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Dismayed

Don't take this as a criticism as it's not intended that way but the first impression I have is it could be your method of cleaning. There are a load of wfp tutorials to help but the biggest culprits for runs are air vents holding water and running long after you have gone, leaking window seals  ( I remedy  this one on first cleans with ubik and extra rinse)

and the other big Culprit is water dripping off the top sills and walls onto the bottom glass and the only remedy for this is gravity and time and sometimes a cloth on the end of the pole to mop up excess dripping. But let's be clear the number of times we have all been back to jobs only to find out customers are complaining about marks that are on the inside is uncanny. One more thing, are you sure your tds is as it should be as that also contributes to the problem as does worn upvc sometimes. 

Hope you get to the bottom of it!

 
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Thanks, gonna watch the vids. My tds is at 0.00 so thats ok


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As is pointed out above, there is a certain skill to operating wfp equipment which is often understated, same as with trad gear. A solid flow rate on the glass is essential for good rinsing as well.

 
In all honesty you shouldn't need several cleans for it to dry right.  If your technique is on point and the windows seals are good the first clean should be as good as the second, third, forth and so on.

I did a first clean yesterday.  Windows hadn't been done for 7 years; sills green, heavily soiled glass, vintage bird droppings etc.  Cleaned once and came up perfect.

Practice more and find a method that works for you.  I didn't let myself loose with my customers until I could get my own house right every time (took a few weeks to be fair).

Keep at it, it's the best thing to happen to window cleaning since I started in 2004.

 
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I agree practise on your own house and/or nearby non coplaining customers until you get it right, give the top bar of the window a wash and rinse then dont go back onto that again, concentrate on the glass area only, rinse thourghly from top to bottom and dont do any lower story windows while the ones above are dripping.

It will all come right.

 
My method with first cleans is to give the frames a really good scrub on the whole top of the house and then the bottom of the house till I'm happy with them.  Then I go back to where I started at the top and concentrate on the glass.  This gives the frames time to drain off considerably before I start the glass.  Then when doing the glass I try to avoid spraying water onto the upper parts of the frames as much as possible.   I might also use a degreaser if I feel it necessary.  Someting like Viro-Sol

 
Its not every house im tripped up on. Odd one. Ive had the round 15yrs and have just converted it all from trad to wfp


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Bigfoot is bang on
You have to give time for the water to settle before you do bottoms or split windows
O find it rather odd the system is so easy but how many folk don't rinse properly.



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Also when I'm collecting always check the windows
For perfection


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Same here Marko, will keep plugging away. People dont like change....fact!


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We converted the round we purchased from trad to wfp. The trad cleaners had only ever cleaned the glass and the frames were minging.

The round was compact so we started off scrubbing the frames and windows and leaving them to dry whilst we moved onto the next house. After we had done 4 or so houses we came back to the first house and cleaned the glass only. We did this with the next few houses. By that time the windows of the first house had dried and there were the odd windows we needed to do again.

We probably did 8 houses a day but we ensured that each house was perfect before we asked for money. The joke on the estate was that we wouldn't last long as we spent too much time on each house. That was 13 years ago - we have another team cleaning this round on our behalf atm.

Whilst the first cleans were hardly economically worth while, the second cleans were a doddle.

We only ever had 1 window that still streaked after the third clean. White oxidised plastic residue turned the rinse water milky. After the third unsuccessful attempt we dried the frames and bladed the windows. On the second clean the decision was that we would either do this window traditionally or dump the customer. The window gave us no issues on the second clean and we continued to clean the house for another 6 years before it was sold and the owner moved.

Over the years we have become better at first cleans so don't take as long, but we always do them twice and visually inspect them after they have dried to ensure they are 100% before asking for payment.

I doubt you will be able to ask for a first clean price as they are all old customers, so the first clean will knock you back economically. Good you are doing it in the summer months so you have extra daylight hours to accomplish more houses.

When one of the local lads went wfp about 12 years ago, he converted his customer base a little at a time. It did mean that he was able to still earn a reasonable wage for the next few months.

 
Lower windows are easy to inspect, unless you have super eyesight,,, how are you guys inspecting the windows at 2 stories plus? 

 
First cleans take twice as long.

My method is to work on one side on the house at a time. clean the frames vents glass etc thoroughly on all wimdows with chemicals ubik etc if needed. I then dry the top frames with a thick microfibre towel on the brush head. Them scrub and rinse any top openers. Them towel again on any frame dividers (frame below top openers) then scrub and rinse all bottom parts of glass. Clean sills well and flush out all bits for as long as it takes then wipe sills dry.

 
Lower windows are easy to inspect, unless you have super eyesight,,, how are you guys inspecting the windows at 2 stories plus? 


You can't unless you carry around a pair of binoculars (one windie used to do that.) In our experience we can see how 1st floor windows are behaving but looking at them from an angle so they catch the light. Anything higher than that is more about your intuition and your faith in how well you clean windows at height. My feeling is that you can only do the best you can. A traditional cleaner wouldn't clean those second floor windows anyway. So if a customer isn't happy after I have given it my best 'shot', then that's their prerogative and decision on how to proceed.

We don't have issues with standard single pane windows. Where the warning lights flash on are older windows with twin openers above a single pane of glass below. We will invariably have to deal with a streak down the center of the lower glass. So we give the openers on the top and ground floors a clean first and let them dry off. Once they have dried, which also could mean that we go and do houses in the area, we come back and do the lower glass of the top windows, followed by the lower glass on the bottom windows when the upper windows stop dripping.

We charge more for these types of houses. We have found that the majority do start to clean nicely after a couple of cleans and we can do them as we do ordinary windows. But we have a couple that have never been right since day one.

You are looking for 2 telltale signs of issues. The first is a run of water from an upper windows down the center of the lower window. You can easily see that. The second is a virtual vertical row of white spots that come from the top of the window. These are mainly from droplets of water on the upper frame and absorb dirt and then run down the window .

Thankfully, the worst window for leaving white spots is our ground floor lounge window in our house. But I can live with that.

When we first started window cleaning, we used Unger aluminum Teleplus poles. We still have them on the van as we can fit a scraper to them and a Fixiclamp. A Fixiclamp from Unger is a plastic clamp that has jaws to hold a towel or drying cloth. We sometimes use this with a towel to deal with issues on spotty windows to save time.

.

 
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Similar to Adam....I use an old pole and spray TFR 20 on and scrub windows and if possible rinse off with my hose reel connected to the outside tap or if not possible use pure to rinse off.

I then go back to where I started and clean glass again using plenty of pure.

A 3 bed semi usually takes me about an hour for first clean but it's worth it in the long run.

 
Similar to Adam....I use an old pole and spray TFR 20 on and scrub windows and if possible rinse off with my hose reel connected to the outside tap or if not possible use pure to rinse off.

I then go back to where I started and clean glass again using plenty of pure.

A 3 bed semi usually takes me about an hour for first clean but it's worth it in the long run.


We are inclined to use a squirt of CIF cream on the brush head these days. I carry a 5 liter container of UBIK on the van with a Hozelok spray bottle and nozzle on the end of those Unger poles, but haven't used it in 2 years tbh. We also don't do many new cleans as I'm full not taking new customers onto the books unless it suits me.

 
I've found it a bit quicker to towel dry the frames rather than waiting for them to drip. Especially with vents. Scrub the top frame dtop the pole down slap a towel on it back up a good scrub, flick the towel off (and catch it) then just clean and rinse the glass  I find waiting can be a very long wait!

 
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