The History of Commercial Window Cleaners
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The history of commercial window cleaners is very much tied up with the history of glass windows. Clear glass windows, albeit not transparent, were first made by the Romans in Alexandria as early as about 100 AD. But it was only really in the mid nineteenth Century that see-through clear glass could be used on large scale and thus economically in windows of buildings. The accepted method for people to clean glass was simply to use a bucket of water, some cleaning solution, a cloth and a ladder for tall windows. The cost for cleaning windows was limited to the solution used, which was usually soapy water, the cloths and perhaps the wages of a servant. Housewives or servants cleaned their own windows, until bigger and taller buildings were erected from about the 1860s, necessitating teams of workers to maintain the windows and thus significantly increasing the costs.
The first proper innovation in glass cleaning was the squeegee used in Chicago in the early 20th Century. It was heavy and bulky and based on the deck-scraping tool first used from about 1844 by sailors. Cleaners needed to remove twelve screws in order to change the two heavy rubber blades. An Italian immigrant, Ettore Steccone, designed and in 1936 patented the T-shaped, single-bladed squeegee we know today to facilitate his window-cleaning business. It was made of brass, was lightweight and had a sharp rubber blade. A window cleaner should have a good head for heights and not be a timid person. Window cleaning was and still is a dangerous job and many cleaners have fallen to their death.
As buildings became higher, new methods had to be found to clean windows and it became more of a specialized job for which people needed proper training. Ladders cannot reach much higher than nine meters. Temporary scaffolding could be erected to give cleaners access to higher windows. Individual cleaners could be suspended from ropes, similar to during mountaineering. Another method is to use a mobile elevated platform raised up from the ground with the cleaners safely inside a cage. This method is limited to buildings that are not very tall. A similar method, suitable for very high buildings, involves a platform or cradle suspended from ropes or cables from the roof of the building with the window cleaners once more standing inside the framework.
A more recent innovation is the pure water fed pole, where a hollow pole of up to 70 feet long, made of glass fibre or carbon fibre, has a squeegee attached at the end and has de-ionized, purified water pumped through it. Window cleaners can safely operate the poles from the ground. Self-cleaning glass has a top layer of titanium oxide which reacts with the sun's UV rays to break down dirt. This also prevents rain from forming droplets on the panes and the rain actually washes away the layer of broken-down dirt. Even this type of glass still needs occasional attendance by window cleaners. Some believe the future of window cleaning lies in robotic window cleaning, which is yet in its infancy. |
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Author Resource:-
For further information on techniques employed by commercial window cleaners , contact LaddersFree Window Cleaners
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By :
Gareth Hoyle
Submitted
2011-02-09 05:22:04 |
Article From Article Mayhem
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