In terms of the equipment needed to run a business, a window cleaning service requires the least amount of equipment of almost any business I can think of, except maybe the guy who walks around your neighborhood with a paintbrush and stencils and repaints the windows. house numbers on your sidewalk. . In fact, the limited number of tools required is one of the most attractive benefits people consider when looking to start their own window cleaning business.
However, just because you can get by with a limited amount of equipment doesn’t mean you can run a profitable and successful window cleaning business by being a cheap skid.
Earlier this week, while checking on one of my crews while they were cleaning a large shopping center, I noticed another window cleaner I didn’t recognize cleaning a building across the street. On the way to introduce myself, I saw that he was using a 12″ stick and squeegee to clean some huge 6′ x 8′ storefront windows.
The man was clearly an experienced window cleaner, so I thought it was a bit strange for him to use such a small squeegee on a large piece of glass. After talking to the man for a bit, I casually asked him why he wasn’t using a bigger squeegee.
What he said baffled me and is the reason why I wrote this article.
He told me that he had been cleaning windows for over 10 years and all he needed was a 12″ squeegee, because larger squeegees couldn’t clean more efficiently than the basic twelve inch squeegee. .
Let me clear this up right now. The above statement is completely and utterly false! Common sense should tell you that, but let me give you a basic example to show just how wrong this window cleaner is.
Let’s use the same piece of glass mentioned above. A 6 ft x 8 ft (or 72 in x 96 in) window. And we’ll clean the same window with a stick and three popular size squeegees: 12″, 18″ and 24″. And remember to wipe the squeegee blade to remove excess water between each pass. There’s a There are a variety of methods to do this, and no matter the method, the only thing we need to know is that this step of the cleaning process must be repeated for each stroke and that it takes time.
– With a 12″ squeegee you would have to make 6 vertical passes with your pole to clean the window. (72 / 12 = 6)
– With an 18″ squeegee you would have to make 4 vertical passes with your pole to clean the window. (72 / 18 = 4)
– With a 24″ squeegee you would have to make 3 vertical passes with your pole to clean the window. (72 / 24 = 3)
So, in this simple example, you can see that using a 24″ squeegee instead of a 12″ squeegee to clean the same window reduces the number of swipes needed by 50%. That means 3 fewer swipes and 3 times less it takes to remove excess water from the blade for every same size window you clean.
As the saying goes “Time is money”. This is especially true when running a window cleaning business. So anything you can do to speed up your efficiency at work directly impacts your bottom line.
For example, if it took you 4 minutes to clean the same window with a 12″ squeegee, you could reduce that time to 2 minutes by using a 24″ squeegee. So if you charged $4.00 to clean that window, you would have increased your profit per minute from $1 per minute to $2 per minute. Think about how this increase in efficiency could add up throughout the entire job. The whole day?
Hopefully you now understand how having the optimal equipment and the right tools for the job can increase your efficiency and put more money in your pocket.