Hello, so I have a dilemma that I hope someone has advice on. I offer track detailing as an add-on service, and I always waterfed 2 story houses. The problem is, when I clean the tracks first, then waterfed, the water pools at the bottom collecting dirt from crevices with it, and the track is dirty again. If I waterfed the outside first, then the tracks are a muddy mess. How do you all deal with this, when doing tracks and waterfed?
If the tracks look like they will become a muddy mess (ie: you could plant tomatos in the tracks)I will clean them first, then touch them up if needed when doing the inside or replacing screens.
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Yeah, do tracks first to vacuum out all the dirt so its not mud, then what I do is buy towels from a laundry place you can normally get they for $2 each, then tear them into small strips use them on the tracks after you WFP, I just fold them over my plastic business cards and toss them after.
It all depends how thorough you want to be.
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Prior to WFP the exterior, I use an ettore dust buster head and dust all of the frames, pull down cobwebs, etc. Then vac the tracks, then WFP. Keeps your brush clean, decreases dirt coming off the frames, and I’ve found the light soil on the glass that normally washes into the track is minimal and often washes out the drain on the bottom of the track.
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When we clean tracks, we do it prior to WFP. We use the Maykker brushes and a handheld Milwaukee vacuum as we have dust here. Never really had an issue post WFP though.
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Don’t clean tracks. Add another exterior house instead. Make 2x the money and 1/2 the hassle.
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Provided the drainage holes are not blocked, I have seen some people silicone them up as they don’t like the wind sound, when it blows really hard it can make a whistling sound.
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What? Why in the world?!?! This frustrates me so. Thankfully I have not seen this but I have seemed clogged drains. Or congested ones.
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I haven’t cleaned a track in God knows how long and no calls of complaints. I can only imagine me out here waterfed poling for 90 to 130 hr while companies run around with vacuums, water bottles and microfibers for 2 bucks. Quit cleaning tracks! Glass always, screens 1st cleaning then spring & fall only and no tracks.
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I guess it depends on your market, In my previous location I was the same with tracks. As soon as I moved every quote I did from day one, every single person asked about tracks, I just adapted and added the price into the quote, now every quote tracks are included, on regular cleans take almost no time to clean tracks, only time it can be a pain is on new jobs that have been neglected for years.
At the end of the day you provide the service the customers are seeking, if they don’t open their windows they probably wont care about the tracks and the tracks are less likely to have much in them.
I doubt I would have the success I have without tracks, once you refine your process 9/10 tracks will take you less than 30 seconds, sure a few times a year you luck out and get tracks that are filled with crap, I had 1 job that the tracks were so filled I had to empty my vacuum twice every downstairs window, I was glad there was only 5 downstairs windows, the upstairs were not as bad, that being said I was able to personally inspect when quoting so this was something I had added into consideration.
I remember years ago working at my previous job, we never did tracks, we just finish cleaning this huge 30’ glass face of windows in this super high end home, when then a fly flew into the track where we had just left is as it was ( which wasn’t good but you couldn’t see it), that dirt and crap mixed with the run off water from cleaning the glass made the flies feet( or what ever they call the things at the end of a flies legs) all like muddy it started flying around and landing on random spots of the glass then repeating that over and over again, I guess it was having a bath in the wet muddy tracks or something.
Then the customer asked why is that fly making all the windows all dirty , we just shrugged.
I couldn’t imagine doing that now, care factor increases significantly when its your business.
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Thanks, this is what I currently do, just hate having to do them twice, or at least it feels like I have to do them twice 
Wouldn’t it make more sense to make more with less drive time, especially considering that my hourly rate for tracks is the same as for windows?
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I live in the desert with a lot of dust, the tracks are an easy upsell!
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Whenever I have a job with really dirty tracks, I attach one of the pencil jets directly to my WFP hose and blast out the tracks. It takes a lot less time than a vacuum and I can get almost all the dirt flushed out. I have gone as far as bringing the WFP hose inside the house to do the second story. This is the first year I started trying it, works so well and saves a ton of time.
Wouldn’t that splash water inside? 
Not an issue outside, but I can control the flow on the inside with a valve. For years I’d dump water into the tracks with a sponge or spray them with my bottle, but the WFP hose and a sponge to wipe them out is the way to go. Works especially well on those old aluminum storm windows that have collected 40 years worth of compacted dirt.
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Ok hold on, so you take the wfp hose with a valve on it up to the track, then turn it on directly into the track? No vacuum?
For the first floor windows, do you walk up to them on the outside and open them from the outside?
I’m actually very interested in your idea lol could you elaborate more on the process and details? In my area tracks are done on almost every house.
@Rutledgepwc Made a short video on my WFP set-up. Tracks at my house aren’t very dirty, but you get the idea. I have no problem pulling the hose through a house interior, no different than what a carpet cleaner is doing.
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To the original post:
Tracks and sills cleaned before WFP regardless of condition. But how you clean them is important.
Just to clarify, the sides of the window frame is what we call tracks. It’s what the sash slides up and down along. Meanwhile, the sill is what the sash rest on when it’s closed. These two window parts are often confused with one another. Maybe in some areas they can mean either but within our company we use the terms separately. So this means that the sill is usually the dirtiest. Tracks also get junky, especially with cobwebs. More often, it’s the sill that’s rough. Making matters worse is when the sill features screen retainers. These are raised vinyl edges along the sill that hold the screen in straight. Super annoying!
To clean all this after the screen is removed, we FIRST scrub the junk while it’s dry using a stiff bristle parts brush. Stiff bristles loosen the dry dirt and scrub it free. We really abuse our brushes but mostly the stiff bristles! We slam them into every place that’s dirty. After a good scrub, we SECONDLY use a paint brush to sweep out the dust and debris. The paint brush bristles can easily get into crevices and sweep out the debris that was broken up from the other brush. (When sweeping out dust and debris, yes, some of it blows into the house. It’s pretty unavoidable. In really really bad cases, we might collect it up and throw it away. But this is rare). LASTLY, and really only if needed, we spray the frame, tracks, and sill with SPRAYAWAY aerosol cleaner and scrub/brush it clean and dry. (Don’t forget the rubber seal on the bottom of the lower sash! It’s usually caked with junk but when cleaned it helps keep the sill clean!). It’s very important that this whole process take only a few minutes per window even in bad cases. So it’s vital that we learn to do a good job very quickly and move on. I wouldn’t want to spend more than 3 or 4 minutes per window doing this.
In most cases, where the WFP process knocks dirt onto the sill we simply mop this up when reinstalling screens. Otherwise we consider it incidental and leave it. Never had a complaint from a customer from this. I should point out that we DO NOT charge “extra” for this. We consider it a normal part of window cleaning. Therefore it is all part of our price-per-window. But that isn’t unique to our area (low country) and so this is expected. In other parts of the US this may not be so.
Track-sills are when the track channel on the sides of the window continue onto the sill so that the sill also contains a track, or a channel. Only with track silks will we increase our price-per-window. And only in those cases will we use a vacuum. Vacuums are a pain: noisy, and awkward in tight spaces.
