Window Cleaning in Old Basford

Window Cleaning for Old Basford homes

The terraces open straight onto the pavement, so the ground floor glass takes road spray and the sills sit where every passing sleeve brushes them. Rear elevations are reached across a shared yard, which we would rather agree with the neighbour beforehand.

The two housing types want different rotas. Terraces sit hard against the pavement, so the ground floor glass takes wheel spray off the road and a film of brake dust that a sheltered street never gets, and the front sill is at the height a passing sleeve rubs. That elevation wants doing more often than the back does. The semis are set back behind a garden with standard modern units, and they hold up for a couple of months between visits. Interiors are the bigger gap in both. A terrace front room has one window doing all the work for a room with the stairs coming out of it, so a film on the inside of that pane costs a noticeable amount of the daylight.

Old Basford sits in NG6, under Nottingham City Council. The housing here is mostly nineteenth century terraces built for the hosiery and lace trades, with postwar council semis filling the gaps left by clearance, and small modern closes on former factory land, and that is what shapes this job more than the floor area does.

What we run into on Old Basford window cleaning jobs

Replacement units went into most of these terraces at some point, and the ones that went in cheapest are the ones that show it now. The drainage slots along the bottom of the outer frame block with pollen and grit, and once they are full the water that gets past the seal has nowhere to go, so it sits in the chamber and eventually comes out on the inside of the reveal. We clear those with a thin brush every visit, and it takes seconds. On the older frames still in place, the putty line is the thing to be careful of, because a blade run along it lifts it and then the pane rattles.

How an Old Basford window cleaning job actually runs

We work these streets on a set cycle rather than by appointment, which is the only way a round makes sense on terraced rows where the houses are a few paces apart. You get told which week you are in and we come whether or not anyone is home, since the front elevation needs nobody to open a door. Rear access is the part that has to be arranged in advance, and it varies house by house along the older terraced streets: some have an entry to the yard, some are locked, some can only be reached through the house. The bay fronts on certain rows take longer than the flat fronted houses do, because a bay is three faces of glass plus the returns and the top lights, and on a row where the bays repeat it adds up across a morning. Where an original window survives with small panes or a leaded pattern, that is slower again and we say so at the start rather than rushing it.

Who books it here

The local reference points are St Leodegarius church on Church Street, the David Lane tram stop and Valley Road, which is usually enough for us to find a property without a postcode lookup.

We run Old Basford on the same round as New Basford, Bulwell and Bestwood.

What we check on every Old Basford job

Sills and frames are half of what people actually see, and they behave differently on the two housing types here. A stone or concrete sill on a north facing terrace front grows a thin green film that is not dirt so much as growth, and it comes back faster on the shaded side of a street than it does on the sunny one, so it wants brushing off properly rather than a rinse. White frames of a certain age are the other one. Years of weather leave the surface chalky, and running a wet brush over it lifts a pale bloom onto the glass you have just finished, which is why the frames get done before the panes and not after. On the semis, the porch canopy and the glass in the front door usually need more attention than the upstairs windows do.

What the window cleaning covers

A sample of what is included

• Exterior: Drainage holes at the bottom of the frame cleared, which otherwise block and let water pool inside
• Exterior: No ladders, so no access needed through the house in most cases
• Exterior: Glass, frames and sills cleaned together
• Exterior: Water-fed pole system using purified water, reaching up to four storeys

That is a sample rather than the whole list. The full window cleaning page sets out every section of the scope, what is deliberately excluded and why, how long it takes on each property size, and what tends to go wrong.

The cleaner who comes to your Old Basford property is directly employed and vetted by us rather than subcontracted, and the questions that come up before a first booking are answered on the FAQ page. If you are not certain this is the right service, the services hub compares all 14.