Window cleaning 2.0?
Jay Hanna wants to clean your building. Not with a squeegee and scaffolding, but with a drone.
“We’ve put our entire life savings into this business. We’ve put everything we got into this,” he said.
The 37-year-old Aurora native launched Drone Wash, which — as the name suggests — uses drones to wash windows and places on buildings that humans can’t reach. He said he believes that his company is the first such one in Colorado.
Hanna demonstrated the technology on Monday at Flyteco Brewing, which is located in the old Stapleton International Airport air traffic control tower. Its oddly shaped windows up high demonstrate why drone cleaning is a necessity for some buildings, Hanna said.
“It’s the right solution at the right time. It’s not experiential, it’s proven,” he said.
The technology, which Hanna said has been around for five years, is straightforward. A drone is outfitted with a hose and a long nozzle on its nose. The hose runs from the drone’s underbelly to the ground and is connected to a trailer where the cleaning solutions and water is stored. He learned the technology from a Florida drone company, testing the product on buildings in the Sunshine State.
First, the firm does a walkthrough and identifies potential hazards, measures the surface area of the property and takes high-resolution images of the building. After the space is prepped for a cleaning, the drones start washing the building, first with a cleaning solution and then with water to rinse it away. His firm also offers some indoor cleaning services as well, done by hand.
“The cleaning solution does the dirty work. Then we come back with deionized water, which is filtered down to nearly zero parts per million, which is basically about the cleanest water you can get,” Hanna said.
After that’s complete, the building is left to air dry.
The entire setup costs about $100,000, as special equipment and a trailer are needed. The company consists of five people. The business is owned by Hanna and his wife, Nicole, along with friend Ray Jeans. Two drone pilots are on staff.
Hanna guarantees his price will be at least 10% lower than that of a traditional cleaning company.
“Our sweet spot is buildings between three and 20 stories, Hanna said. “We’re not really looking to do the skyscrapers downtown.”
The firm plans to make “noise” in Colorado, with hopes to expand into the Midwest. There are no outside investors into the company, but Hanna is open to offers.
“Our vision is to have multiple trucks, multiple pilots,” he said.
But the company must first show to consumers that its concept is viable — something it attempted to do at Flyteco. It’s also where the company began.
After being “bored to death” working in the marketing industry, Hanna launched his own drone company, Jeeves Drones, which specializes in photography, imaging and mapping. He was enjoying a birthday dinner with his wife at Flyteco about eight months ago when he joked about using drones to clean the tower.
That off-handed remark proved to be prescient.
Hanna texted his friend, Tom Dolan, another drone entrepreneur, about the idea. Dolan responded with a selfie of him with Flyteco Tower co-owner and founder Eric Serani, and put the two in touch.
Serani told Businessden that traditional window cleaners have quoted him $12,000 for a single project — well beyond what he can afford. When Hanna called, he was also entertaining an offer from an Arizona-based drone company.
Hanna said he could do the job for less and gave Serani a price on the phone. That call would set him down the path that would lead to Drone Wash’s launch this month.
“I don’t believe in coincidences … nothing happens by accident,” Hanna said of the story.
Due to the tower’s design, the windows are difficult to reach. On the first three floors where the business operates, horizontal slats blocking the windows make it tough for humans to angle in and get them clean. The stairwell and elevator shaft leading to the top of the tower is also covered in windows.
And at the top of the building, tight catwalks and angled windows make it dangerous and
difficult to clean. The drone solves all of these problems, Serani said.
“It’s a pretty simple, sleek, unobtrusive method to get everything clean,” he said.
The drone’s convenience is also its weakness, said Matt Garcia, owner of the Erie-based MG Cleaning Systems, a conventional window cleaning company.
“The biggest difference is with a drone you can’t do agitation. There’s nobody scrubbing … They won’t be able to match the same quality as a human,” Garcia said.
Garcia, 33, started his company about a decade ago and does work along the Front Range, cleaning the windows of well-known Colorado institutions such as the Buckley Space Force Base and the University of Colorado in Boulder. He mostly does residential work, but has done commercial projects of all types, all the way up to the big high-rise buildings.
Garcia has investigated drone technology and found it useful for “maintenance cleaning” or for properties that cannot afford traditional cleaning services. But the quality of hand-done work will always be higher, he said. That’s because his employees use long brushes with boar’s hair to scrub windows clean. The equipment for commercial cleaning costs about $40,000.
“I like the (drone) technology but I think we’re a little bit early on it,” he said.
Hanna doesn’t see his business as competing, but rather as a complementary service.
“We are not their enemy,” Hanna said of traditional window cleaning services.
Drone Wash is the “touchless car wash” while the conventional cleaners are more along the lines of “car detailing,” Hanna said. The former is cheaper and more convenient, while the latter is more thorough and extensive.
“We are not a replacement (for traditional) cleaners. It’s an additional service that has never been done before,” he said.