Window washing is a dirty business, but somebody's got to do it

As a design feature for large public buildings, the window has experienced a long, humbling decline. Preening architects transformed the urban skyline into a high-rise hall of mirrors, while windows that once breathed light became rare as gargoyles. But through all the changes, window cleaners -- who now scour entire glass buildings armed with only squeegees and buckets of soapy water -- have remained indispensable.

The dangers inherent in a job that sometimes requires working hundreds of feet off the ground for hours at a time became painfully apparent during a 10-day stretch in November. First, a pair of window cleaners working 69 stories above the street outside New York's new World Trade Center found themselves suspended for an hour from a scaffold that had tilted to nearly vertical, before firefighters cut through the glass and reeled the men in.

The following week in San Francisco, a workman who had not yet begun cleaning windows at the Sterling Bank and Trust Building plummeted from the roof, screaming as he fell 11 stories, before landing on a moving car. That saved his life, although the still unnamed window cleaner has endured numerous surgeries since the accident.

Thirty years ago, when Andy Shavalia -- owner of Superior Window Cleaning in Santa Clara -- was learning the business, the sort of safety equipment that almost surely saved the lives of the window cleaners in New York was rarely used. Instead of the motorized scaffold-like devices that are used today, called a "swing stage," window washers were lowered from the tops of skyscrapers on a small chair tied to pipes or air conditioning units. "That's like rappelling down the side of a building," Shavalia says. "I would say rope work is probably the hairiest situation you can be in when you first learn the trade."

Shavalia has cleaned the 40-story McKesson tower in San Francisco and the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose -- jobs that can take a month or more. The work is slow and methodical, and often the only thing that breaks the tedium is the occasional surprise encounter. Shavalia has come across couples in the full flower of connubiality. "Especially on hotels," he says, "we've had a couple of incidents where maybe the management forgot to tell their guests that if they want privacy to close the curtains. They tried to cover up. You just turn away and continue with your job."

Most window cleaning companies do a mixture of commercial and residential work, although not all of them ascend to great heights. Tim Zickuhr's R12 Window Cleaning in San Jose is only insured to go three stories high, after which the cost of his coverage would quadruple. "How they figure that there's more danger at four stories than three stories is beyond me," says Zickuhr, who uses an 85-foot articulating boom to reach the glass at the top of triple-decker office buildings.

Unlike most homeowners, who tend to use spray products such as Windex to clean their glass, the pros typically use Dawn dishwashing soap and water, which they slop on with a mop, then remove in a long coiling motion with a squeegee. This is known as "snaking" the window, and Shavalia says the technique can take as much as a month to learn to do without leaving any streaks.

Zickuhr uses a 45-foot telescoping pole that hooks to a water de-ionizer that filters out San Jose's notoriously hard water. Windows dry spot free.

Zickuhr has "window washer" among his Google search terms, but he disdains the term. "When you've been doing windows as long as we have, there's an art to it," he says. "It's not just a matter of washing a window. You wash your clothes, you wash your car, you don't wash windows. You clean them. If I come in and clean your house, and I miss some dust, chances are you're not going to notice it. But if I miss a spot on the picture window that you sit next to every morning to have your coffee, you're going to say I didn't do a very good job. The art of window cleaning is having an eye for detail -- and being very meticulous."

The window cleaning industry used to be quiet -- or would switch to gutter cleaning-- during winter months. But when taggers began etching graffiti onto the windows of ground floor stores and restaurants about three years ago, polishing out the etched messages created a booming new business. Billy Berk's bar and restaurant, on the corner of First and San Fernando Streets in downtown San Jose, has suffered vandalized picture windows several times. Nick Ramezani, who has owned the place for two years, estimates he has gone through seven replacements, costing a total of $1,600.

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Window washing is a dirty business, but somebody's got to do it