Window Cleaning in Edgbaston

Tall sashes above soft ground and a painted wall

The problem in Edgbaston is reach combined with fragility. Tall sashes sit two and three storeys up on elevations where the ground below is soft, sloping or planted, and the wall above it is painted render or stucco that marks the moment anything rests on it. Original glazing bars and putty are older than the paint on them and will not take a scourer. Add the fabric you must not touch, cast-iron guttering and ornate porches, and ladder work goes from awkward to out of the question. Meanwhile the communal glass in a converted house belongs to the building, so it stays dirty until a freeholder or agent commissions it.

• Tall sash elevations two and three storeys up, above gravel, planting or a stucco plinth that gives no safe ladder footing
• Glazing bars, deep reveals and painted timber frames holding more visible dirt than the panes they surround
• Stairwell and half-landing windows in converted houses that no single leaseholder can reach from either side
• Large glazed frontages on the Hagley Road blocks and offices, greying with traffic film within a few days
• Ornate porches and original cast-iron guttering directly in the path of anywhere a ladder would otherwise go

Pure water from the pavement, up to three storeys, nothing on the stucco

Filtered pure water on a pole, worked from ground level up to three storeys, so nothing at any point rests on stucco, an ornate porch or cast-iron guttering. Brush pressure is dropped on original sashes, where the paint and the putty are frequently a century old and a hard brush will find the weak putty before you do. No detergent goes on the glass and no squeegee on the outside. Frames, sills and glazing bars are brushed by the pole, which on a period elevation is where most of the visible grime actually lives. In converted blocks the stairwell glass is done inside and out on the same visit.

• Pure water on a pole from ground level, with nothing leaning on stucco, render, a porch canopy or cast iron
• Reduced brush pressure on original sashes, because old putty and old paint give way before modern glazing does
• Communal stairwell and half-landing glass cleaned from both sides in one visit, since it is the pane nobody else can do
• Ground-floor frontages on the Hagley Road finished at eye level, where traffic film is most obvious to anyone walking past

More detail on the equipment and the order of work: our window cleaning method.

Edgbaston window visits, house by block

House visits are grouped across the estate roads: Westbourne Road, Church Road, Carpenter Road and the roads towards the Botanical Gardens, where elevations are long and the intervals are steady. The block and commercial work is concentrated at the Five Ways and Hagley Road end and along Islington Row. Two local timing quirks. Early summer under the mature limes brings sticky honeydew onto glass and sills, which is a different job from ordinary grime and shortens the interval. And during event weeks at the Cricket Ground we move the nearby slots, because there is nowhere to put a van.

Glass-heavy elevations: how an Edgbaston window quote is counted

Price follows the number and type of openings, not the size of the house, and Edgbaston elevations are glass-heavy. A tall sash divided into six or eight lights counts as several units of work, and an original painted timber frame needs careful brushing that a modern sealed unit does not. A regular interval is what keeps this sensible: at six weeks each visit is short, whereas a first clean after two or three years takes a second pass to clear properly. For a converted block we quote the communal and external glass as one building job to the agent, separately from anything an individual flat owner wants doing to their own windows.

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Four to six weeks by the Hagley Road, six to eight on the estate roads

Four to six weeks along the Hagley Road and around Five Ways, where traffic film returns fast on a frontage. Six to eight weeks suits the quieter estate roads, pulled shorter for a few weeks in early summer if the elevation sits under limes and picks up honeydew. Entrance glass on a block can be done weekly if the agent wants it, with the rest of the building on the same four to eight week interval as the houses.