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Our window cleaner has hung up his long pole and any replacement will cost a lot more than what we were paying.
I'm not going up a ladder so I need my very own long pole.
What can you recommend thatdoes a nice job and doesn't make you too wet?
STW demographic =/ cleaning own windows
Congratulations on a suitably filthy OP.
my very own long pole.
Can you lean out of window?
I bought the Docapole 7m one on Amazon as my top window is about 6m. One of the pop rivets holding the head on fell off out the box, so I had to fix that first. I still prefer to put up a ladder to the first storey as it is too flexy / unwieldy at full extension. It really comes to having a bucket of really hot soapy water and a good going over with the mop head to remove the dirt before using the squeegee.
I do a lot of window cleaning for work, both trad & pole and we have a ‘proper’ DI filtered reach and wash trolley.
I still pay someone £20 every few months to clean them, life is far too short…
You have to clean windows!? Every day's a school day..
A lot of modern windows have a little button so that you can slide the opening window along and clean the outside pane of glass from the inside, that's what we do.
A lot of modern windows have a little button so that you can slide the opening window along and clean the outside pane of glass from the inside, that’s what we do.
Oooh - didn't know that. Just checked and ours do. Thanks!
Do ours twice a year, life is just too short. And self cleaning glass is a load of waffle, never seen our bifolds clean themselves in 5 years....
Can you lean out of window?
I guess that would depend on the type of windows the OP has. It would be impossible for me to clean the outside of our windows from inside.
I still pay someone £20 every few months to clean them, life is far too short…
That seems absurdly cheap. Would happily pay that but last quote we had was many multiples of that....
Can you lean out of window?
This is what my OH does but we have windows that open enough to let him do this. He does them every other month or so.
Always have cleaned my own windows, and now the solar thermal and PV too. Bucket, mop, old windscreen wiper blade, ladder, rope, jumar.
In our new house I tried cleaning our windows myself as I did on the previous house but even doing the lounge bay window seemed an impossible task.
Thankfully the local window cleaner knocked on my door one day and asked only £9 a month to clean them. Chuff knows what I’ll do if he ever gives it up as £9 is a bargain - our house is 3 stories at the back!!!
Get net curtains so you won't notice!
We pay someone £5 a every 2 weeks to clean ours as I really can't be arsed to do it myself.
self cleaning glass is a load of waffle
We've got self cleaning glass in a glass curtain wall at work, its shite!
It's main method of self cleaning seems to be for random panes to shatter at odd intervals.
We pay someone £5 a every 2 weeks to clean ours as I really can’t be arsed to do it myself.
Please tell me you are in Epsom!
I just did the back of the house with a sno foam Lance. Lots of fun.
Interesting, ours have just been cleaned for £30. Two guys here for about 20 minutes. Just used the extending lance with brush and water, no squigees or wiping. Does save me some grief in doing it (I've got the same kit they have) but slightly disappointed that it's just water and a wipe, not a 'proper clean' as I call it
Hard to calibrate this though
decent size house in the SE FWIW so pricing might be linked to that
slightly disappointed that it’s just water and a wipe, not a ‘proper clean’ as I call it
Japanese bog vs regular?
I let the rain clean mine
Got a long pole cleaner thingy from Aldi. Cheap as chips. I don't clean my windows very often. Add in some screw fix 'degreaser' when you need to do them, all sparkly.
£10, once a month, 4 bed detached.
Never thought to clean my own
Venetian blinds and never retract them. In rooms we don’t have them we have small children so you can’t tell if the outsides dirty because the inside is!
I used to have to clean a butchers shop window each and every Wednesday in a shop I used to work.
Soap from a simple run of the mil bar of soap, used to draw lines across the glass, then a deck scrubbing brush to clean with, and rinse off with several buckets of clean water. Squeegee the water off and allow to dry naturally.
So any bar of soap is fine, tight lot in butchers shops, no fancy cleaners or anything like that and always sparkling clean, and on a main road so always a lot of grime from traffic
I would highly recommend the official water fed pole from https://wfp.co.uk/ they have poles from 20ft-30ft nice and cheap its what got me started in my window cleaning business. the poles come with fittings to connect to a tap or some other quick connectors and the brushes are some of the best on the market and for the price they are the most affordable. you will need to still purify your water as if you use tap water the minerals in the water can leave stains on the windows.
