Video shows how great waterfed pole window cleaning is

We’ve been talking about the amazing, gentle power of waterfed pole window cleaning to get windows truly clean for some time now.  Yet we still meet people who don’t know what waterfed pole window cleaning is.

They say a picture says a thousand words.  So, for those of you who haven’t got the picture from our words, we’ve made a video to explain what waterfed pole windowcleaning is and how it works.

You’ll see our lovely Shidan demonstrating the system (a career in TV beckons, surely?!).  You’ll be able to see for yourself the extremely long poles that we use, the pure, filtered water and the gentle brushes that we use to dislodge the dirt.  And you’ll be able to see that Shidan can get get a fantastic finish on even upper-storey windows with his feet still firmly planted on the ground.

What you won’t see are ladders, detergents, squeegees, people balancing precariously, accidents waiting to happen or window cleaners peering in through windows.

To see Shidan in action, click here.

For a free quote, contact us.

How to get smear-free windows

Now that the sun is getting lower in the sky, it shows up every smear and streak as is it shines in through your windows.

Blistering Summer sun can, bizarrely, be kinder to dirty windows than the lazy sun of Autumn.  High in the sky, the summer sun dazzles its way into our homes, blinding us to less-than-perfect window washes.  But when the sun starts filtering into our homes at a more direct angle, every blemish becomes obvious.

So after you’ve folded up the beach towels and packed away your picnic hamper, it’s more important than ever to get a great finish on your windows.  And the best finish is achieved with the waterfed pole window cleaning system.  Using only pure, filtered water and gentle brushes to lift the dirt, we clean the frames before we clean the windows, meaning your windows stay cleaner for longer.  And with no detergent or squeegees, we leave no smears.  Just sparkling, clean windows.  So wherever you are in Kent, Sussex of Surrey, we guarantee smear-free windows.

 Say hello to Autumn.  Say hello to fabulous clean windows!

Contactus now for your free quotation.

Not too old to YOLO

Teenagers love having their own jargon to distinguish them from the fuddy duddies.  If you’ve got one (a teenager, not a fuddy duddy) you may be familiar with the phrase YOLO – You Only Live Once.  Teenagers use it to signal that they are about to do something unbelievably stupid - but,  hey, YOLO!

Sadly, I said goodbye to my teenage years some time back, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t empathise with YOLO.  But the implications of YOLO change with age.  Rather than “Hey, look how imbecilic I am!” it’s more likely to resonate with a need for quality of life, while we still have it coursing through us.  For example: YOLO – so mend bridges before it’s too late.  YOLO – so get cracking on your bucket list.  YOLO – so don’t put up with a job you hate. 

I’ve always loved providing a great service cleaning windows across Kent and Sussex.  But I hate climbing ladders.  Every time I had to climb one, I was quaking inside.  So in true YOLO spirit, I stopped climbing them. 

Waterfed Pole Window Cleaning gave me my YOLO breakthrough.  I can now clean windows up to six storeys high while keeping my feet firmly on terra firma.  What’s more, the windows are cleaner and stay cleaner for longer than they ever did when I was hauling buckets up and down ladders.

YOLO – so make sure you enjoy what you do.  I do! 

Giving you back your privacy

The twenty-first century isn’t a very private place. 

Every time you buy something, your bank builds a sharper profile of you, your family, your likes and dislikes.  Cookies follow your every click on the internet to customise your cyber experience (or, more cynically, to optimise which ads you are bombarded with).  And you only have to slip over to discover you are the latest YouTube sensation.  

Wouldn’t it be nice to get back some good old-fashioned privacy?  We think so.  At Waterfed Pole Window Cleaning, we are committed to rekindling that twentieth-century concept of privacy.  And we are among a handful of window cleaners spearheading the campaign.

Unlike traditional window cleaners, who peer in through your upper windows as they perch on their ladders, we keep our feet firmly on the ground, using our very, very long waterfed poles to clean windows up to six storeys high.  With Waterfed Pole Window Cleaning, what goes on in your upper storeys, is your business.

So, we can’t help you if you sign Bohemian Rhapsody at top volume in your car.  When you pull up at the traffic lights, we can do nothing if the teenager standing at the crossing decides your rendition needs sharing with the world.   But we can promise that if we’re round cleaning your windows, you can step out of your shower and we’ll be none the wiser!  

Living the high life

The High Life is something to aspire to.  The Pent House suite.  Dreaming spires.  On top of the world.  Phrases around high living make it clear it’s where the elite hang out and the lowly dream of.

But high rise can be different from high living.  While you can have the reassurance of living in a close community and no time-consuming garden to maintain, there can be down sides: broken lifts, dirty stair wells and grimy windows, because window cleaners can’t reach beyond the first couple of floors.

Wrong!  Whatever the pros and cons of living in a flat, grubby windows don’t have to be one of them.  Not with Waterfed Pole Window Cleaning to save the day.

True, most window cleaners won’t venture beyond the first or second storey – their rickety ladders won’t let them.  But with Waterfed Pole Window Cleaning we can safely reach as far as the sixth floor.  Because we have no ladders.  Our feet stay firmly planted on the ground and we use our very, very long waterfed poles to make your windows as sparkling as those of your ground-floor neighbours.

