Window Cleaning — Cobden Street, South Melbourne

On a block like this the windows do not line up. They sit on different faces, at different heights, set back behind balconies on some flats and flush with the wall on others, and there is no single position from which a run of them can be worked. The harder half is that many of them open inwards or cannot be reached from outside at all. That makes the job dependent on residents: someone has to be home, the flat has to be accessible at the agreed time, and the work has to move through occupied homes without leaving a mark on any of them. Glass in that position is usually the glass nobody has cleaned in years, precisely because arranging it is the difficult part.

The building was worked as a sequence of appointments rather than as one elevation. What could be reached from outside was done first, so that time inside was spent only on the panes that genuinely needed it and nobody was waiting on us in their own flat. Inside, the rule is that the flat looks untouched afterwards. Surfaces below the glass stay dry, anything moved goes back where it was, and the pane is checked in daylight before we leave the room, because coming back for one window means arranging the whole appointment again. Two technicians for eight hours, which on a job like this is a realistic figure rather than a fast one. The glass is quick; the doors are not.

• External glazing cleaned across the block
• Panes reachable only from inside worked from within the flats, by arrangement
• Frames and sills cleaned with the glass
• Interior surfaces kept dry and anything moved returned to position
• Each pane checked in daylight before leaving the room

• Glass cleaned on faces that cannot be worked from outside at all
• No second visit needed for panes that were missed
• Flats left as they were found
• Eight hours on site with two technicians