Squeegee Pros - Commercial Window Cleaning Training .

Hello, I'm Barry, General Manager for Squeegee Pro's Window Cleaning. Today, I'm going to be doing an instructional video on what the do's and don'ts are of cleaning windows and teach you exactly how to clean the windows, how to make the water. First off, you want to make sure you have all of your equipment, pole, bucket, squeegee, scrubbers. And we only use Dawn dish detergent, Dawn only. It works the best out of all the soaps, doesn't leave streaks, doesn't peel the tint, certain soaps have ammonia in it, could peel the tint off, and things of that nature. First off, you want to start, take the soap, you want to do five seconds. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five, just spreading it throughout the bottom of the bucket. And then, there's a line in the bucket, you want to fill the water to this line. If you start to run out of water, have to add more water, obviously you want to add a little more soap each time you add water. Each time you add water, you're diluting the soap and you don't want the soap to be diluted and not be able to clean the windows properly. This is a cross tip water tool, normally it is issued, if it is not issued, you can pick these up at any Lowe's or Home Depot, they cost about seven bucks. You will definitely need this, all commercial water sources on buildings have a little square key and you will need this key to turn the water on and off. The reason for the cross water key is, this is a commercial water source, this is what they all look like. A commercial water source has a little square knob, take your key, obviously, lefty loosey righty tighty, you want to turn it to the left to unlock it. Once it's unlocked, open it, this is what a water source looks like, again, another square knob that you will need the key to turn the water source on. So once you have put the soap in, once you put the water in, you want to take your brush and what you want to do with your brush is kind of stick it in the water and just kind of mix up the water, just to make sure that all of the soap is mixed in with the water. If not, if the soap is not mixed in properly when you go to clean the windows, then it's going to be spotty and it's not going to clean the windows properly. Okay, now I'm going to demonstrate how you would clean the top window properly. And I want to point out first that here, the top ledge, it's a rubber seal. This rubber seal, you do not want to get wet. You can go about a half inch from the rubber seal when scrubbing the window. Okay, what you want to do is grab your scrubber, as you notice on the pole, there's a little clip here, and also on the scrubber, there's also a clip. The best way to keep the scrubber from falling off is to put it down onto this clip. As you've just seen, it snaps in place. It will not come off. When scrubbing the windows, I always come about right there, almost touching the top ledge, but not quite touching the top ledge. You don't want to take the scrubber off of the window. It needs to be a continuous motion. Just keep in mind, scrubbing the window is what actually cleans the window. The squeegeeing just takes the dirty soap water off of the window, so you want to make sure that you really put a little bit of strength behind scrubbing the window. To take the scrubber off, just push the little button, it pops right off. Same thing with the squeegee, it has the same little button, push it on, it clips in place. When squeegeeing the window, you go all the way to the very top, you want to do it just a little jiggle motion, just to make sure that there's nothing at the top of the window. Come all the way down. Once you get close to the bottom, you're going to pop the squeegee and the pole up to come all the way down. If you don't pop the squeegee and the pole up, I will show you what happens if you don't. You come down, you hit the ledge, and as you can see, a big line of water at the bottom of the window. Once you are out by yourself cleaning the windows, you would not just do one window at a time. As you can see here, you would do one, two, three, scrub, squeegee, and then stop. We always do top, then bottoms. Obviously if you do the bottom, then you try to do the top, water may drip down back onto your bottoms. Also, I do want to make sure everyone knows that you use a bath towel. We have a textronics cloth, which is for the window only, if you make mistakes on the window. These are not to be used on the ledges at all. The bath towel, however, is to be used on the ledge. Just take the bath towel, wipe the front face of the ledge, make sure it is clean of all dirt and debris, spider webs, etc. Okay, now I am going to demonstrate how to clean the bottom windows. Our company uses what is called a mountain technique. This technique is probably the fastest in the window cleaning business. Most other companies use a figure eight technique. The problem with the figure eight technique is a lot of times when you are doing a figure eight, guys miss the corners, they round off the corners, they miss some