Adderley Street, previously known as Heerengracht Street, is one of Cape Town’s most historic roadways. Striking a path right through the heart of the Mother City’s central business and commercial district, the street is lined with some of Cape Town’s oldest buildings, many of which are heritage in character and still bear the dates of their build, several centuries ago. Others are newer, but only relatively speaking, and are in sore need of a refurbishment.
It was for this precise reason that the team at Ascend Rope Access was called out to one particular building on Adderley Street – an 11-story high-rise structure – that, for 30 to 40 years, has seen little more than rainfall and periodic window washing as a means of exterior cleaning. Our task was to perform a complete exterior refurbishment on the building using remote rope access techniques – also known as industrial abseiling – to reach every square inch of the high-rise’s façade. In other words: perform a large-scale makeover.
Total exterior refurbishment: services rendered
We began with a high-pressure wash of the building’s façade to remove the decades’ worth of grime, dirt, and organic matter that had accumulated there. We then mechanically prepped the window frames and painted them. Finally, we painted the entire building in their chosen color scheme of green, red, and yellow. The job took a total of three months and is currently in the concluding stages. With all the walls and windows washed and painted, we successfully concluded a complete exterior refurbishment and the building now looks absolutely beautiful and ready to take on the next 30 to 40 years of weather, wear, and tear.
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Special challenges
Our 11-story Adderley Street building job was fairly straightforward; however, the Ascend Rope Access team did face one minor challenge. To perform any external cleaning job with a high-pressure wash, we require a source of water, which the building was unable to supply us with. And so we had to bring in our own JoJo water tank and lift it to the third-floor balcony so that our rope access technicians could link up to a source of water to perform the cleaning job. Using suspended platforms we were easily able to overcome this challenge, which just goes to show that no matter the obstacle, we can innovate a solution around it.
Client review
The client requested that one side of the building be completed by the end of February 2019 and so we brought in eight of our technicians to successfully meet the deadline with our usual high standard of work. The client is extremely happy with the outcome.
