The use of a tap to stop the flow of precious pure water
just when you want it to has been a long and tortuous road.
When I first started with water fed pole system there really
wasn’t much on the market or many DIY idea’s about to solve the problem of
turning off the water in a convenient way. I had a Freedom trolley system to
begin with which was very well made but there was no sign of a tap of any kind.
I would try to keep the trolley close to me and when I had finished a run of
windows, I would rush over to it and just switch it off.
This is fine until you can’t quite get your trolley past
that wheelie bin or up them steps lad! So you find yourself rushing about
trying to beat the flow and getting in all sorts of bother. And just then the
customer comes out and wants to pay you. Then the water runs out and you have
to change the barrel – again. I say barrel because it’s typically in this
situation that you want to save water because you have a very limited supply.
If you are using a van mounted system with a large tank, then you may not need
to worry as much about saving water and a full tank might just last you all
day. But what about the water bill? If you are using a DI (deionising tank) to
purify your water, then the amount of resin you will use might make your system
uneconomical. Not only this, it is more convenient and faster if you
don’t have to top up those barrels or big tanks as often.
This is when I got to thinking about putting a tap into the
pole hose somewhere. Great but it dragged on the ground and got caught on
everything. Then there was the great idea of having the tap on your belt. It
sort of worked but if you had any leaks at all, you had a wet leg all the time.
Not only this, it tended to be like some sort of alien umbilical cord which
would forever marry you to your prize pole so you could never leave it. “Excuse
me, can I pay you?” “Er...... no”
Some people would just kink the pipe and this worked quite
well but the results would depend largely on what type of hose you were using
as to whether or not the water would completely shut off and the pump would cut
out as it should when it senses that the flow has been restricted. Then again,
you would be stood there with that kinked hose in your mitt with nowhere to go
again. Some would bolt a small eyelet onto their pole and this would be a place
where it could be wedged until required once more. This would seem a good idea
but it is still just that little bit awkward and unreliable.
There was always the high tech method. This seemed promising
apart from the price. It was and still is a device that transmits a message to
your pump/flow controller, you can turn off now. It’s like a remote central
locking key fob. It is very good but has some downsides. The first is that you
have to fumble for the thing in the first place. The batteries run out and
worst of all its “line of sight” meaning that sometimes the signal that you are
trying to transmit to tell the system to stop the water won’t get there so you
run round the corner and aim it at your van and hey........
Alright the new versions are much better and there are some
that can use the aerials of people’s houses to “bounce” the signal off. I’m not
well up on this but I’m sure it’s getting there. This system might just be more
appropriate for when you are doing commercial work rather than domestic houses.
Not only this but it will cost more than that second hand back pack you are
using....
The next thing I decided to do was to use the tap I got with
the leather holster and just tape it to the pole. Now we were getting
somewhere. It worked really well and it was close to hand all the time. It was
almost instant too and all it took was a quick flick of my hand or thumb and it
was done. The water was no more.
The only downside to this was that the tap was a bit heavy
so it made the pole heavier but not noticeably so. The other downside was that
you needed to route the pole hose internally and of course this meant that you
had a big trailing loop to contend with but once you got used to it, it was
pretty good. All I used for this was tape to secure the tap onto the pole in
the best place near the bottom.
Then Unger came out with a tap that you could just trap the
hose and it would shut off the water. At first glance this seemed to be the
ultimate answer. It was light, it was cheap and it was effective....but there
was a small problem. This came in the form of when lowering the pole, unless
you wanted a massive trailing loop in front
of the tap instead of behind it, you had to literally pull the pole hose which had to be external, through the tap again
to get everything tidy before starting over again.
Then we had the Aqua-dapter invented by window cleaner
Steven Jones. This was truly a revelation and indeed it worked well. This works
on a mechanical principle of pulling your internal hose which activates a small
lever which in turn switches on/off the water - genius.
There are not many drawbacks to this system except that it
adds a little weight to the top of the pole and if the pole is fully extended
and heavy at the time, you do need to let go of the pole with one hand and pull
downwards to actuate the mechanism although you could just stand on the hose
and pull it that way. I never tried it myself. Normally this is not a problem
and these taps are used extensively by many window cleaners throughout the
world. I am not sure if this tap can be used with the hose externally yet so if
you want to split the pole, then you can’t.
After this came the magical simplicity of the Aquatap
invented by Scotsman Peter Fogwill.
This is light and again resides at the top of your pole. It
works by twisting your pole. Twist one way and it comes on, twist it back the
other way and it stops. Magic! The beauty of this is that you can have your
pole hose internally or externally and it will still work regardless. Now that
I like. The downside to this type of tap is that if you have a brush that
swivels, then it becomes very hard to apply the twisting leverage required to
actuate the tap but to be fair, not everyone is sold on swivel brushes.
Personally, I would probably die without one but that’s another story.
Another downside is that because of the natural ergonomics
involved in actually cleaning a window with a pole and brush, some inadvertent
actuation of the unit will take place either switching on the water when not
required or the opposite. I didn’t find this too much of a problem and a little
change of technique generally sorted this out.
I have other idea’s which are at present being evaluated and
tested but these are very basic idea’s and are already well tried principles
that have been used before and not the perfect solution. In fact I don’t think
there is a perfect solution but I would be very happy to be proved wrong.
Everyone will have their favorite method of cutting off the
water supply and many will be satisfied with what they have at the moment
because they have not tried anything else or that they have become expert at
doing what they do. Some will wonder what all the fuss is about as their
squeegee glitters in the sunlight.
