How quickly can you finish a task? With the expertise and as a maintenance clean can you do a 15-minute cleaning of a semi? Front and back?
I thought it would take about 30 minutes to clean a semi-detached house.
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!
How quickly can you finish a house?
- Thread starter Soul1
- Start date
Help Support WCF:
I thought it would take about 30 minutes to clean a semi-detached house.
- Messages
- 11,587
- Location
- Sunderland Tyne and Wear
A new build 3 bed semi is 10-12 minutes, an old Victorian 3 bed semi with leaded bay windows is probably closer to 15-18 minutes. A newbie will probably be double those times.
Should take you nowhere near 30 mins to clean a normal semi once you get up to speed. How many times are you scrubbing the glass ? If its a monthly clean and there's no bird muck on it then once should be enough for agitating everything then rinse.
At the start your not that confident and worried it won't be clean so you end up scrubbing it about 3 or 4 times just to make sure. When I switched over I'd walk around where I was working every 2 days checking the windows to see if they were okay, as I knew even if they were a mess the chances of someone complaining were slim. It's amazing how much people don't recognise you without your work clothes on though so I had a few ppl coming out asking if they could help me. Imagine sitting in the house and you look out and some lunatic is close up at the glass inspecting your windows who you don't recognise. Well that was me lol. I ended up just going back checking them an hour later as I went along and that stopped people thinking there was someone outside needing sectioned.
At the start your not that confident and worried it won't be clean so you end up scrubbing it about 3 or 4 times just to make sure. When I switched over I'd walk around where I was working every 2 days checking the windows to see if they were okay, as I knew even if they were a mess the chances of someone complaining were slim. It's amazing how much people don't recognise you without your work clothes on though so I had a few ppl coming out asking if they could help me. Imagine sitting in the house and you look out and some lunatic is close up at the glass inspecting your windows who you don't recognise. Well that was me lol. I ended up just going back checking them an hour later as I went along and that stopped people thinking there was someone outside needing sectioned.
Chris34
Well-known member
- Messages
- 1,752
- Location
- Stockport, Cheshire
I've got plenty that take 30 minutes and longer. Some semi's around here have more windows than a detached house with large side extensions and rear extensions with bi-folds and also have awkward windows, velux's etc.
Put it this way, some semi's I could do in 10 minutes, maybe 8 if I pushed it and nothing was in the way, some can take 40 minutes.
It really is a very vague question that I think is somewhat irrelevant. You cannot compare apples with oranges.
Majority of my semi's have 4 top windows and 4 bottom. There's parts I can do 8 to 10 an hour on my run. I still do they kind of one's with the ladder, nothing gets wiped though, all the soaps left unless they have asked for it to be wiped. When I first went alone I did actually start wiping houses and it ended up with people calling me saying there windows weren't done as there was no soap there, so unless they ask otherwise the soaps left.
Every house is different, but how is possible to go over the glass only once, even on monthly cleanings? How do you remove all snail and slug trails, dust from moth's wings? These are almost on every house on at least 50% downstairs windows. Sometimes, when ivy grows to the first floor, then there too..
Obviously if it has snail marks etc it needs more attention, they aren't on 50% of the houses I do tbh. If someone let's ivy grow all over the windows I'm not that daft that I'm going to try get the window spotless, there's only 2 houses that have that ivy stuff. There was a house yesterday that a womans grew bushes and there leaning on the living room window now. It got left, I'm no fannying about trying to clean that.
- Messages
- 9,366
- Location
- Teesside
We are on the North East coast. We get a lot of salt sea spray on the windows, even inland a bit.
Even if the window doesn't have seagull strikes on it which require individual attention, we have found that we need 2 passes with the brush and then rinse. On upper windows the 2 passes are vertical and downstairs I try for one vertical and the next pass, horizontal.
Brushes are so much better these days with the way they splay, but we still stick with the 2 pass method.
Even if the window doesn't have seagull strikes on it which require individual attention, we have found that we need 2 passes with the brush and then rinse. On upper windows the 2 passes are vertical and downstairs I try for one vertical and the next pass, horizontal.
Brushes are so much better these days with the way they splay, but we still stick with the 2 pass method.
Similar threads
