Window cleaner uses unique contraption to get the job done

Ray England is 70 years old and lives in Albion. He cleans windows for a living and has a handful of clients in Downtown Batavia.

He was on Main Street this afternoon in his top hat and green scarf taking care of some shop windows when I met him.

He uses a contraption that he built himself. It's quite ingenious. One metal poll with a cleaning wand at the end. A tube is connected to the wand and an air-pressure garden sprayer on a pull cart. England can spray water up the tube and onto the window.

One advantage of the system, he said, is that his hands never get wet, so he can easily clean windows in winter.

The squeegee he uses to wipe the water off the windows has a swivel head so he can handle any shape, including rounded edges, of a window.

The idea for the design came to him after he was seriously hurt in an auto accident.

“My arm was broken in three places and split at the wrist," England said. "For two years I couldn’t use this arm. It was dead meat. That’s when the great Lord above, the great engineer, He designed the universe, showed me this idea. I put it together and I’ve been using it ever since."

England claims to have a patent on the design and would like to find a U.S. manufacturer to build it and sell it so Americans could be put to work, but he claims a German company stole his idea and is building the same system out of cheap plastic.

"Mine is made with steal and copper and I sell it for $600," England said. "They sell theirs for $1,700 and if you drop it, it breaks."