stuff on the ledges. So we use what is called a mountain technique that covers the entire window. I am going to demonstrate how to do that. First, you want to take your scrubber, dip it in the water, put it in your tray, let just a little bit of the excess water drip off, then scrub the window. And again, I can't irradiate enough that, obviously scrubbing the window is what cleans the window, the water, the soap is what cleans the window, and you want to put a little bit of strength in behind scrubbing the window. And again, you want to keep the scrubber on the window. Also, when you are scrubbing the window, you want to make sure to scrub the bottom ledge. You want to get all dirt and spider webs and everything off of the bottom ledge. Once the window is scrubbed, you want to take your squeegee, and now I am going to demonstrate the mountain technique. You want to start here, come up to the corner, come over to this corner, to your right corner, and if you are noticing, obviously you want to turn the squeegee as you go, so that way you are in the next position to go where you need to go. You come all the way down to the bottom corner, come all the way back up where you started, turn the squeegee, and then if you, on this window here, you would come down to this corner, and then just cut down the little mountain. Then you would use your squeegee, scrape the water off of the ledge, and then at that point, again, you would take your towel, bath towel, wipe all the side ledges, wipe the bottom frame, the front face of the frame, and of course this side rail as well. Now obviously I didn't miss anything, but if you were to miss something, I am going to put a little spot on the window. Say there was a spot right here on the window, you missed it when you were squeegeeing, this is what the Textronix cloth is for. You would take it, one swipe, and wipe that off. You're not going to scrub back and forth, it's just one swipe. One thing I would like to mention about the Textronix cloth is, obviously again, it's for the window only, no framework, but as the Textronix cloth gets wet throughout the day, it smears the window instead of actually taking what you missed off the window. Normally you are given two of these. When you are given two of these, what I like to do is leave one on my dash so it's drying and use the dry one while I'm out cleaning windows. At the end of the day, you want to make sure that you put your towels that you used for that day aside. Do not use them the very next day unless you washed them that night. Obviously the bath towels can be washed and dried. Also at the end of the day, the soapy water needs to be discharged, it needs to be poured out down a drain in the grass. The soap doesn't hurt the grass, so it is okay to pour it in the grass, but now at the same time, the scrubber and the Textronix cloth, which you get two size scrubbers, you'll get this scrubber and a smaller scrubber, these scrubbers need to be washed at least once a week in the washing machine. Do not dry them, they can only air dry only. The same thing goes with your Textronix cloth. You may wash them in the washing machine at least once a week, but do not dry them, they are to be air dried only. On the squeegee, we supply rubbers every two weeks. And also how to change out the rubber. It has little clips, pop the clip on both sides and the squeegee comes out. Now, the squeegee also has, if you can see in the channel, has little grooves that the rubber has to go in. The bottom groove is better for doing bottom windows by hand and also using the pole work. I do not use the top groove, I think it leaves streaks. However, this is your option once you get trained and you are out cleaning the windows on your own. It is whatever works best for you. The rubber goes right into the groove on the channel, it goes in just like this. You want it to be even on both sides. If you got too much on one side, it could leave a line on the window. Once you got the rubber in place, pop it, lock it back in position, lock it back in position on both sides. Also on the channel, with the squeegee, you can pop it here, sometimes the channel may move a little to one side. You just pop this open, push it down, it releases the channel and the channel moves freely through the handle. I always like my handle and channel needs to be right in between the two marks on the channel. Once you are done putting it to whatever is comfortable for you, pop it back in place and you are ready to go. One very special thing that I need to go over is safety. Here at Squeegee Pros, we are all about safety. Whenever you are cleaning windows on a commercial building storefront, once you made your water and you are getting ready to clean the window, the bucket needs to go up against the wall, out of the walkway, so when customers are walking through, they do not trip on your bucket. Also, with the pole, once you are done doing the top windows, you are done with your pole, it needs to be secured in a place where it will not fall over and somebody can trip over it walking through the walkway.