So don’t endure grubby windows.  Let the light back into your life!  With Waterfed Pole Window Cleaning, everyone can have sparkling windows, whether you’re living the high life or high rise. 

Neighbourhood Watch

At Waterfed Pole Window Cleaning we pride ourselves on being environmentally friendly.  You may have noticed we even blog under the name Eco Window Cleaner.

We’re eco-friendly because we don’t use any detergents - just pure, clean water.  We’re eco-friendly because we let the daylight flood in through our sparkling clean windows, meaning you don’t have to turn on your lights so often.  And we’re eco-friendly because we try and keep our carbon footprint as low as possible, even running our Waterfed PoleWindow Cleaning van on LPG.  But we want to make our emissions even lower.

That’s why we promote community spirit by encouraging our customers to recommend our excellent services to their neighbours.  The more windows we can clean in one neighbourhood, the less fuel we use driving between customers.  That’s good for our costs.  It’s great for the environment.  But it can also be fantastic for you.

We’re so committed to keeping our carbon footprint down, that we want to reward you for recommending us to your neighbours.  For each of your neighbours who make the switch to Waterfed Pole Window Cleaning on your recommendation, we’ll take 20%off your bill.  So if just five of your neighbours join the Waterfed Pole Window Cleaning revolution, we’ll clean your windows for free!

That’s two bonuses for the environment: our carbon footprint is reduced and there’s even less detergent polluting the water system.  And great news for you – free window cleaning as long as you keep the neighbourhood spirit alive! 

The birds and the bees

Isn’t nature resilient?  We may have had the harshest March for 30 years, but that hasn’t deterred Mother Nature.  The birds and the bees are now in full flow, making out like, well, birds and bees.

When I’m out cleaning windows, there’s nothing quite like fabulous bird song to lift my spirits. At this time of year, the birds are cranking it up as they establish their territories and get nesting.  As they belt out their Greatest Hits it’s impossible not to smile.

Which is why I get sad when my clients report that their windows are so clean after I’ve visited that the birds fly into them.  By way of apology, I’d like to invite my customers to follow my tips to keep the birds away from my shinywindows.

Placing a cat statue on the window sill inside – ideally glaring out of the window – can help. 

But even a statue won’t help if the birds are seeing the sky and the trees reflected in the window.  So the most effective strategy is to stick silhouettes of birds on the outside of the glass, so your garden birds think the territory is taken and steer clear.  Birds of prey silhouettes will also make your feathered friends think twice about flying straight on.

Another great deterrent is a cobweb sticker – no bird wants to get tangled up with a spider’s sticky web.  As with the bird stickers, position it in the middle of the pane or in a strike hotspot, if there is one place the birds keep hitting.

So please keep enjoying my lovely clean windows, but make sure they are bird friendly. 

April showers - does it matter if it rains after your windows are cleaned?

April is traditionally the month of showers.   So it’s the perfect time for me to address the most common question put to window cleaners: does it matter if it rains after your windows are cleaned?

And the answer?  Well, that depends upon how your windows have been cleaned.

Most traditional window cleaners squeegee over the pane and give the window ledge a quick wipe over with a fairly grimy cloth.  If that’s what your window cleaner does, then yes, it will matter if it rains soon after.  Because your window cleaner has missed out the magic first step to clean windows that stay clean – come rain or shine.  He hasn’t bothered to clean the window frame.  Over time, your window frame gets covered in exhaust fumes, dust and bits of dry leaves etc.  If you don’t clean the frames, as soon as it rains all that filth washes over your window panes and make them dirty again.

Which is why, at Waterfed Pole Window Cleaning, we clean the frames first with lots of lovely pure water.  And only when the frames are clean do we move onto the panes and the ledges.  Which means when we clean your windows, they stay clean for up to two months.  Come April showers.  Or sleet.  Or snow.  

Waterfed virgins - what to expect

I have a confession to make.  The first time I come to clean your windows, it will be messy.

But that’s not my fault.  No, honestly, it’s not.  It’s the inheritance I get from other window cleaners.  You see the difference between other window cleaners and waterfed pole window cleaning is that we clean the window frames first.  And the other don’t.  They may give the ledges a quick wipe over with a grimy rag after they’ve done the windows, but they never clean the frames.  And that means over time your window frames get filthy.

Dirty window frames are more than just an eyesore.  They’re the reasons why your windows seem to be dirty only a couple of days after your window cleaner has visited.  Think about it.  Your window frames are dirty.  It rains.  What happens?  Yes.  The rain washes the dirt off the window frames onto your nice clean windows.  And your nice clean windows get dirty all over again.

Clean window frames are the key to clean windows.  We wash your window frames first and get rid of all that grime that has accumulated over the years – the grime that keeps running onto your clean windows.  And only when the frames are clean do we move onto the glass, which we may sparkle with our pure water.  Because we don’t use any nasty detergents, we use quite a bit of water.  If you’re a waterfed pole window cleaning virgin, you might be surprised by how wet it looks by the time we’ve finished.  But the beauty of it is, it’s only water – lovely pure water.  And it soon dries out.  To give you sparkling clean windows, that stay sparkling for longer than you ever dreamt possible. 

