Mike - You have made personal attacks on two separate people (Larry and John) in very short order. Please remember rule #7 and Be Nice.
[QUOTE=Mike the Window Cleaner;99284] It’s not rocket science though. You get a brush in your hand and wet the window exactly like you would with a strip washer. The difference is the tool, a brush has bristles, it bust up the dirt. You don’t have to scrub vigorously, just a quick once over even yearly houses, that’s all you need to do.[QUOTE]
Many of us here have a great deal of experience w/ brushes since we do wfp work. I have used nylon bristles brushes and boars hair on my poles and the boars hair does a better job breaking up dirt. That being said I have a Reach Around goose neck on my poles for one basic reason - both those brushes won’t remove all the debris from the window all the time. On a first clean I need a razor to remove a variety of stubborn debris. Even on regular cleans when I run across artillery shotgun fungus I need to use a razor to remove it.
Reading text about a technique is sometimes hard for people to comprehend, a person is just reading, there is no brush, scrubber or squeegee in the readers hand (think instructions for Ikea furniture in another language.) A photo helps to show the viewer the technique and tools used (think a good picture book), a video shows the viewer exactly what you are trying to get across technique/scrubbing/detail and finished product (think a great novel). If you have a digital camera most have a video option, if not ask a friend if they have something that you can borrow, or video one of your friends cleaning or have them video you.
Had a heck of a time posting the message above for some reason.
Mike firstly ime English ! and i live in Germany… and secondly you probably have a point about the brush…i can imagine it does scrub the glass well… i cant comment on how much energy is needed though… because ive only tried Vikan , Salmon ,Bentley and Gardiner brushes when WFP ing… the bristles are all longer in length than that Nylex your using and the NYlex looks like it has more bristles per square cm… so you might have a point… if its the case they scrub better .ime gonna order one and see how it goes…
I have next to no experience with wfp but I do have two of them. A 26’ and a 12’, I haven’t even used the 12’ yet but I’ve done a dozen homes with the 26’ including some fairly big ones.
I cannot get any pressure at all on the glass with a wfp unless it’s right in front of me. I constantly worry about it so I over scrub and over scrub and over scrub then rinse and over rinse. I hope you don’t think that’s what you have to do if you had a brush in your hand?
There is no comparison to having a brush in your hand. With the brush in your hand you can scrub the crap out of a window if you have to. Most windows are dead easy, a quick once over with almost no pressure just like with the strip washer but, even though I don’t know what that fungus is your talking about it can’t be any harder then cleaning a window next to a barbecue, eh? Those windows that are splattered with grease, I can brush those clean.
I’ve given up using the wfp on 1 story houses, by the time I get the hoses out and hooked up I could have cleaned the entire outsides traditionally.
Maybe that’s why the brush I use holds so much water. I can literally leave my pail in the front of most one story and do the side and back with just one brush full of water. Those wfp brushes, I have a vikan sill brush also btw, I think they are designed to NOT hold water I never actually thought about it before.
I went and took a pic and you’re right. (This isn’t the vikan sill brush btw)
That green brush can hold water and if you flick off the excess it won’t drip on you either. It’s indispensable part of MY Ultimate window cleaning kit:)
Geez, this thread has got me thinking.
I’m gona try out boths methods
Mike- I didn’t understand what you where saying about the brush at first either.
but the 3 step method SOUNDS alot better than the 7 I use. If it works just as well, and its’ faster, then I’m happy.
Also John- SICK video!!
Mike,
I’ve often watched the high-rise guys in Toronto and many of them use the brush. I figure it must work because I’ve never seen one with a scraper in hand. I’ve often wanted to try the brush method. So far I’ve experimented with a soft truck wash brush but two things bothered me. It got my solution to froth up too much on the glass and frames and it put too much solution on the glass meaning I had a ton of water to wipe up. Would using a proper window cleaning brush like the one you’ve posted a picture of produce the same thing I’m experiencing. Also, do you use the brush indoors or just outside?
One last thing. What kind of soap do you use in your bucket?
