[Sir Squeaky]

...and all that faffing around is quicker. :

My foot.

[Paul Coleman]

If i had a van, i would probably be singing its praises too.
Its just i can tell, and maybe its just my round, that cleaning trad is quicker for me compared to the trolley system.
Obviously not for georgian, and leaded. Im talking about the majority of "normal" windows out there.

If you eventually got a van mount or some type of regular WFP system, after a while you would probably find yourself seeking the type of work that would be more suitable for it (i.e. larger jobs with decent access).  nothing wrong with that either.  You could always sell on the part of your round that was more suited to ladders.  Working that way, you could increase your income substantially once you got the feel of WFP.

[AuRavelling79]

Ol' squeaky's like those Japanese soldiers that carried on fighting the second world war into the 1970's on some forsaken pacific island. The rest of the world carried on after 1945 (including Japan) and left 'em behind. :

[Paul Coleman]

Ol' squeaky's like those Japanese soldiers that carried on fighting the second world war into the 1970's on some forsaken pacific island. The rest of the world carried on after 1945 (including Japan) and left 'em behind. :

I thought Squeaky was still using a slingshot and rocks   

Just a bit of fun Rog.  No harm meant.

[Ian_Giles]

Rich,

Link up with me on Friday morning, it'll only take out 30 mins of your time, and you will see how I cope with a couple of awkward houses in Rogiet.

Mine is a van mount of course, so different to Tosh's set up.

I'm intending to get some microbore hose, but I've only got a 60psi pump, and not at all sure that I will have a high enough flowrate with 100m of the stuff.

At the moment dragging out normal size hose can be a pain at times, and on some accounts it can be a pain, at other times it is so fast there is no comparison to using a ladder.
But even with the awkward factor thrown in there, on most houses the time saved on the actual cleaning of the windows more than compensates for it.

It is always interesting to see how others work though

Ian

[Richy L]

yeah, great ill take you up on that.
Can you send me your phone number, then ill call you friday morning.

r1chyal@tiscali.co.uk -- if you dont want to put it on the post.

What time were you thinking?

[craig jwc]

Rich,

Link up with me on Friday morning, it'll only take out 30 mins of your time, and you will see how I cope with a couple of awkward houses in Rogiet.

Mine is a van mount of course, so different to Tosh's set up.

I'm intending to get some microbore hose, but I've only got a 60psi pump, and not at all sure that I will have a high enough flowrate with 100m of the stuff.

At the moment dragging out normal size hose can be a pain at times, and on some accounts it can be a pain, at other times it is so fast there is no comparison to using a ladder.
But even with the awkward factor thrown in there, on most houses the time saved on the actual cleaning of the windows more than compensates for it.

It is always interesting to see how others work though

Ian

Ian

Met up with Rich P@F last Friday and saw a bloke who was running a 60psi pump with 100m microbore.
He had a problem as in the water just trickled out of the brush.
He had the 3mm jets in his brush.
After changing them to 2mm the problem was solved.

Craig

[windows_chepstow]

...and all that faffing around is quicker. :

My foot.

Not only is it faster, it earns you more money and is easier.

Remember, Leekson has just started using it.

I doubt many people here have an area such as I do; around seventy houses all built on the side of a hill.  High windows, 1st and ground floor.  Steps and narrow alley ways to gain access to many of the rears.

At first, I nearly went back to using ladders on this estate, for the rears anyway.

But, it just takes a bit of thought and experience.

I now fill the backpack up to the brim and clean the fronts of say, three of them; unhitch the backpack from the trolley; and carry it on a handle around the rears (up steps and through overgrown weed-infested alley ways).

Because I done the fronts first, it's lighter to carry, so no trolley is needed and the wheels aren't getting tangled up in weeds and stuff.

After four to seven months experience (I'm a slow learner), my turn-over is increasing to a level I could never have achieved using ladders.  

I'd say I turn-over around 30% more using the backpack; which is better than a kick up the backside.

Safer too; although I still regularly use ladders when I have to.

[Ian_Giles]

Rich,
I've emailed you some details

And darn tootin' it's faster
Today has been the biggest day on the round, it comes around once every 8 weeks and I am not going to say how much I have turned over, I started at 8 am (town council offices (and I see you had started earlier Tosh, saw you had had done the italian)) then 3 office blocks down the bottom of town and a single house a couple of miles outside town.
I had a 30 minute dinner break and although the work was quite hard because it is all 3 storey work, it was done at a leisurely pace but even so, one job that with ladders used to take me 4 hours (Squeaks could do it in 3 hours by the way) I now do with ease in 1 hour.
It is now coming up to 3pm, I've been back home since 2pm and I've earned more in just over 5 and a half hours than many will earn in 3 days, and there is no way on this planet could I have done so were I still on ladders, in fact that one office I now do in an hour would have probably been enough for me.
It was always roughly a mornings work and always left you completely wasted.

