Window cleaning in Sidi Ghanem, Marrakech

In a workshop converted into a showroom, the four- or five-metre shop window does not face an empty floor. Behind it and under the glazed mezzanine there are display sofas, rugs, light fittings, dressed tables, stock. None of that can be sheeted over completely, and most of it does not move.

Our preparation therefore begins at floor level, not with the glazing:

1. What can be moved within fifteen minutes, and by whom — your teams know the display plan, and we move nothing without your say-so.
2. What can be sheeted: upholstered furniture, rugs, bare timber surfaces, anything a single drop will mark. Clean sheets, laid by us, taken up by us.
3. What neither moves nor can be sheeted: a built-in counter, a masonry island, a powered installation. These zones govern the order of work: the glass above them is washed last, at reduced flow, or it is not washed that day.
4. The floor underneath, protected and squeegeed as we go: wet polished concrete is slippery, and a puddle left to dry leaves a ring on it.

Reading the floor this way is what separates a workable visit from one that costs the operator half a day of putting things back. It carries no price line of its own: it decides the slot. That is why, along with the areas, we ask for three to five photographs of the space — overall views, access, sensitive zones.

This is the technical reason why pure-water washing is the right method above a display area, and not merely a preference.

Conventional washing involves a detergent. On a large shop window washed by pole, or on the glazed balustrade of a mezzanine, that detergent comes back down: it foams, it runs along the profiles, it drips at the foot of the glazing, and it leaves a mark on whatever it reaches — an upholstery fabric, an oiled timber top, a polished concrete floor that the wrong product will dull for good.

Demineralised pure water contains neither surfactant nor mineral salt. What falls is clear water: it does not foam, it leaves no film, it dries without deposit. On the glass, that is what allows us not to wipe — and therefore not to climb — while still getting a streak-free surface as it air-dries.

Two rules we do not bend:

• We do not go up on roofs. A glazed shed, a rooflight or a roof glass canopy is not part of what we offer, whatever resistance is claimed for the glazing: an aged translucent sheet gives no warning before it fails.
• We do not wash above an area in use. The visit is set outside opening hours, on a slot confirmed with you.

How the pole and the pure-water production work is set out in detail on how the pole works from the ground.

A Sidi Ghanem building nearly always combines several types of glazing, and the estimate keeps them apart because they are not priced the same.

• The street-facing shop window: 25 MAD incl. VAT per m², both sides included. Measure width × height of each pane, then add them up. It is the most visible surface and the most often treated. See glazing that faces the street.
• The glass inside the showroom — partitions, glazed doors and lobbies, mezzanine balustrades: 15 MAD incl. VAT per m².
• The shop minimum: 1,000 MAD. A 24 m² shop window comes to 600 MAD of line items; a 400 MAD top-up brings the visit to 1,000 MAD. The inside glass helps fill that floor.
• The sign, a flat fascia no more than 1 metre high: 100 MAD incl. VAT per metre of length, 200 MAD minimum. It is added after the shop minimum and is never marked up. Raised letters, a light box or a taller panel: supplement to be confirmed on a photo.

A full example: 36 m² of shop windows and 20 m² of inside glass give 900 + 300 = 1,200 MAD. The windows rise to between 3 and 5 metres and are done by pole: +25% on the base price, that is 300 MAD. The 8-metre sign adds 800 MAD, with no mark-up. Total: 2,300 MAD incl. VAT, confirmed after photographs.

If you also have offices upstairs, they are priced separately, at the office rate: 15 MAD incl. VAT per m² of glass faces, inside face only, 500 MAD minimum — a floor with 30 m² of faces comes to 450 MAD, raised to 500 MAD. Glazed sheds, rooflights and roof canopies fall under none of these lines.

Our only means of access for high-level glass work is the telescopic water-fed pole, used from the ground. It carries two conditions, and both are safety conditions rather than commercial preferences.

Five metres. Up to 3 metres, reachable from the ground, is the base price. Between 3 and 5 metres the pole takes over at 25% on top of the base price, and feasibility is confirmed on your photographs: the supplement does not guarantee that it can be done. Above 5 metres, we do not take the work on.

Clear ground. The pole has to be set plumb, with room to stand back, on stable ground. In a furnished showroom or a loaded workshop that is not a given: it is often this condition, not the height, that stops the job.

When either one is not met, here is what happens, and it is said before confirmation:

• we do not take on the glazing concerned, rather than burying it in a lump sum that nobody will be able to honour;
• EPUREVA has neither a cherry picker nor ropes, hires neither, subcontracts no such access, and will never present itself as having any;
• the rest of the building — lower shop windows, inside glass, a sign within reach — is priced normally, line by line.

This is a refusal, and we own it. The most frequent complaint in this market is not price: it is the contractor who agrees to everything on the phone, then does not turn up, does not finish, or stops answering. We would rather lose a job than accept it with equipment we do not have.

The rest of what we do in the district is set out on the Sidi Ghanem page, and the overview of the service on everything we clean on glass. On a showroom coming out of building work, with paint, adhesive or cement on the glass, the supplement is +40% on the base price, and some marks may remain: see showroom glass after the fit-out.