Oh and Mike, I know too well about those windows above BBQs. Even after I warn my customers about the damage their doing to their windows, they fail to move them to a better location.
If I see bubbles on my windows, I got way too much soap. I used sunlight dish soap forever now but recently started trying GG3. I’m having a problem with gg3 soaping up my sponge, I was thinking of trying a sea sponge but I might just go back to sunlight. If it ain’t broke…
As for the water, they can hold a ton of water for outside work for inside you can flick out most of the water and adjust it. I don’t wipe up with a shamwow though but I do, if it’s a big picture window, catch water on my way down while squeegeeing. Or use the brush as a rough sponge to get most of the water off the sill. After I brush and squeegee. I Sponge and detail, sometimes you do have to use a towel on the bottom sill because a sponge, as you know, will leave a certain amount of water that is visible no matter how much it’s wrung out. All part of detailing.
But if you flick water out of your brush before you go in, you can literally just dip the corner tip of the brush in the pail to add the smallest amount of water when it’s getting to dry or spray water from your bottle onto the window.
All this is so automatic to me, I have to think about what I actually do, LOL. But I know how careful you have to be inside and yeah, I’ll crawl up a ladder inside a house and not worry about water. Though sometimes I might have to do the top half of a large vaulted window then come down the ladder a bit to rebrush the window to adsorb excess water just to make sure it won’t over flow the sill and go down the wall.
I know that the brush can be too dry for me so I know you can keep it adjusted to your liking. This is why I like my unger pail so much, it has that sieve that I can rest my brush on. I usually use 5 gallon round pail and I’ll put my brush upside down on the top edge so I don’t have to keep squeezing and flicking water out it. It wrecks the bristles in short order it still works but it looks ugly.
You see how the outside bristles get damaged? These brushes at least 5 years old so it’s not a biggie but I like nice looking equipment. My good brush is actually in my truck.
Btw, Mark. I know you like the boab, I’ve never used one but I did buy one recently. These brushes don’t fit in them very well… the unger boab anyway. If you stick it in too far the bristles get caught up on that upside down T and probably those channel holders on the sides. I don’t suppose you know of a brand that doesn’t have those things? I was trying to figure a way to cut them out… maybe with a reciprocating saw but I don’t think so. A bucket on the belt that can hold a brush would be pretty awesome. The problem is if you stick the brush all the way in, it lifts the boad when you try to take it out.
This house here, there is a stanless steel barbeque on the large deck on the right. It looks like it’s in the middle, it’s hard to see but it’s right under a window. That window was cracked right from top to bottom. I don’t clean broken windows so no one can blame me but the lady told me it was from heat from the barbeque. It looks like if they open the lid of the barbeque it would rest against the window, LOL. It’s not like they’re lacking deck space either.
I made myself a BOAB to hold my hogshair brush during CCU work, especially for ladder work (sieve was adequate for ground work.)
There may be a pic of it here somewhere already.
I would seriously love to see that larry. And yeah it’s primarily ladder work I’m thinking of. I always have climb on roofs with a brush in my hand, then back onto the ladder or I’m placing my brush on outside lights or I have to squeeze between my leg and a ladder rung or on an eavetrough, I have no where to put the brush. I’ve often thought of duck taping a juice jug to my ladder but thought it would look stupid.
What would I search for if you can’t find it? or, could you give some ideas on what you made it out of?
I’ve often taken an old 30 inch rubber or two and tied it around a couple of rungs of the ladder, to hold brushes.
Another idea is to get a light plastic clip, tie it to the brush hole, and clip the clip on the bucket on a belt’s edge.
(hope that makes sense, as I’m terrible at describing things…)
That green brush looks like an over sized ordinary scrub brush. Is that what it is?
I used a clear plastic bread holder, and attached a standard clip-on belt release (like on my Unger BOAB.)
When Mike posts my minds eye sorts has me thinking this is him, or what he looks like… ( think youve posted this pic before)
Josh those jackets are very much back in fashion.
