How to clean sash windows?

I don't think there is an easy way, if you can't get at the outside with the windows closed.

Cleaning the top sash isn't two bad. With that fully open, you can reach out over the top and clean the outside. Cleaning the outside of the lower sash is more difficult.

You can get kits which allow the lower sash to be converted so that it still slides up and down like a normal sash but also hinges inwards so that you can get at both sides of the glass. Have you thought of fitting one?

Timothy Murphy scribbled

My mum and dad have a magnetic cleaner. The magnet is surprisingly powerful (I nearly trapped my finger just picking it up). It works well, even on double glazing, but they do keep letting it fall to the ground occasionally. I can also imagine it breaking the glass if not placed carefully.

I don't think this method (with a long pole) is practicable in my case, as some of the windows are on the fourth floor. But thanks for the suggestion.

I have tried this. But as I mentioned, the wife considers it slightly dangerous.

We are not allowed to do this, as the building is listed. (We got a grant to restore the windows, but weren't even allowed to install double glazing.) But thanks for your response.

I did ask one man, but he said he would need to use a cherry-picker, which I am sure would be very expensive.

I'll see if I can find someone to do it the old-fashioned way, standing on the window-sill.

You _sit_ on the cill/bottom of the frame with your legs inside and your body outside. It would be quite difficult to fall really. Tricky if you have very thick walls.

Cheers

Slightly, yes - as are most things. In that case tell her to live with dirty windows: cleaning the windows in any way is slightly dangerous: the glass could break leading you to cut an artery and bleed out :(

Of course you could also trip and fall on the glass and the risk of that may increase if there's less light because of the dirty windows :))

Not good for sash windows generally. In my case the angle required to get over the sill and down to the bottom of the lower sash means you would have to stand in the middle of the road

Cheers

When I lived in the city centre cleaned the top sashes like this. Bottom sashes folded in so you could stand inside on the floor and do them but the upper sashes you had to wriggle out and put the sash as far down as they could go the idea was if you did start to tumble backwards the pane would catch your legs and stop you falling the four floors to the pavement/road, I was to feart to try testing this

You can put an angled extension on the end.

Cheers. I might look into that

Ask the local fire brigade round for a training exercise.

Or get one of those garden sprayers with a lance and bend the lance into a J shape so you can put it out of an almost-closed window and spray the outside.

Owain

If this is feasible, it is surprising it is not advertised as such.

Syd has got it right the traditional method involved sitting on the cill, I remember watching women do it that way as a child. I seem to recall they w ould stand on the internal cill and drop the top sash and lean out reaching as far as they could to clean it and then sit on the outer cill to finish the top sash and bottom sash.

Richard

Have you done the work already? If not, how about self-cleaning glass on the upper storeys?

Self-cleaning glass from Pilkingtons. It added £200 to the total cost of replacing around 30 windows in the building we have.

Jonathan

I don't think we would be allowed to do this. When we got a grant to re-furbish the windows it was specified that the old glass must be retained unless broken.

But I'm interested to know if Pilkington's self-cleaning glass works? I've only seen Pilkington's ads. I've never seen any independent reviews. Has Which ever looked at this glass?