Window Cleaning Basics: Tools & Techniques Pt. 2

The next thing I’m going to show you is how I start what I do is: I take my washer I place it into my bucket, I then we're going fill up two gallons so I take my two capfuls pour it in take my other capful pour it in. The reason I put the t-bar in the bucket is you want the water and you want the bucket to be soapy but you don't want it to be so soapy that the only thing that's on the glass are suds, so when i go to wet when I go to add water to my bucket I let it run on my washer and not in the bucket itself. So, now that you have your two gallons of water what this will allow you to do is show you how sudsy you want the water because remember when you're walking around the house you're going to be slopping the water back and forth in between the bucket so you do not want the water in your bucket to be extremely sudsy. Also when walking around the house on the exterior you do want to keep your washer in the bucket itself what that does is that acts as a buffer so that the water doesn't start splashing around the entire house.

So with the window being a little bit taller than expected you have one or two options you can go with your Ettore reach extension pole or you can go with your standard step stool. These poles are great for a consumer's home the way that you use it is you spin it counterclockwise, which allows it to loosen up and then you spin it again counterclockwise and you lock it into actual place. When loosening it up to bring it back down you want to make sure that you have your hand on the top piece and you want to make sure that you have your hand on the bottom piece and you want to guide it down you never want to just let out allow it to fall right down because you could pinch your hand you could pinch your finger.

The way that I like to get set up is I like to make sure that i can reach the top of the window without overextending my body and allowing the pole to do the work for me. So what I’ll do is I’ll grab my washer; you do not want to apply a large amount of water and soap to your window. So what I do is I give it a quick little rinse off a ring and then what I do one of the things about Ettore that I like is you can clip these into place so it's not going anywhere and it allows you to clean the entire window and get it wet and it's not going to go anywhere.

So what I’m going to do is I’m going to show you how I mop a window, and I basically go the length of the t-bar or I go the length of the washer and I make sure that everything is wet I make sure everything that's rinsed off. Then I flip my washer over again and I just go through the entire window and make sure that everything is wet.

Then what I’m going to do next is I’m going to show you how to squeegee a window, and again all Ettore products come with a hole so you are able to clip it in. You're always going to want to start at one side of the glass you never want to start in the middle when you're doing a window you want to keep the part of the squeegee that's faced facing towards the wettest side of the window you want to keep that down so it minimizes your streaks. What I do is I just make straight pulls down when using the pull, so you have the window cleaned off the next thing to do is your minor little details. What I always do is I always grab my Ettore microfiber I attach it to the top of the pole give one little flip over now you're just able to detail that window, and that's how you clean a window with your Ettore extension pole.

The next way that I’m going to show you how to clean a window is using your basic household step stool you always approach the window you always make sure that you're not over extending your body or overextending your arm and always make sure that your tools are working for you. The way that I go about wetting the window is the same way that I wet the window with the pole. First way that I’m going to show you how to clean a window is the fanning in our industry this is how we clean a window, basically what you're doing is you're going side to side touching each side of the window that in my opinion and the way that my business is ran is I use my the fanning method on almost every single piece of glass now.

The next way I’m going to show you how to clean a window is I’m going to show you how to do straight pulls on the piece of glass just like I was using the pole but there are a few little bit there are a couple more tricks that I’d like to show you using the washer. One of the ways that you can go about making sure that you're getting the everything off the dirt is the same way that you're going to do the pull; so I will always go down up down up down up down. What that allows me to do is I’m tracing and I’m tracking that dirt the same way that I’m going to be squeegeeing the window, so that I know that when I have that squeegee water and when I bring it down I know that I’m bringing the dirt down with me. I like to do with the straight pulls again is just wipe down the edges because when you're cleaning a window and you have your solution set all the way to the top of the glass you're going to notice that when you make a straight pull down you're going to be bringing all of that residual water up there and that's going to stay up there until you wipe it off once you apply your Ettore microfiber and you wipe it off if you haven't detailed or cleaned up that water it's going to leave a trace of water.

One of two ways I like to do it if I’m doing straight pulls is I know that i have a 16 inch squeegee, so I will go down to a certain point and I will continue to do my straight pulls all the way down once you get about halfway through the glass you want to wipe down your squeegee. You want to finish it off just like that and then what you can do is you can bring it straight across just like that with minimal amount of detailing I just give it a quick wipe down there you go you.