High-Rise Windows: What You Can Do And Where To Stop

Start with the safety line, because it is short

Do not lean out of a window, do not sit or kneel on a sill, do not stand on furniture pushed against a window, and do not clean anything while leaning over a balcony rail. Not with a harness, not on a low floor, not quickly.

This is the one part of apartment cleaning where the failure mode is not a stain. Everything below is written to give you a version of the job that does not involve any of that.

The inside is most of the problem anyway

People assume dirty windows mean the outside needs doing. In an apartment the interior face usually carries more: cooking film, dust, handprints, and in winter the residue that condensation leaves behind as it dries.

Clean the inside properly first and then look again. A surprising share of the time that is the whole job, and the outside turns out to be evenly weathered rather than dirty.

Check whether yours tilt

• Many modern apartment windows tilt or swing inward, which lets you reach the outer face from inside the room.
• Look for release catches at the top of the sash, or a handle position that rotates further than the one you normally use.
• Double-hung windows often tilt both sashes inward after releasing clips on the frame.
• If it does not move with light pressure, stop and ask the building rather than forcing it. A sash that comes out of its track is a repair and a hazard.
• Ask maintenance to show you once. Most will, and it takes two minutes.

If your windows do tilt, the whole problem disappears: both faces become an interior job and nothing about it is dangerous.

Doing the inside well

• Vacuum the track first with a crevice tool, then brush, then vacuum again, before any liquid.
• Wash the frame and sill before the glass, since dirt runs down.
• Two cloths on the glass: one damp, one dry, or a squeegee if the pane is large.
• Work top to bottom in one direction, and dry the edges where water collects.
• Do the weep holes at the bottom of the frame with a cotton bud, which stops water pooling on the sill.
• Blinds before glass, always, since dust falls.

What the building owns

Exterior glass above the ground floor is a specialist job with equipment and insurance to match, and most buildings have a schedule for it, often once or twice a year. Ask when it happens rather than assuming it does not.

Also the building's: seals that have failed and left permanent fogging between panes, windows painted shut, sashes that will not tilt when they should, broken restrictors, and anything that makes a window unsafe to open. Report those in writing, and note that a window painted shut is a safety item rather than an inconvenience.

Fogging between the panes is not dirt

A haze that sits between the two panes of a double-glazed unit means the seal has failed and moisture has entered the cavity. Nothing you clean on either face touches it, and no product reaches it.

It is a replacement of the glazing unit, which is the building's. Worth reporting, since a failed unit also stops insulating properly and shows up on the heating bill long before anyone notices the haze.

Interior glass, frames, sills, and tracks are inside the scope of deep apartment cleaning, and what a cleaning service will and will not take on at height is set out in the guide to what cleaners do not do.