I posted a question a few days ago and received some great responses. Now I am curious what someone who could use a lift and or hang from the building might charge? The picture attached is showing the face of this building. It is 63’ tall and has approx 3790 panes of glass just on the front. It has a total of 5600 total?
I have the job already but have not submitted my price yet… ( wish all jobs went this way)
I plan to use WFP but am curious what others may charge. Is there any IDEAS out there? I would love to get my hands on some BASIC pricing… ANything on the net?
With just seeing the front. I would charge big money for that job. For me they would be looking over 25 grand not to include the lift rental price. If you got 25 grand, I’m sure you could hire a chair guy at 30%, leave him hanging all month if he wanted and still make a great profit. From what I have read chair and lift guys do not make more money then a normal window cleaner. Which would mean $10 to $15 per hour. If you gave him/her 30% of a 25 grand gig for 1 month total. The person would make $46 per hour. I’m sure some chair guys would jump on that. If they completed the job in 1/2 the time they are almost at $100 per hour.
With a lift you can get that job done in 1 to two weeks. My 60 ft articulated boom rental cost about $1500.00 per week with 14% added on for insurance. Call your insurance company if you are going to use the lift. They might be able to ad it’s cost on your plan for time you need the machine. It may be cheaper. Example. $1000 rental x 14% is $140 x two weeks. You might be able to get your insurance to cover it on for $100 extra on the policy. Dont fill the machie with gas at the end of the gig the companys will charge you for the full tank anyway and most of those things are like 50 to 100 gallons.
Oh another way to look at this. If you got 25 grand or more. You can request a deposit and buy a WFP set up, complete with poles etc. Do it yourself from the ground and have a machine that will make these jobs very easy…
Ray 25k, really?
That seems awfully high. Maybe I’m missing the ball on this one.
I think you can knock that out in 3 days with a lift and a helper as long as the hardscape is suitable for something that heavy.
If the back looks like the front, I would be at 19 to 25 grand as well. That building with wfp work will go alot faster, the only concern I would have is the top most row with the wfp…I have never worked that high with one and dont know how well it would do at that height. If you had 3 poles on it, you can get it done in 2 days with 6 guys. Teams of 2, one pulls line while the other works and they switch off so they dont get fatigued.
If the glass is really bad, I would use a boom. Chairing that is gonna take forever and I would want to be out of the tenants’ sight as quickly as possible. Ray is dead on.
Guys thanks for the replys. I am using WFP’S . They will not allow lifts on the grounds. The front and 2 sides have a total of 3700 panes and the back has 5 stories and another 2000 panes. I am contracted to do this in July and have not given a price as of yet. I am planing to have 3 guys on the outside with 2 poles and another 2-3 on the inside. I to am a little nervous about the height but I feel that once we spend the time on the 5th floor it only will get easier coming down.
For rope work
Roughly 6000 panes over 5 floors, is roughly 1200 panes per floor
It looks like it would be fairly easy to do 2 windows per floor per drop ( possibly 3 but lets stick with 2) Thats 600 drops at about 1/2 hr per drop
or 15 per day per guy ( probably more but being pessimistic)
Thats 40 man days @ $500 per man day ( optimistic) $20,000
Thats without really seeing it
More likely is doing 3 window drops @ about 12 per day or about 34 man days, and at about $300 per man day or closer to $10,000
More likely again is someone with a roof roller will drop a guy down to the top window and roll him for the day until his arm drops off amd charge about $4000
I used to think that way also. But the fact is jobs like this are never simple. You get to the upper floors and find all sorts of goodies on that glass. If you want to price out at $1.00 per window then fine, it’s what? A $5000.00 job. But that is not taking into account the unforeseen issues that always pop up. There is no wiggly room when you price low. You have to take into account so many other things with this. If you double the price to $10,000.00. And you miscalcuated 1 thing. You end up paying to do the job. I learned very fast how quickly your money starts flying out the window. Example. I was on a job last summer where my hose on my WFP broke. I did not have the means to fix it as the hose I had bought for the WHAT IF’s did not work. I had to drive out and find one (job was in the middle of no place and took me two hours). With my helper on site removing screens and me not being able to follow behind. I lost over $500 for that day. Reason being was the two hours killed me on window count completion. When I got back my helper was just sitting there because she had to wait on me. She had all the sills cleaned etc. That was just for one wing on the building. You have to account for stuff like that and if nothing happens and all goes well, then great it’s money in your pocket.
I have gone on a more then enough mid-rise quotes where as, I told the person. “For a simple WFP maintaince clean outside only was $2500.00.” The response was “Really? That cheap? I thought like $10,000.00”
Most of these companies don’t really have any clue what a window cleaning is going to cost. They see a 5 floor building and think the cleaners will be roping. Just for the risk in roping alone they expect the job to cost some big bucks.
I have worked with wfp at this level. You will want four men working in teams of two taking turns. The top floors will go slower than the bottom three. I would only use the SL2, new Simpole 66ft or the Ionics Ergo2 72 ft. All very light poles 20,000 sounds about right. You can get the Simpole or SL2 here on WCR You will want a cart that has an electric or gas pump to push two poles. The new RHG battery cart will push two poles.
