OSHA’s standards for workplaces that use rope-descent systems impose an even stricter set of regulations: Every employee who uses the RDS must be specifically trained, and every employee must be equipped with a personal “fall arrest system” or lifeline that meets a specific set of criteria. The New York Department of Labor requires every window-cleaning scaffold to be inspected before any daily use to ensure ropes are not worn or deteriorated in ways that would affect their strength that safety belts have been stored in dry places and kept away from potential damage and that all fiber materials in use are stored in dry places out of contact with corrosive substances.
Window washing scaffolding design full#
You can discuss anything, you can talk to yourself, no one’s gonna yell at you.”īefore any team is cleared to begin its duties for each day, the equipment is subject to a full hour’s worth of safety checks, as that same New Yorker story explained. (On occasion, though, you might see a bosun chair, or boatswain’s chair, in use it’s designed to carry just one person and looks sort of like a stationary bike, but suspended from a rooftop.)Īs one window washer explained to The New Yorker in 2013, the side of a skyscraper makes a surprisingly peaceful workplace: Up there, away from the noisy cars and people at street level, “It’s just you and your partner. There are a variety of rigging systems that enable window washers to do their jobs, but the apparatus most commonly seen climbing the sides of New York’s skyscrapers is the scaffold (a long, rectangular platform that sits flush against the outside of the building) hanging down from a boom or a system of davits on the building’s roof. Window-washing is, statistically and practically speaking, much safer now than it was at the dawn of the age of skyscrapers, thanks to more sophisticated technology and practices. How often does the unthinkable … actually happen? And how is it prevented? On a day with even a slight breeze, it’s hard not to imagine a worst-case scenario. 1 source of secondhand anxiety for New Yorkers, it’s the unmistakable sight of skyscraper window washers, out in the open air, doing their jobs while suspended hundreds of feet above ground by a system of cables. “Shockingly analog,” one coworker muttered as the window cleaners disappeared from view. As they finished up, one pressed a switch, and with a terrifying lurch and a collective involuntary noise from us, the peanut gallery, the stage descended down to the next floor. Twenty-eight floors up in the new One World Trade Center, just a matter of months after the magazine I worked for had moved in, I stood transfixed alongside a few colleagues as a pair of window washers on a hanging platform sprayed and soaped our floor-to-ceiling window. But should they? Every month, writer Ashley Fetters will be exploring-and debunking-these New York-specific fears, letting you know what you should actually worry about, and what anxieties you can simply let slip away. Have an idea for a custom aluminum structure to make your operation more safe and efficient? We have everything to build anything.New York City is full of peculiar phenomena-rickety fire escapes 100-year-old subway tunnels air conditioners propped perilously into window frames-that can strike fear into the heart of even the toughest city denizen. This was a fairly simple, new design for an important process in Clear Horizon's operation that will now be used worldwide.
JHF was able to help Clear Horizon design the most critical piece of their application- the structural component that allows them to mount/operate their automated skyscraper brush/washing system. The kit was built using quality products from Festo, TSLOTS, and Freelin Wade. Our design engineers and sales teams collaborated with the customer to research, design, and build a completely anodized aluminum (with all-aluminum/stainless bracketry) bolt-on kit that provides a lightweight and completely weatherproof design. The add-on required durability requirements to withstand a variety of environments and heights- including skyscraper building structures. Louis, was in need of a lightweight structural add-on to their existing window-washing scaffolding structure. Safe Skyscraper Window Washing Made Possible by JHF Custom Aluminum SolutionĬlear Horizon, a unique customer of John Henry Foster- St.
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