Mine open inwards, well all except the bathroom one with the knackered hinge!
I sed to clean mine but decided to stop* and pay someone else £30 a month. He still doesn't do the conservatory roof, or will but charges extra for it so we now do it leaning out of the upstairs windows which isn't as good as the ladder but I seem to have developed the fear* of ladders.
*Reason for both stopping cleaning my own window and the fear
Mine open inwards,
+1, clean all ours from inside (upstairs anyway).
Why did I not even have to look at the top of the post, to guess who'd posted that ^ pic just up there? Username checks out, as they say.
We moved in to current house 2 years ago and took the recommendation of the cleaner all the neighbours use (£50 per month...). They chipped paint off all the wood framed windows so they got told to foxtrot oscar.
I have a DI cylinder anyway as I'm a sad car detailing obsessive so I've been cleaning the downstairs windows myself. The upstairs windows are starting to look very sad now though, can anyone recommend an extendable hose-fed brush that isn't rubbish?
@Tallpaul Can’t you just reach up?
🙂
I wasn't impressed with the window cleaners we tried on our current house - latest in particular had a very long pole, water-fed, but didn't actually touch/wipe the glass at all. Pretty ineffective so sacked that off. Do them myself, downstairs is easy using small stepladder and thankfully upstairs either open fully inwards or I can lean out and reach the sides on the dormers.
The Karcher window vac thingy is a bloody awesome thing.
Ouch!
I clean my own using ladders. With due caution. A friend who was a climber ended up at A&E after falling off a ladder doing DIY.
Keep telling myself I need to replace my ladder. It is aluminium, 30 years old, and I'm somewhere between 16 and 17 stone. Is there a replacement time/shelf life for ladders?
As Natrix said above if you have the windows with a button similar to the one in this video it makes cleaning windows on all floors a doddle. someone alerted me to this out a few years ago and it has saved having to get the long pole out.
We’ve got self cleaning glass in a glass curtain wall at work, its shite!
They work by oxidising anything that sticks to the glass (like bird crap) then once it's degraded and fallen/washed off, UV light reverses the reaction.
Doesn't completely clean the glass, but it's a lot better than nothing.
Interesting, ours have just been cleaned for £30. Two guys here for about 20 minutes. Just used the extending lance with brush and water, no squigees or wiping. Does save me some grief in doing it (I’ve got the same kit they have) but slightly disappointed that it’s just water and a wipe, not a ‘proper clean’ as I call it
Hard to calibrate this though
They'll be using deionised/demineralised water, which wont leave a mark as it dries, hence no need to squeegee it off.
The difference is, even if you have a long pole at home, you probably don't have DI water so it will leave more of a mark (although there's probably products that mostly solve that with silicones and acids).
I have a DI cylinder anyway as I’m a sad car detailing obsessive so I’ve been cleaning the downstairs windows myself. T
What's your DI cylinder and how much did it cost and how big is it? I looked a while back and gave up on working out what I needed. (currently manage all but one of our windows by leaning out/short pole and soapy water/squeezee. a DI setup and a long pole would make it much quicker and easier)
We've got some horizontal roof glass that needs cleaning more than the windows and this year is exceptionally dusty (combination of dust storms, weather and nearby building sites).
Sadly not quite tall enough 😂
This is the DI vessel I use. Except it was ‘only’ £73 when I bought it:
Also bought a cheap water conductivity meter to test the output quality. The resin lasted about 6 months of frequent car washing and a couple of downstairs window cleans. I was pretty wasteful with the car washing as was using DI for the whole wash but now I only use for final rinse.
Bought 25L bag of resin (enough for 2x refill) for £90.
Not cheap but zero water marks on my cars is worth that to me.
A lot of our neighbours use a local company who uses de-ionised water, so you don't get any calcium carbonate smears as it dries off (we're in a very hard water area). However, something like £40 a pop for a terraced house.....
When I bought my house I got all the windows replaced with inward opening ones and have never looked back. Cleaning windows is piss easy now, so I do it myself in no time.