The Government here in the UK has forced the window cleaner over to a completely new way of window cleaning. Health and safety states they cannot clean windows unless their feet are planted firmly on the ground. The window cleaner and resourceful suppliers have found ways round the restrictions by using water fed poles for window cleaning. Firstly the tap water is purified, stripped of all the dissolved solids. To do this we need to clean the water, it is passed through a Reverse Osmosis system which separates the good water from the contaminated water. The problem with this is to get 400L of pure water we are actually needing 1200L of tap water, times that by the amount of window cleaners in the UK and we are using 72,000,000 extra Litres of water per day. With water being the prime essential of life as we know it you can see that the over usage of water can create a major problem. This problem is taken seriously by Aquatec and has led to developments being made in reducing water wastage among their customers. Due to excessive overuse of water vasts amounts of water is wasted which include the following major points...

Water flowing from the brush.

Until Aquatec got involved with the water fed pole industry all brushes used pencil jets which waste vast amounts of water. These jets don't restrict water in any way and cause water to flow from the brush in two places only, meaning more time is spent with the brush on the glass ensuring the water is reaching every part of the glass, for effective cleaning. And also as the water is not coming out under pressure a lot of the water is wasted without even being used. The water was also being used to excess to justify large water treatment systems being sold to customer who purchased these systems.

2/ Brushes.

The type of brushes being used before Aquatec got involved were more suited to the car washing industry. These brushes were very dense and didn't allow the dirt to freely pass through the brush, meaning more time and water on the glass.

3/ The means for stopping and starting water.

When a window cleaners working he is relying on a valve type device, or a water stop type device for stopping and sorting the water flow. And because the two stated devices rely on the operator stopping what he is doing, to turn a valve by hand, or disconnect a pipe by hand, to stop the water flow then he is just going to continue what he is doing, without turning the flow off. What Aquatec done was fitted the valve on the brush itself and supplying a means of operating the valve from the ground with a simple tap of the brush on one side or the other to start or stop the water ensures the operator will prefer to stop the water flow when needed. At the time of writing this no other supplier has attempted to supply their customers with the Autobrush valve system.

4/ The pole.

The new clamp-less Pole, again a first from Aquatec. The pole saves water as it is much faster to use than a conventional clamped pole. Four hours working instead of eight hours working is easily achievable.

All the above water saving devices may not seem like much but added together amount to a considerable water saving over the course of the day.

Copyright (c) 2008 Peter Fogwill