Why we love British Summer Time

I’m getting ready to block my ears against the barrage of complaints that I know are coming this weekend.  British Summer Time starts this Sunday, and every year it’s the same old whining about losing an hour’s sleep. 

Enough already!  British Summer Time is fab, and here’s why: longer evenings, relaxing with friends, the sound of kids playing outside after school, peeling off the winter layers, green shoots (and hopefully that includes the economy) and the promise of better to come.  It’s not just a clock change.  It’s a change of mind-set as we slough off the lethargy of winter and prepare to re-energise for the summer. 

For a window cleaner, British Summer Time is especially good news.  No more getting up at silly o’clock with the van smothered in a blanket of frost and windows cold enough to freeze the brushes in an attempt to smuggle enough daylight hours into the working day.  Instead, we can enjoy sensible hours, boosted by the songs of nesting birds and the warmth of a returning sun on our backs. 

We all take an hour forwards and backwards in our stride every time we go on holiday.  So stop the whinging and instead think of all the positive things this means for the next few months.  British Summer Time is just around the corner, and this window cleaner is preparing to celebrate.  

How long between washes?

It’s a very good question.  In the 50s and 60s, girls used the excuse “I’m washing my hair” to avoid dates.  It was a standard brush-off, given that girls used to wash and set their hair no more than once a week and the process took the whole evening.  But the Wash N Go revolution put paid to that, making most of us daily or twice-weekly washers.  As the world of hair-care products has progressed, our hair lasts less and less time between washes.

Fortunately, evolution in the window cleaning world is working in the opposite direction.  The development of waterfed pole window cleaning means your windows can go for longer between washes. 

How?  It’s all in the technique.  Traditional window cleaners wash the windows and then give the window sill a quick once over.  This system completely overlooks the key factor in keeping windows clean.  Your windows don’t get dirty when it rains because of the rain: the rain is generally clean.  What causes them to become smeary and smudgy again is the accumulated dirt on the frames: the moment these get wet, the loosed dirt runs down your windows and they get murky once more.

One of the key features of waterfed pole window cleaning is that we wash the frames, and we do them first.  Only when the frames are free from dirt do we move onto the windows and, finally, the sills.  This means when the rains come, your windows stay clean.

So the answer to the question “How long between washes?” is 2 months, IF your window cleaner is doing it right. 

My eureka moment

Eureka moments are rare.  But when they come along they provide inspiration that can change your world forever.  Like Archimedes, my Eureka moment provided me with the solution to a problem that had been vexing me for some time.

Archimedes’ Eureka moment was inspired by a dodgy goldsmith.  King Hieron II had commissioned a crown from a lump of pure gold, but he suspected the goldsmith had substituted some of the gold for a cheaper metal, such as silver.  Unfortunately he had no way to confirm his suspicions.  So he asked Archimedes, super mathematician and inventor, to find a definitive answer. 

Archimedes famously found the solution in the bath.  When he stepped into the bath, he noticed that the water level rose.  And in that moment, Archimedes developed his principle of buoyancy, which says that the volume of an object is the same as the volume of water it displaces. 

Archimedes was so inspired by his discovery that he jumped out of the bath and ran through the streets shouting “Eureka!” – or “I have it!”

My Eureka moment did not involve a bath or naked street dancing, you’ll be pleased to know.  But it did involve water.  I had been a window cleaner for two years.  There was just one problem: I hate heights.  And I hate ladders even more.  But you can’t be a window cleaner without a ladder.

Or so I thought.

Then I discovered waterfed pole window cleaning.  It was the answer to my prayers!  No ladders, just a super long pole with a soft brush that can reach up to six storeys, using pure water to get windows cleaner than ever.   In other words, I can do my job better than ever, without trembling like a ninny!  

Eureka!

And, in case you were wondering, the goldsmith had cheated the king. 

That's my Eureka moment - now tell me yours!

Show your window cleaner some love

Spare a thought for window cleaners.  It’s not an easy job.  Out in all weathers.  Detergent reducing hands to tired prunes.  Heavy buckets blistering palms.  Juggling buckets, squeegies and cloths.  Cold water sloshing on jeans.  Heaving ladders on and off the roof of the van.  Not to mention that just one slip could result in a broken neck. 

And where would you be without a good window cleaner?  Locked in a cocoon of grime, squinting in the half light, unable to enjoy the world outside, unaware of changing seasons.  You probably don’t give window cleaning much thought.  But a good window cleaner quite literally brings light into your life. 

So it’s time to show window cleaners some love.  The window cleaning love revolution starts right here, right now.  And the key to the revolution?  Waterfed pole window cleaning.  No more rickety ladders – just a long pole that can reach up to 6 storeys high.  No more detergent damaging skin and the environment – just pure water.  No more juggling heavy brushes, squeegies and cloths – just a waterfed pole and a soft brush that leaves your windows squeaky clean for longer than you thought possible.

Show your window cleaner some love.  Join the waterfed pole window cleaning revolution and let the light back into your life!