Smethwick Window Cleaning, Glass Plus the Grey on the Sills
On a Smethwick terrace the front windows sit a metre from busy roads, and traffic film leaves a fine grey deposit on painted timber, render and brick that does not come away with a wipe. Glass clears in one pass with pure water. The sills and frames beneath it need brushing separately, with a frame cleaner where the grey has bonded, or you end up with clean panes sitting in grey surrounds.
The other half of this job is reaching the back. These byelaw terraces have the front door on the pavement and no side gate of their own, so the rear elevation is worked from the yard, reached along a shared entry between houses or, where there is none, through the house itself. The pole and the hose reel go the same way. Streets are parked solid, so the van is often not outside your door, and we plan the hose run before the day, not on your step.
- Service
- Window Cleaning
- Area covered
- Smethwick, B66 and B67
- Local authority
- Sandwell
- How we do it
- Pure water through a reach and wash pole, from the ground
- From our Selly Oak base
- About 20 minutes
- Price
- Quoted per property before we start (quoting and booking questions)
- Booking
- Call or WhatsApp 07788 574283
Grey deposit on the cills, and backs with no side gate
The window work here is defined by two things that have nothing to do with the glazing itself. The first is deposit: road film and airborne grime have greyed the painted cills, the frames and the render around the openings, and cleaning only the glass on a house like that makes the surrounds look worse by contrast. The second is access. With no side gate, everything for a rear elevation goes along a metre-wide entry or through somebody’s living room, and both need arranging in advance. Add front windows sitting a metre off the pavement, catching road splash at ground floor level, and surviving timber sashes next door to replacement units on the same terrace.
- Grey road film on painted cills, frames and render, worst on the elevations facing the main roads
- Ground floor front windows a metre from the pavement, taking road splash and grit rather than clean rain
- Rear elevations with no side access at all, worked from the yard along a shared entry or through the house
- Streets parked nose to tail, so the reel and the van are rarely directly outside the property
- Landlords buying a single clean on a void before a viewing, with no regular interval behind it
Front from the pavement, rear from the yard
Everything is done from the ground on a water-fed pole with filtered pure water, front from the pavement and rear from the yard, so nothing leans on old render, a shared parapet or a neighbour’s roof. Frames and cills are brushed with the pole as we go, the ground-floor cills on the pavement side get a hand scrub, and where the grey has bonded to paint or uPVC we use a frame cleaner and note it on the quote. Surviving painted sashes take a gentler pass than the sealed units three doors along. The hose is run along the entry and kept off a neighbour’s back doorstep, since that passage is a shared right of way.
- Pure water on a pole from pavement and yard, with nothing resting on old render or shared rainwater goods
- Painted cills and frames brushed, with a frame cleaner quoted where the grey has bonded
- Hose laid along the entry and kept clear of neighbouring back doors, because the passage belongs to both houses
- Lower pressure on the original timber sashes than on the replacement units on the same terrace
More detail on the equipment and the order of work: the full window cleaning process.
Front elevations, rear entries and the grey
Regular cleans are booked on a steady cycle, on the same weekday each time, for the terraced grid around Cape Hill and Windmill Lane, out to the streets by West Smethwick Park, and across the semis and blocks between. Front elevations on the main routes pick up road film quickly and are the ones people notice. Rear elevations get done far less often, purely because of the entry, so they sit on a slower cycle, and the quote says so. Landlords with voids in B66 and B67 can book a one-off, and for exterior work on an empty house we only need the entry gate left unlocked.
Glass count, bonded deposit and rear access in a B66 quote
What sets the figure is how many openings there are and what kind, not the footprint of the building, and these terraces carry a lot of glass for their size. Two things add to it here. Treating bonded deposit on painted cills is slower than cleaning glass, and it is mostly a first-visit cost: once it is off, keeping it off is a normal clean. Doing the rear as well as the front costs more, because the kit has to come along the entry by hand. A landlord holding several houses in the same row can have them all done on the same visit.
Four to six weeks on the main roads, eight on quieter ones
Four to six weeks suits anything fronting the High Street, Cape Hill or Windmill Lane, where road film returns quickly on the ground floor. Eight weeks suits the quieter roads towards West Smethwick Park. Rear elevations behind the terraces are realistically two or three times a year, because the entry makes every visit slower, and it would be wrong to promise a rear the same cycle as a front.
Overall satisfied with service this company has provided leaving windows & guttering clean.
First time customer. Excellent service and great job. Will definitely be using them again in the future.
Excellent job, highly recommended.
Smethwick · Window Cleaning
Frequently asked questions
Because road film has bonded to the paint, and a pure water pass over the glass does not touch it. It needs brushing on the cill and frame directly, sometimes with a frame cleaner, and on a house that has never had it done the first clean takes noticeably longer than the ones after. If your previous cleaner only did glass, that is exactly what you have been looking at.
Along the shared entry between the houses if your terrace has one, or straight through the house with the hose on a mat and the floor protected. Both are completely normal in Smethwick. The through-the-house route needs somebody in for that part of the visit, so it is worth telling us which one applies when you book.
Yes. The front elevation is worked from the pavement, so we do not need you there at all and we will let you know we have been. The rear is different, because we either need the entry gate unlocked or someone to let us through the house. A sensible arrangement is the front on a regular interval, with the back added a couple of times a year when someone is in.
Yes, usually, so tell us the street. We work off a pole system fed from the reel, so the van needs to be within a sensible hose run, not necessarily outside your gate, and on the tighter roads off Cape Hill we plan where that is beforehand. It is the reason we ask for a street name and not just a house number when you book.
Yes. A void property needs nobody there for exterior cleaning, we only ask for the entry to be left open if the rear is included, and we invoice the landlord or agent directly. A one-off costs more than a regular visit, because a year of build-up needs the slower first pass described above.
Other cleaning we do in Smethwick
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