
Ian