Roofs on buildings tend to be largely ignored. When you buy a property your surveyor goes up there. When tiles come lose the roofer goes up there, but most roofs can be left unseen for years on end. We know they’re there, but from the ground how much of your roof can you really see? If you own a house then the answer is probably ‘most of it’, but if you have a flat roof or live in a high-rise then it’s about as visible to you as the dark side of the moon. However, up there, up on the roof, things could be happening that you should know about, and that’s where our story begins.
As a high-rise window cleaning firm, we see things from an altogether different perspective and this includes what’s happening up on your roof. We’ve already written recently about the rooftop jungle that had formed when seeds wafted their way up high and took root, risking the integrity of the roof itself by growing virtually into trees. We pulled them up and cleared them away for our clients, who had no idea they were there (as we were the only ones with the insurance to work at such height). But we have seen so much more – broken pipework hanging off of walls they had once been attached to. Cracked and leaking flashing and gutters. All of which we’ve informed clients about, so they could be fixed before they got any worse.
Then there is the item most commonly found in distress: the satellite dish. We’ve seen so many blown over in our time, but the satellite dish to beat all others was on a job we did for a client in Mayfair.
We were instructed to clean the windows of a duplex penthouse on the 5th and 6th floors of a characterful old residential block. A massive 3m wide satellite dish had been placed on the rooftop – a little like the ones you had in the 1980s when people with altogether too much money wanted to get more channels (before Sky and Virgin arrived) and the fashion was for bigger and bigger dishes.
This dish had been anchored with concrete blocks around each leg, but this had not been enough, some had come loose and the whole dish was on its side. We’ve had some stormy nights over the last few years that have taken down power lines and trees, so it’s not at all surprising that this satellite dish had toppled over. But as luck would have it the structure had fallen inwards. If it had fallen the other way it wouldn’t have just been inconvenient for the owner, it could well have ended in a lawsuit because the other direction was the roof edge. A lucky escape.
If you would like a quote for window cleaning for your high-rise residential or commercial building from a firm so dedicated that we even look out for maintenance and safety issues for our clients while we’re up there, call us today on 020 3954 2900.
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