On a side note I have spent most of my 35 year career in cleaning working for companies with over 15 employees. Even though I work alone, now, I use systems because it’s second nature to me.
[MENTION=4338]CapeCodCleaner[/MENTION] Good point I had nt considered the employee part . I can clean the storms backwards from the top so I dont have to flip them. I know where the errors will occur.
To the all storms are interchangeable post sometimes the old ones get loose corners and push their track s outward. A storm thats tight in the corners will just get air. Or visa the spread corners wont go in a tight track. Keeping the order is essential, It can take a long time to find where they go once theyre mixed up
I m really tired took a pretty good beat up today. Lots of off tempo customers in the summer. Old miseable never taken care of finger rippers and move the big old furniture too. I m hurtin Josh Josh the mushy gosh
seems like you are on the tipping point of employing jesse. you seem to be cornering the market in the very old homes which in my opinion best suit the trad way .Doing trad i used to feel it was killing me when i was on my own but once i employed it became an absolute joy [well,almost] to do trad and im still on the ladders all day long
[MENTION=2009]jonnyald[/MENTION]
I definitely believe all window cleaners should be proficient in using ladders and getting nose to glass when needed (or if they just prefer to clean that way). I actually like switching back and forth between trad and wfp - uses different muscles.
From what I’ve read and seen on the internet, it is very common for window cleaners to clean the same house quarterly and even once a month. Trad may be very efficient for those types of cleans.
All the older houses I clean are on the ocean. Most of the time the older homes (with old true divided windows + storms) haven’t been cleaned in years by the time people call me. No one wants to clean the older windows so people give up on having them cleaned. All the window cleaning companies are after new windows that can be tilted in.
Anyways, they are covered in years of salt and hardwater stains. Previously, I was steel wooling them all. My arms felt like they were going to fall off after doing that 8 hours a day.
Compare that to how I clean them now with One Restore and pure water. Night and day difference in terms of effort vs. reward.
I still like climbing ladders but would rather only be on a ladder if I’m getting paid well for it i.e. gutter cleaning which still nets me more per hour than window cleaning (although with the wfp, I am closing the gap).
When I’ve been off the ladders for awhile, I do start to miss them. There’s a strange freedom being 20-30 up in the air breathing the ocean air and listening to the seagulls while scrubbing windows esp. if you are rocking one earbud.
Hopefully, I can start getting these older homes on a maintenance schedule. I find that customers with the newer windows love to set up a once or twice a year cleaning but the windows with the older homes are often beach houses and people can be loath to shell out a lot of coin on a regular basis for their vacation home.
Is anyone out there doing maintenance cleaning for older windows where you would clean both sides 1 year, then the next just clean outsides and storms… maybe clean outside of storms every 6 months to maintain things? Because the older windows are twice as expensive (often more) than the newer windows, I think splitting up the costs would make regular maintenance more managable and more desirable from the perspective of the homeowner.
Thanks for all the feedback.
Jesse i can only imagine those old and neglected windows -the stuff of nightmares? however you could make that Your niche Jesse , if you can find a way to bust-em-out without killing yourself in the meantime.
take on a youngster or 2 with biceps like a bison ? and/or buy/fabricate a pane sized rotary buffer that works and looks similar to the brush bar in a vacuum cleaner. ? one things for sure,you wont have any/many rivals so you could cream up .
Love the Aztec Screen Washer but with storms, I don’t think so.
I have heard of more than one guy going after the triple storm window niche market when they were just starting out.
Well, I’ve been at it for 4-5 years now. If that’s “just starting out” to you then ok. I am using the old window jobs to fill out my August and September. May-July I was slammed with new windows. Peak season.
I am flyering neighborhoods with old windows with good success currently as the initial rush has been completed. I actually like cleaning the old windows, it’s very rewarding the before and after difference. I wouldn’t want to clean them year round, but they make great filler jobs because there is always high demand & short supply of window cleaners who want to do them and /or are good at cleaning them.
I don’t need to earn my chops or pay my dues anymore. I believe I am up there in skill with the best of them.
Funny, how some window cleaners think that if another wc cleans old windows then they are a rookie. I find that mastering the classics to be a sign of good craftsmanship. But to each his own.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat.
Huh. Not at all how I took @BostonMike’s comment. But I can see how it sorta sounds that way, now.
I would think it would be hard to work in New England and not do old windows. I think many old windows have a certain non perfection to them that makes them look better than newer glass. They have a certain character. Once you get them in shape they are not that bad to do.
My comment was for the guys who are starting out.
There’s neighborhoods where the houses all have new windows and neighborhoods with a bunch of true-divided windows. You could definitely just target the newer houses if you wanted. I like variety and being able to clean anything, myself.
I agree that the true-divided windows have a look that can’t be replicated. Each pane is individually set and ends up at a slightly different angle from the one next to it. So the light reflects off them in a unique way. The brand new true divided windows are completely flush with each other and still look better than windows with the internal grids (or snap out grids) but they will never look the same as the older true-divided windows.
The craftsmanship on some of these older windows is amazing. The wood alone is often old growth stuff that you just can’t get anymore.
I am currently in the process of seeking out and marketing to historical preservation societies. I have brochure I give them to explain how I clean and maintain the older windows. I would like to write and self publish a short book about old window maintenance and then I would be able to really sell my expertise to the gatekeepers of the really nice historical homes.
That’s what I figured 
My bad if i misunderstood you. You are correct that there is plenty of work out there for people who want it.
What’s funny about being a newbie is that the learning curve is vastly accelerated by carefully reading and implementing ideas on this forum. Someone reading this forum regularly and putting into practice new ideas will be much farther ahead after a couple of years than a guy not plugged into the forum and just learning from trial and error.
I have had a couple window cleaners approach while on jobs or filling up at the gas station, solo guys who have been cleaning windows for 20 years. After talking to them for a few minutes, I realized that I already have way more tricks up my sleeve than they do. Being on this forum, you can get the tricks and tips from hundreds of window cleaners gleaned from years of working.
With all the potential pitfalls of fabrication debris, millguard screens, pella windows etc out there, I would hate to be starting out without the feedback and expertise of a whole community of people.
