When technology doesn't cut it.

Sometimes, although we have all this great window cleaning gear it's necessary to revert back to what most of us started out with. I'm, of course talking about the trusted scrim, squeegee and T-Blade. These tools of the trade have served many of us window cleaners very well, and sometimes it's necessary to whip them out even if we're using a great WFP system. Perhaps the window isn't responding well to pure water and not all the dirt has been removed. You can either give it another rinse, but a lot of the time if it's safe to reach the window by a secured ladder or if it's withing reaching distance giving the window a quick clean with the squeegee, scrim and T-Blade. By doing this you can save on your pure water consumption, and ensure the client is left with clean windows. T-Blades and scrims come in various sizes, so it's important to have a nice range of sizes for those different window types; single panes, double glazing, leaded windows, conservatory doors etc. Usually I'll only need my trusted 12" T-blade and 12" squeegee, but I have for larger windows/doors 16" and 14" respectively and for the leaded windows I'll use a 9" T-blade and 7' squeegee. Also a good tip, is to add a few drops of GG4 to your water to make the action that much smoother and get you better results.

Preparing for colder weather

So with summer over, it's time to start gearing up to the winter. Colder weather can pose many problems for your average window cleaner, whether they're using WFP or not.
But, probably for the water fed pole system user the problems are tripled with the threat of the water in the system freezing over. If this happens you could have even bigger problems with other parts of your set up such as your pump, trailing hose and connections etc. There are many ways to combat jack frost. You can keep your van nice and cosy overnight and make sure the temperature doesn't drop instead by a paraffin heater or electric heater. But a word of warning you want to seek out professional advice before installing one of these in your van overnight, as the last thing you want is to wake up to a 'fred flinstones' van burnt to 'barny rubble'.

Others include adding reflective insulation, the kind that long distance runners sometimes get wrapped in, over the tank, so that it radiates the heat in the van back in and around the tank. This is a fairly inexpensive way of insulating the van. Or add glass-fiber padding, the kind you perhaps find in an upstairs loft. Which you can wrap around your tank before installing (make sure you wear some protective gloves whilst doing this). There are many other ways you can make sure the pure water in the van stops from freezing overnight or during the day. Another one I forget to mention is by adding a special anti-freeze type liquid in the correct dose so that it doesn't affect the TDS of the pure water. A lot of other ways have been devised by the more ingenious and inventive of window cleaners, but sadly I can't claim to be a part of this subset.
Till next week. :)