A friend of mine tells me that his wife wants me to clean 5 large windows at their house. I go look at them and the are about 6 feet tall by 6 feet wide and they arch outward (they are on round parts of the house like a castle). Three of the windows are upstairs and two are downstairs. So far…a piece of cake.
Upon further inspection, I discover that they are acrylic windows. I have never cleaned acrylic windows before, so I go do some research (here is where you seasoned guys start laughing). I find the most highly recommended product available and find a local supplier. I call the manufacturer and ask them for specific instructions on it’s use and any helpful tips that they might have to offer. OK, I’m set.
I quote her a price of $20 per window and she agrees. So, I get started. This is where my enthusiasm takes a turn. I had no clue as to how labor intensive this was. I spent 6 hours cleaning 5 windows inside and out and I can’t raise my arms over my head. I’m exhausted!
The good part of this story is that I learned a valuable lesson. And hopefully, if there are some rather new guys to the biz that are reading this, maybe you could learn something from my mistakes.
Remember: A smart man learns from his mistakes, a wise man learns from others.
The product I used is called “NOVUS” Because of the condition of the windows I used the Novus 2 which is a fine scratch remover and Novus 1 which is a cleaner, shiner and protector.
The product is rubbed on kind of like car wax and then buffed off.
I believe that I should have charged about $100 per window. OOPS!
Plexiglas is a brand name for acrylic. Lexan is another brand name for it. They are all the same. What was on them that it took so long to clean them? We just did a CCU for a new warehouse in Jan that had an inside dividing wall of them and finished it in a day (14 4’x12’ and 9 4’x4’)
The windows have been in the house for 12 years and have never been cleaned. There was some fogging problems that I was trying to deal with. And the fact that the shape of the building was round and 2 1/2 stories high created some ladder placement issues.
For Ladder placement like this,
I have used ladder stand offs in the inside as well. Also another time, i secured a 2x4 to the top of the ladder, put foam around it to protect the paint and wood, and voila, only moved the ladder once instead of 4-6 times like I would have to normally.
Note, I also used ladder mits on the bottom of the ladder along with two bath mats to protect the wood floors.
Weird huh… but effective and very non slip.
I feel for you man. The first job I ever did was $800 lawyers office. They had hardwater and I had no idea what it was. Well I knew what it was but I though it would be easy to remove. I had no chems to do the job right. We cleaned the entire place and the windows looked like crap. Of course being my first job that was not the only thing involving crap. I went to a shop and got that Kaboom stuff. It worked ok. But again not knowing anything about window cleaning, we bladed every pane while the kaboom was soaking. Then we had to reclean everything again to get the rest of that kaboom crap off. Started at 8am and ended the job at midnite. My arms, legs, back we killing me. My eyes felt like they would burn out of my head from that Kaboom stuff. It dried out my hands so bad they started to crack. The guy I had helping me insisted on 1/2 the job money and honestly I could not blame him he busted his butt. In the end the job was gone and looked great. But I learned pretty fast after that, that HW will be charged double my price to remove. You live and learn. Now when I run across crazy jobs like this, I stop and tell the customer that this was an unforseen problem and in order to clean it correctly it’s more money. Live and learn. That’s how life and business is. Look at it like this, now you know how to deal with those windows and how to charge correctly for them.
