Welcome to the UK Window Cleaning Forums
Starting or own a window cleaning business? We're a network of window cleaners sharing advice, tips & experience. Rounds for sale & more. Join us today!
water usage
- Thread starter simon
- Start date
Help Support WCF:
Duncs
Well-known member
- Messages
- 3,488
- Location
- Berwick on tweed
these short days two guys use 600l in the summer i could easily use 800l
Forget what every body else say they use. Some use less water because they don't rinse properly. Their standards can be different to yours. If you are happy with the end result and more importantly, if your customers are happy with your standards, then nothing else matters.
When both of us work together, 1 with back pack and me with a hose reel, we can use around 400 liters per day in the winter. On a commercial job we will use around 650 to 900 liters, depending on the circumstances as we would have both hose reels on the go. (We will go home for lunch and refill the van.)
Deluxe Window Cleaning
Member
- Messages
- 8
Hi I work on my own and I use about 2 to 300 ltr of water. I clean about 45 houses a day.
Aqua-pure Portadown
Well-known member
- Messages
- 361
What type of houses are they ,i would ues 4to 500 ltrs in a day (25 houses )
Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk
I use about 150-200 litres a day for 15-20 houses a day but i trad bottoms on certain jobs to conserve water as working from a car at the moment
Average 3 bed semi maintenance clean would be around 2 houses per 25l barrel if i do it purely wfp
Average 3 bed semi maintenance clean would be around 2 houses per 25l barrel if i do it purely wfp
I would say you are right with your water usage.
There is a brush manufacturer who used to post on this site saying that with his brushes all you would need is one pass on the glass and no rinse. If you took his advise to heart then you would use less water, but I doubt you will have many very happy customers. No matter how much I tried with his brush I could never achieve good results by following his suggested procedures.
I have a commercial job I do on a weekend when there is no one around. There are a couple of experimental windows I used to use as I was working around the building. They were usually warm as they faced into the morning sun. They were perfectly positioned so I could do a clean, single pass, no rinse and the next window a double pass and no rinse. They could then be redone when passing back to the van. The best result always came from 2 passes over the glass with a decent rinse afterward. That takes a bit of water, especially when you clean properly into the corners.
I've seen slap dash and its not what I would base my reputation on.
My feeling as I have said is for you to do what best and comfortable for you. Water usage depends on so many things. We live on the north east coast and we need to rinse well when we do windows overlooking the sea front. Those days we will use much more water than when we are doing houses inland.
My son in law was working for us for the past 4 years and now has gone into employment as window cleaning wasn't for him. He spent half the time on each window I do. His results were satisfactory, but he didn't do the job to our standards. Customer's notice; I've had a few tell me that now I'm doing them again they will be done properly.
Oh good. For some reason recently I have been thinking am I using too much water and wasting to much time rinsing. But also want to ensure the job is as good as it should be.
I currently take around 20 minutes on a 3 bed semi from getting out of van to getting back into it. Would this sound a bit long or about right. Bare in mind I'm only on my 3rd month of doing it.
There is no reason why you can't experiment to reduce that time if you think you can reduce it. If a window is taking you 60 seconds to clean, can you reduce it to 50 seconds with equally good results? You need to try it on windows that you can inspect later, preferably downstairs ones. If you can, then can you squeeze a few more seconds off the time? We have noticed a big difference in the time it takes to clean windows every 4 weeks and the time it takes to do the same windows every 8 weeks. In our part of the world we can whiz though monthly cleans with a quick wash and rinse as the windows look clean before we start.
I manage a fairly quick time for the first hour, but then my cleaning rate rapidly drops off. I can't sustain a fast cleaning rate. After 3 or 4 hours I hardly have enough energy to reel my hose in. Its partly age and health related. I estimate that I'm am only doing 1/2 the amount I did 10 years ago, and that is with better equipment. I'm doing the best I can. That's how you need to look at yourself. Are you doing a satisfactory job that both you and your customers are happy with? And can you earn at a sufficient rate to give you the life style you need - albeit financially and/or more free time to spend with your family? If the answer is yes then a few minutes here and there aren't the end of the world. Its very easy to develop a negative feeling for your job if you regularly push yourself beyond what you are capable of.
There is and old expression that is so relevant - more haste, less speed. One mistake can take ages to rectify, especially if you have already packed away. Its not how quick you are but how smart you work. Each time you go back to the same job, spend a few moments and ask yourself if there is another way to do this job that would work better. I did a job for 3 years before it dawned on me that it was quicker to wheel my hose reel around the back to the starting point and then walk my hose reel back to the van using all 100 meters of hose around 3 x 90 degree corners of the building. That saved me more than 10 minutes when compared to the way I was doing it before. After that I tried numerous other ways of hose management on that job, but this was the best way. I've done it this way for the past 4 years. 10 minutes on a job that takes an hour and 50 minutes isn't a big deal. But that change has saved me 8 hours over 4 years for the same amount of money.
Once you have the balance and target right, you will be happy and it doesn't matter what others say they do. People talk, but sometimes what they say doesn't add up. You have to take what some people say with a pinch of salt.
We found in the beginning that I was easy to knock off early in the summer to enjoy the rest of the day. But if we stayed and worked an extra couple of hours our daily income increased considerably. So keeping a steady pace was what was needed to achieve this.
Deluxe Window Cleaning
Member
- Messages
- 8
My wife loves me more. She's a designer shopping girl.
Deluxe Window Cleaning
Member
- Messages
- 8
Really to be honest I thought I was about average. I know others doing more.no offence mate but that seem a touch unlikely
