Window Cleaning in Strelley

Window Cleaning for Strelley homes

Four weekly on the elevations facing the dual carriageway, six to eight on the streets behind them. In the village it is small panes, glazing bars, the occasional leaded light and stone sills that hold moss in the joints.

The dual carriageway sets the rota here. Properties on the elevations facing it pick up a traffic film the streets behind them never see, so those run on a four week exterior cycle while the rest of the estate sits comfortably at six to eight. The glass itself is undemanding: standard modern units, cleaned from the ground with a water fed pole and no need to come through the house. The village is the slow half. Small panes divided by glazing bars have to be detailed one at a time rather than swept in a single pass, one or two cottages have leaded lights, and the sills are stone rather than plastic, so they hold moss in the joints and algae on the shaded side.

Strelley sits in NG8, under Nottingham City Council. The housing here is mostly postwar city estate semis and short terraces along Strelley Road and Flamsteed Road, newer housing around Princess Boulevard, and a small group of listed brick and clay tile cottages in the village itself, and that is what shapes this job more than the floor area does.

What we run into on Strelley window cleaning jobs

Interior glass counts for more here through the winter than people allow for, and the fires are the reason. A room heated by an open fire or a burner lays a fine, faintly greasy film on the inside of the panes, and because it arrives evenly and slowly nobody notices it until it has gone. It takes a real bite out of what daylight there is in January. On the estate the winter problem is the deep reveal left by the window replacement: the track sits well back, fills with grit and blocks the drainage slots at the bottom of the frame, which is how water ends up on an internal sill.

How a Strelley window cleaning job actually runs

Exterior work here is decided by whether we can get to the back of the house. Most of these properties are cleaned from the ground with a pole, so the equipment goes down the side path, and a locked side gate means the front elevation gets done and the rear does not. If your gate bolts from the inside, leave it unbolted on the day or put a key safe on it. Dogs in the garden are the other one, and we need telling rather than discovering. A car parked hard against the front bay stops a pole reaching the glass above it cleanly, so moving it is worth doing if you are in. On the village side the buildings are taller and the ground in front of them is often gravel or planting rather than hard standing, which changes what can be reached safely and now and then means a section is done off a ladder with somebody footing it. We work through the winter and stop only for wind and for freezing conditions, because glass cleaned in a hard frost dries with a bloom on it.

Who books it here

The local reference points are Strelley Hall, All Saints Church, the Asda on Strelley Road and Nottingham Business Park, which is usually enough for us to find a property without a postcode lookup.

We run Strelley on the same round as Bilborough, Aspley and Wollaton.

What we check on every Strelley job

Frames are where a pole clean either looks finished or does not. The rubber gasket holding modern glazing into the frame collects a black line along its lower edge, and if the brush passes over the glass without dropping onto that gasket the window reads as clean from indoors and grubby from the pavement. Trickle vents along the head of the frame are the same, full of grit and cobwebs, and they are the first thing to let go in the rinse and run down a pane you have just finished, which is why they get done before the glass rather than after. Friction stays, the metal hinge arms on an opening light, hold grit in the channel and mark the frame when the window next closes. On older white frames there is a chalky bloom that lifts onto a cloth and then returns; that is the plastic breaking down in sunlight, not dirt, and cleaning will not stop it.

What the window cleaning covers

A sample of what is included

• Also: Green algae on north-facing frames
• Exterior: Drainage holes at the bottom of the frame cleared, which otherwise block and let water pool inside
• Also: Conservatory roofs and glazing
• Exterior: Glass, frames and sills cleaned together

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.