Water fed pole vs traditional window cleaning: which is actually better?

Traditional: bucket, applicator, squeegee

Soapy water, an applicator to wet and scrub, a squeegee to pull it off, and usually a ladder for anything above the ground floor.

What it is good at

• Close control and precision, so it is still the right tool for detailed work.
• An instantly dry, finished window you can judge on the spot.
• Interior glass, where you cannot exactly hose the room down.
• Really neglected glass that needs physical scrubbing before anything else will touch it.

Where it falls down

• Ladders. Leaning them on gutters and frames is how gutters get bent and how people get hurt.
• Slower on a modern three bed with a lot of glass upstairs.
• The bucket gets reused, window to window and often house to house.
• It leaves a thin film of detergent behind.

That last one is the one nobody mentions on the day. The film is invisible at first and the windows genuinely look great. Over the following fortnight it collects dust more readily than bare glass, and the first heavy rain reacts with what is left and leaves the spotting and streaking people blame on the rain.

Water fed pole: pure water from the ground

A light telescopic pole, a soft brush head, and purified water pumped up through it. The brush scrubs glass, frames, sills and trickle vents while the water rinses. Because the water has had its minerals removed it dries without leaving anything behind. There is a fuller explanation in what pure water cleaning actually is.

What it is good at

• Safety. Almost everything is done standing on your path.
• Speed on modern houses, and reach up to three or four storeys.
• Frames, sills and vents cleaned in the same pass as the glass.
• Fresh pure water on every window, never a reused bucket.
• No detergent film, so the glass stays cleaner for longer and rain does not spot it.
• No chemicals going onto your plants or into the drain.

Where it falls down

• Serious equipment cost for the cleaner, which is part of why the cheapest quotes tend to be the old method.
• You do not see the finished result until the glass has dried.
• No use indoors.
• A really heavily soiled first clean can need a second pass to get it back to baseline.

So which one wins

For everyday exterior work on a house, the pole wins on the things that matter: it is safer, it does the frames properly, and the clean lasts longer because there is nothing left on the glass for dirt to cling to.

Traditional still wins indoors, on fine detail, and on ground floor jobs where you want water use tightly controlled. The right answer is usually knowing which to reach for, not being loyal to one.

How to tell which one you are being quoted for

Ask two questions. Do you work off ladders or from the ground? and do you use pure water? Neither answer is wrong, but they tell you what you are buying, and they explain a lot about why two quotes for the same house can be so far apart.

Common questions about the two methods

Does the pole method really clean as well as a squeegee?

On exterior glass, yes, and it cleans the frames and sills at the same time, which a squeegee does not. The difference people notice is that it stays clean longer, because no detergent film is left behind for dust to stick to.

Why do my windows look wet when the cleaner leaves?

That is normal with pure water. The finish appears as it dries, because there is nothing dissolved in the water to leave a mark. Have a look an hour later.

Do you still use ladders at all?

Only where there is genuinely no alternative, and never resting on gutters or frames. The whole point of the pole is keeping weight off your house and off a ladder.

Is traditional cleaning cheaper?

Often, because the kit costs a fraction as much. What you are trading is the ladder risk, the frames, and how long the clean lasts.