Window cleaning in Church Stretton

What you notice first is the frames, not the glass

The first thing people spot here is rarely the glass itself. It is a grey-green line along the bottom rail of the frame, and a dark tidemark in the corner of a timber sash where water has sat. On the older villas it shows up in the moulded sills, where moss gets down into the detail and stays wet long after the rest of the wall has dried out.

That growth is not road dirt, so it does not simply rinse away. It is algae and spores off the hedges and gardens around the town, and it takes hold on anything that stays damp and out of the sun. Deep reveals, planting close to the wall and a bank rising behind the back of the house all keep the air still enough for it to settle and stay.

By the time the glass looks obviously dirty, the frames have been carrying it for months. That is why a clean here is really a job about the edges. Get the algae out of the frame mouldings and off the sill and the glass stays clear for far longer, because there is nothing sitting around the pane waiting to creep back across it.

Stone cottages in All Stretton and Little Stretton tend to get it worse than most, and so does any north-facing elevation in the Strettons, whether it is a spa villa or a modern semi.

Old glass and painted timber, cleaned without a ladder touching them

Every window is cleaned with a water-fed pole from the ground. The water is filtered and de-ionised before it ever goes up the pole, so there is no detergent in it and nothing left on the glass once it dries. Unfiltered tap water through a pole is the other way a pole clean goes wrong, because the minerals dry as spots, which is why the filtration is the part that matters.

The bigger point on a period house, though, is what is not happening. No ladder goes against the building. Church Stretton has a lot of soft sandstone sills that mark under a ladder foot, painted timber that chips, gravel and sloping drives that a ladder will not sit square on, and borders planted right up to the wall. Resting weight on a Victorian gutter, a bargeboard or an old rendered reveal is how those end up bent, split or chipped, and putting one of them right costs more than years of window cleaning.

From the ground I can reach first-floor windows, dormers and the glass over a porch or a bay without leaning anything on the house, and without treading through the planting to get to it. On a let property it also means nothing is left propped up outside while I work round the back.

Glass, frames, sills and doors are all done on every visit, at no extra charge. Algae left in the frame is exactly what puts the green back on the pane, so cleaning the glass and leaving the edges is just booking the same job in again.

Holiday cottages, B and Bs and houses that stand empty midweek

A good share of the property around the Strettons is either let out or lived in part-time, and both have the same blind spot. Nobody is standing in the room to notice the windows, so it gets noticed instead by a guest at the end of a long drive, or by you on the Friday night you arrive.

For holiday cottages and B and Bs I work around changeover, so the clean lands between bookings rather than while someone is sitting in the front room with a cup of tea. It is all done from outside, so there is no key to hand over, no appointment to be in for, and nobody indoors. If your changeover day is fixed, tell me and I will keep the visit off it.

For second homes the round simply keeps running whether you are in the county that week or not, and the text still goes out before each visit so you know it has been done. Tell me once about a bolted side gate, a code, a dog in the garden or a shared drive and I will remember it for good.

Commercial work is fine as well, so shopfronts, offices and let blocks are all covered, and I agree the price with you before I start. If you look after more than one property around the town, mention it when you ask for a price and I will quote them together.

From £18, and what a period house changes

Window cleaning starts at £18. That figure is also the minimum charge for window cleaning, so a small cottage with only a handful of windows still comes to £18.

Above that, the price follows the property rather than a price list. What moves it:

• How many windows there are, how big they are, and how many separate panes
• Bays, dormers, sashes and leaded lights, which all take longer than a plain modern unit
• How many elevations there are, and whether I can get round all of them
• Access round the back, so gates, steps, banks and narrow side passages
• How long it has been left, since a first clean after a couple of years of growth is more work than a visit on a round

A Victorian villa with bays front and back and small-paned sashes is a longer job than a modern three-bed, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. I would rather price your actual elevations than quote you an example house that is not yours, so use the instant quote to price it yourself, or send me the address. Either way you get the figure before I start any work, and the work is fully insured.

Choosing 4-weekly, 8-weekly or a one-off

Most houses here settle on either 4-weekly or 8-weekly. If you are shaded for a good part of the day, sat under trees, or up towards the hill, 4 weeks keeps the growth off the frames before it turns stubborn. Open plots with a bit of wind through them are usually fine on 8. An 8-weekly visit works out roughly 15% more per clean than a 4-weekly one, so the interval is worth choosing on how your own windows behave through the year, not on which number looks smaller.

One-offs are fine too, whether that is before a viewing, after building work, or when a cottage has stood shut up over the winter.

I keep the Strettons on one round, so the town itself, All Stretton and Little Stretton, and out towards Minton, Hope Bowdler, Cardington and Wistanstow are all on the same run. You get a text before each clean so nobody is caught out, and you can move a visit if that particular week does not suit.