High Rise Window Cleaners

To be a window cleaner, you need to be confident working at height – even if just to climb a rickety ladder and clean a second story bathroom window. When window cleaners work on high rise office buildings, some of the heights they experience would be truly terrifying for the untrained novice. While we ensure our staff are safe, they definitely tackle more challenging situations than most other cleaners.

Whilst some of our staff get away with cleaning mid sized office buildings, with long water-fed poles and their feet planted firmly on the ground, others are not so lucky.

The Height Challenge

Our water fed window cleaning poles can reach up to clean panes at a height of 70 feet – adequate for most buildings. But, for windows that soar beyond 70 feet, the cleaner has to get face to face with the window to clean it. This is where a good head for heights starts to come in handy.

Reaching windows higher than 70 feet above the ground requires the use of machinery, and one machine we use to reach beyond 70 feet is the cherry picker. The cherry picker will raise our window cleaning teams up to a maximum of 200 feet in the air to reach those difficult to clean places. We’re not aware of many cherry trees that reach this height, and working at 200 feet is no mean feat.

However, if you think being raised 200 feet in the air is enough to bring about the onset of vertigo, there are plenty of office blocks which extend way beyond this height. Take the Shard in London. This reaches up to over 1,000 ft and has several thousands of glass panels which need to be cleaned. Thankfully, many modern office buildings can be cleaned using a cradle system. It’s still no picnic; being suspended hundreds of feet up in the air with only a cradle for protection is enough to take the breath from anyones lungs. But this isn’t the most challenging height that some of our cleaners have to face.

Abseil Window Cleaning

Not all tall office blocks are capable of being cleaned with a cradle system. Sometimes, our cleaners have to go the extra mile. In what should be considered the extreme sports version of cleaning, abseil window cleaning has to be the most terrifying prospect for anyone who doesn’t have a good head for heights.

Abseil cleaning requires our cool-headed window cleaners to be suspended over the side of a building with nothing but an abseil cable keeping them from tumbling to the ground below. With no cradle to support their feet, and no crane to hold them up in the air, the cleaners must keep a cool head while dangling in mid air – while also doing a sterling job and getting the windows to sparkle.

Help Cleaning Your High Rise

Cleaning hard to reach windows is scary for the amateur, and we never recommend taking on a job you can’t handle. If you find your windows difficult to reach, don’t hesitate to call Aquamark do that the professionals can do it for you. And remember: never lean out of windows to clean them, and never take risks. Let our trained, experienced teams take the danger out of extreme cleaning assignments.