Window Cleaning in Hockley

Communal glass, shopfronts and workshop lights

Three separate customers want window cleaning in B18 and they want different things from it. Managing agents want the communal glazing done: entrance doors, stairwell and half-landing windows, and the courtyard elevations behind the street. Jewellers and shops along Vyse Street and Warstone Lane want the display frontage spotless, because a smeared window sits directly between a customer and a ring. Offices and studios want the elevation cleaned because tall dirty glass makes a good interior look neglected from the street. Flat owners can book too, though the outside of their windows is often covered by the block’s own arrangement.

• Multi-pane steel and timber workshop glazing with dozens of lights, glazing bars and deep reveals on one elevation
• Stairwell and half-landing windows that are communal, so a single resident cannot usefully book them
• Courtyard elevations in converted workshop buildings, reached through the yard
• Jewellery shopfronts and display windows on Vyse Street, where the glass is part of the sale
• Conservation-area frontages and protected brickwork that nothing is permitted to lean against

Pure water light by light, with steel frames handled gently

Filtered pure water on a pole, worked from the pavement or the courtyard, with no ladder against a protected elevation and nothing resting on a cill or a cast iron hopper. On multi-pane workshop glazing we go light by light, never sweeping the whole sash in one pass, because the dirt on these windows collects in the corners hard against the glazing bars. Steel frames get a gentler pass than uPVC, and where a frame is corroding we photograph it instead of working at it. Cills and reveals are brushed with the pole as we go. Shopfront glass gets a final check at eye height for smearing.

• Pane by pane on multi-light workshop windows, since the dirt sits in the corners against the glazing bars
• Nothing resting on a conservation-area frontage, a stone cill or a cast iron hopper
• Corroding steel frames photographed and reported, never worked at
• Internal stairwell glazing quoted separately, because it needs the building opened up for us

More detail on the equipment and the order of work: window cleaning across Birmingham.

Workshop elevations, stairwells and shopfronts

Hockley window work is mostly buildings: blocks and conversions off Warstone Lane, Hylton Street, Branston Street and Vyse Street, booked by their managing agents, retail frontages along Vyse Street and Frederick Street, and offices in and around the Big Peg. Shopfronts want a short interval and everything else a long one. The practical constraint is the one that governs all our work here, which is that there is no parking outside the building, so we take a pole and a tank in on foot and clean several premises on one street in a single visit. We keep off Vyse Street on Saturdays, when the shops are busiest.

Counting lights, not measuring the building

We count windows and lights instead of measuring the building, which is why a Jewellery Quarter quote can look high next to a suburban one. A single original workshop window with twenty-four small panes is twenty-four sets of edges and corners, and there may be a dozen of them on one elevation. Flats in the newer blocks are far quicker per window. Communal work is quoted for the whole building and invoiced to the agent, so residents are not each arranging their own. One-off cleans cost more than a regular visit. Where an elevation is beyond safe reach from the ground we tell you before you book, not afterwards.

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Fortnightly for shopfronts, longer for communal glazing

Shopfronts and bar frontages in the Quarter want fortnightly or monthly, because they sit at street level on busy pavements. Communal glazing on a block works well quarterly, with the entrance doors wiped on the regular communal visit in between. Office and studio elevations sit at six to eight weeks. Courtyard elevations suit the same interval as the street side of the building.