Platform for cleaning and painting windows. . .

[Ray]

Our coop apartment building is four floors, on irregular ground. The upshot is, getting access to the windows makes painting and cleaning pretty costly.

Our painters/cleaners routinely use 60-foot ladders to get to the upper-floor windows.

My question is this: Is it possible to fabricate some very sturdy hooks which would fit over the sill of the windows, going over to the inside of the building, to support a platform to do the painting and cleaning?

I realize this sounds dangerous, but it seems to me if the hooks and platform could be very securely fastened, it would be made to be at least as safe as those platforms dangling from ropes on high-rise buildings.

[DD_BobK]

The "ropes" that hose platforms are dangling from are actually steel cable capable of holding 1,000's of pounds each.

What you are proposing is totally doable from a technical point of view...... whether it is allowable from a legal point of view (OSAH or other agency?) is another question.

The devil is in the details. What does the exterior of the building look like? Same questions about the interior & exterior sills. How wide are the windows? SIngle windows or always a pair?

To have such a device properly designed, fabricated & tested could cost many $1000's. Depending on the size of your building, number of windows, frequency of use and time saved per window.....your concept could wind up saving money.

Before I left my previous employ, we were looking into a device such as this (used not new)

Boom lifts come in all sorts of flavors...... IIRC we were looking at less than $20,000 Whether this could work depends on the local terrain and the type of lift used.

cheers Bob

[aemeijers]

The building I work in still has some of the 80-100 YO (depending on wing) window washer hooks in the brickwork on either side of the window openings. They are fitted as building is built, presumably with a backing plate behind the brick or something.

No, they don't use them anymore. I would not, either. They use a portable bosun's ladder setup, set up on the flat roof. Think big-ass fishing pole welded to a big metal plate, covered with hunks of ballast.

[RicodJour]

Replace the windows, starting with the top floor down. Use vinyl tilt- in windows, which makes cleaning the windows easy (make it the occupant's responsibility). You'll upgrade the energy efficiency of the building, largely eliminate a recurring expense and get an energy credit to boot.

R

[Ray]

Thanks -- replacement certainly is an option, but an extremely expensive one -- $300,000 for our building of six apartments. No doubt in time this would pay for itself, but I think it's all but impossible that we could get enough tenants to go that route.

Replace the windows, starting with the top floor down. Use vinyl tilt- in windows, which makes cleaning the windows easy (make it the occupant's responsibility). You'll upgrade the energy efficiency of the building, largely eliminate a recurring expense and get an energy credit to boot.

R

[RicodJour]

Three hundred grand....? Huh? I'm not sure what type of building you're in or anything, but that seems extremely high. Is it a historic building or some sort of loft building with acres of glass?

R

[RicodJour]

Please stop braying - it annoys the other barnyard animals.

The OP has yet to reply to the question about the cost of the replacement windows, but assuming that the $300K number is correct, for six apartments, what is your ex-compos-mentis engineer-emeritus calculation for the payback period? Include figures for how much energy would be expended to replace those windows - manufacture, transportation, labor, etc.

There is a cost to energy saving. Nobody reading this will live to see a $50K savings in energy from window replacement. I still think the OP's figure is high, but I _know_ you are.

R