How They Clean the World's Tallest Building

How They Clean the World's Tallest Building

Cleaning companies who think they have it bad... Think again. With almost 25000 exterior windows covering more than 1 million square feet of space, window cleaning at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai is an industry unto itself. Unveiled on January 5th as the world's tallest building, the Burj poses some significant difficulties for the after builders cleaning London teams hired to get the properlty ready for its thousands of would-be inhabitants, take care of window washing, spire polishing and the like.

Three horizontal tracks have been installed on the exterior of the building at equal intervals to facilitate window cleaning and maintenance of the building's external shell, made from glass, concrete and aluminum glazing. Each of these tracks is capable of holding a large bucket machine, held by cables, which can move both vertically and horizontally around the building to facilitate window cleaning.

Above the 109th floor, things get trickier. Traditional cradles, much smaller than the bucket machines used to clean the lower levels, are manned by one and two person teams operating with more traditional skyscraper window cleaning methods: think of standing in a basket more than half a kilometer off the ground with a squeegee.

The final twenty-seven tiers of the building, from floors 133 to 160 and above are subject to extreme winds and weather conditions and thus, are not typically cleaned by real people. Instead an Australian firm developed a series of automated, unmanned machines to clean these upper levels, all for the paltry sum of $8 million.

In cases of emergency or necessary maintenance to the building exterior of these upper floors, or of the building's glass spire (extending to a shocking 828m), specialist window cleaners and maintenance personnel will hang from cables in high winds and gulf temperatures to clean and inspect these upper floors and the top of the pinnacle.

As for cleaning at the Burj Khalifa being an industry unto itself, here's why: it is estimated to take a team of some 36 expert window cleaners upwards of three months just to clean the building exterior. This is to say nothing of the numerous cleaning companies to be employed in tidying up after the 25,000 anticipated residents and other inhabitants of the Burj when they begin arriving in February. So when you're doing the dusting, don't think it such a big job as things could certainly be worse: you could be dusting a glass spire nearly a kilometre in the air with only a rope 'round your waist. In terms of after builders cleaning London companies will begin working to similar scale when the new Shard opens on Southbank, stretching to a proposed 300+ metres by its 2012 unveiling.

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