I'm goingto stop farting around on here and I am off to put my feet up in my garden hammock and have a doze in the lovely warm, spring sunshine

Ian

[Easyclean Windows]

ok ladders against wfp...ok so a van mount is probably quicker than a trolley mount but wfp is still quicker and can earn you a lot more money.

I have many £10 houses but my biggest customers are

80 flats cleaned 4 hours £365.00
65 flats cleaned 3 hours £315.oo
sports car manufaturer 2 hours £150.00
190 lead glass three storey house 3 hours £200.00
Food plant 10 hours split 5 hrs fri-5 hrs sat £1000.00
i have many blocks of flats and have just quoted another at £700.00 for two days

None of these buildings could be done quicker traditionally let alone at all.

So as long as you have a wfp trolley or van it will allways be financially more rewarding than using a ladder and squeege

[stuart webster]

Iv'e been WFP for 4 weeks now, most of the work is domestic.

First few days I had the same problem of taking longer on some work and the same time on other work.

After 4 weeks i'm still on first cleans, but we are getting through more work than before. I put this down to now knowing how best to use the equipment.

I expect second cleans to be even quicker, and will be starting them next week.

I have a mate who had the same problem and has now decided that for those houses which on first cleans took longer, he will stay trad. This is a mistake, because, if nothing else, you work quicker as you figure out where to put equipment etc.

Stick with it, it will get better.

Finally, my 2p worth on the "trad or pole quicker" debate.

The only way you will know is to do your own work at your own pace, with both trad and pole.
So Squeeky needs to borrow a WFP so that he will know for himself that it is quicker WFP.

[Tim Morton]

Well, I've been wfp for about 8-9 weeks now, Just finished the 2nd clean on all my customers. My first cleans on wooden framed windows were just a bit slower than trad, about 2-4 mins per semi-detached house. On PVC framed windows on the 1st cleans was a lot slower, about 5-10 mins per detached house, I think this was because the frames held more dirt than well varnished wooden frames, and took longer to get up to an acceptable standard. Also the PVC frames have the dreaded vents that drip dirty water for ages 

However, the second cleans were faster. On wooden frames it was as fast and maybe about a minute faster. On Pvc frames it was also a couple of mins faster.

I'm expecting to find the 3rd cleans to speed up more as I get more used to wfp and how best to clean each house.

I do some commercial work too, and on one factory that has a row of high windows about 14ft up and the window panes are 9ft high and about 12ft across, so the tops of the glass are 23ft up. There's about 7 of these in a row and the same downstairs and also a load around the back of the office block. The outsides done trad used to take 2.5 hrs to do, with someone footing the ladder for the big frames around the front. Did it all on my own with wfp in just over an hour!!

The biggest gains are in commercial work, but my experience is that there is a time advantage in domestic work after the 1st clean, and the great thing for your customers is that they now get their frames cleaned each month, which I didnt do before.

Tim

[Andrew McCann]

The change over to WFP isnt just about how well or quickly you actually clean the windows.

If you have been totally trad as I was it's really like learning your whole round over again. Its the equipment handling.. where to place it etc that really takes up the time. You cant expect to be as fast first time around espaecially on domestics with all of the access issues etc. To give up after a day or 2 and blaming the kit isnt really fair. I was frustrated.. fed-up.. wondering i'd I had done the right thing etc for the first couple of weeks. I was actually quite abit slower the 1st time around but I wasn't going to give up easilly and go back to ladder work when I didnt have to.

2nd time around I was much faster than the first. From then on I reckon I was atleast 10% faster each time around until I reached a plateau at the 5th time around I reckon.  By then I was at least 40% faster. A few months more down the line and its nearly 50% faster overall. It's easier.. safer and less tiring.

I really believe that a lot of the "what is best.. van mount..trolley..backpack" debate is answered honestly by people who have  bought a system and stuck with it.. adapting their working methods to suit. Of course there are eceptions to this where for instance Tosh's workload has so many access probs that the backpack is probably the only piece of WFP kit that will do the job for him.

I have a van mount which I use mainly on commercial work.. long runs of easy access windows in the main. Its superb for this. For the domestic stuff its the trolley all the way for me. Tried the van mount on it for a month and just could not get the work done anywhere near as fast.


Cheers

Andrew