[Spruce]

Well, I thought I had seen it all until yesterday.

I passed a relatively new unlettered Berlingo Van outside our local library. What caught my attention was the long aluminium water fed pole leaning up against the 2nd story windows. I turned my van around and headed back to this youngster purely with the intention of finding out what aluminium pole he was using and how he managed with it as it was a big ’un.

He was just packing up as I got to him after finding a place to park. In the back of his van was a blue plastic drum mounted horizontally on a metal frame. There was a small round hole crudely cut in the top of the drum.  There was a battery and pump lying around along with 4 plastic 20 litre drums and a massive DI vessel – nothing secured – all loose in the back. The young operative informed me that he fills the blue drum through this hole with ordinary tap water from his supply of plastic containers. He said that there was a hose coming out of the bottom of the drum to the pump, then to the DI Vessel (he didn’t know what it was called but knew there were beads in it) and then onto his pole. If he ran out of water he could fill his ‘jerry cans’ from his customer’s tap.

The brush this youngster was using was an old Vikan 16” which was battered and had lots of bristles missing.

I had to pinch myself to make sure that what I saw was actually real. I come from Africa and have seen some improvisations, but this took the cake.

For a moment I wondered why I was going to all the future trouble of kitting an 800kg Peugeot Partner HDI van for my son to use when our local council are employing the services of out of area contractors who supposedly meet all the Council’s safety criteria but blatantly ignore all HSE regulations with their own personnel.

Never was able to identify the pole. It was aluminium, telescopic and had metal locking collars. The pole had the feed running down the centre and must have had about 6 or 7 sections to it. The brush had to be removed and it just went into the van diagonally with the brush end on the dashboard up against the windscreen and the other end just touching the back doors. The base pole’s diameter was too big for my hands to comfortably hold and it was so heavy I wouldn’t have been able to use it for long.

I drove past the library today and from the road could see the terrible mess of all of the windows he had washed. I didn’t think it was possible to see so many white spots and streaks.

Its people like this that give our industry a bad name. This is a business that is based 60 miles from us and has employees working all over the country (according to this young man.)

This is why I will ensure that my son has his van properly kitted out and all equipment properly secured before he starts window cleaning with me.

Spruce

[S_RICHARDSON]

LOL!    Talk about improvisations but come nothing staped in or nothing! LOL! 

Some People Ey!


Shaun R.

[Mike_G]

It will happen more and more I'm afraid, the cheaper wfp becomes the more you will see these kind of things.

[cybersye]

sounds like it may have been a powerpole?
I used to have one and they can be heavy, my 40ft gardiner gf is too, but hey I've got used to it.
Cheap or old equipment or even diy need'nt be an indication of a cowboy or shoddy work, though this case seems to support that. Never realised our industry had a bad name
But seriously , the cheaper wfp becomes the safer we'll all be, the less sad stories we'll hear like the lad who's been paralised after a ladder fall. There will always be good and bad workers.

[Ladders]

Spruce

The system you describe dilevers pure water to the brush head, thats what matters.

If he has done a crap job that is down to training, and supervision. But he wont fall off a ladder.

Jeff

[JM123]

yeah but would he even know when the resin needs changed??  I doubt he's been trained at all, plus with working in different areas the tap water is going to have different levels of tds, and so he may have been working with 6 month old resin, with water coming out the brush at 100ppm!!

[Spruce]

[quote author=cybersye
Cheap or old equipment or even diy need'nt be an indication of a cowboy or shoddy work, though this case seems to support that. Never realised our industry had a bad name
But seriously , the cheaper wfp becomes the safer we'll all be, the less sad stories we'll hear like the lad who's been paralised after a ladder fall. There will always be good and bad workers.

Hi Cybersye,
Your comments are well noted and you are right. The WFP industry generally hasn't got a bad name at all. People I think were initially skeptical about the window wash concept, but I made the comment from local experience. When I changed over to WFP some of my customers were worried about the poor results, as they had seen WFP uses at the offices in the Petro Chemical industry where some of them work for many years now.

yeah but would he even know when the resin needs changed?? I doubt he's been trained at all, plus with working in different areas the tap water is going to have different levels of tds, and so he may have been working with 6 month old resin, with water coming out the brush at 100ppm!!

Hi JM123.
I agree, I bet that very little training if any had been given to this lad. Judging by the van and the equipment in it I wonder if his boss really cares.
I am sure there will be complaints about the work done, and the focus of attention will be on this lad and his poor work quality rather than on the true cause.
Spruce

[cybersye]

I started working for myself a couple of years ago, prior to that I did 2 years wfp for someone with 2 days training, back then I had no tds meter on board the van, would'nt have known anything about the ro and di process, I just worked my socks off with huge lists each week on an hourly rate, probably much like the guy you mention. Point is unless you work for yourself or oversee things, there is no pride in your work, why should there be? you wont have a sleepless night, you get paid and rake it in for someone else ( sorry not meaning to offend anyone who has a team working for them )
This maybe why good staff are hard to find.
 Most public services have a budget set aside for things like window cleaning, and not being nescessarily a commercial or profit making concern leads me to the conclusion that if a guy turns up shows the windows some water, thats good enough! witnessed it myself on a visit to the hospital a couple of days ago, 2 guys wfp'ing from a trailer mount hard at it, a whole glass frontage of a stairwell, passed them a couple of hours later as they were packing up, spots and white streaks everywhere, looked really crap, a cushdy number I'm sure! with no sole individual having to fork out of their own wallet who gives a stuff? made me chuckle as I walked on past though

[steve k]

cybersye...
from the horses mouth...spot on about commercial work...