CHAPEL HILL -- Between the black widows, loose dogs, extreme heat and seeming monotony of his day, Ron Balliu would have every right to be a man hardened by his job.

The only thing his 14 years as a professional window washer has hardened, however, is his resolve that people are good. He spends his days looking in on the lives of others, mostly those who are very privileged, and usually ends the day with nothing but nice things to say.

"I never met a stranger in my life," he said Tuesday morning as he unloaded the buckets, squeegees, towels and detergent needed to work on the 100-window home in Chapel Hill. He has the number of windows for all 314 clients pretty much memorized and is happy to tell you, with pride, all about them.

Perhaps one of the sources of his utter contentment is that he's his own boss. After nearly 20 years in sales, the 64-year-old chain smoker decided working for himself was what he needed, and window washing (along with gutter cleaning and roof blowing) was something he could make work. It helps too that much of Orange County has mineral-laden well water that leaves lots of residue.

"It's something I did while I was going to school and I knew how to do it and do it really, really well," he said.

Sparkle Window Cleaning came about as a News Year's resolution. By Jan. 8 he had purchased a business license, made some business cards and set to work knocking on doors. If someone wasn't home, he simply walked around the property and left the estimate on the card -- an estimate he never goes over, he says, and an estimate that is surely lower than anyone else's thanks to low overhead costs.

Don and Nancy Marple, whose home Balliu was cleaning Tuesday, were the first to respond from Stone Knoll development. Now he cleans multiple homes in that area thanks to word of mouth.

"He does very good work," said Don Marple, who spent the first few minutes of Balliu's arrival bantering about the steak and eggs breakfast he jokingly asks for when he shows up. "He is an engaging guy."

Clients are on first-name terms, and he uses words like "honey" and "sweetheart" within minutes of an introduction -- he's a shameless flirt. Wearing weathered jeans, battered sneakers and sleeveless shirts, this man who sports an accent he picked up on his way to North Carolina by way of Wales and Australia speaks of his clients like they are old friends.

"You really have an unusual relationship with him," Marple said. Balliu's ties to clients extend beyond the line that is usually drawn between a homeowner and those employed to maintain the property.

Megan Toben shares those sentiments. "Ron really cares about his clients and has a dedication that's hard to find," she said. Her house has 164 windows. "He's funny and good-hearted. Ron is entertaining, and he's the best window washer in town."

Balliu sees to it that he is not just another laborer. He brings in the newspaper and garbage cans at the end of the driveway, and alerts clients to other issues with their roof if he sees something faulty. If someone has many pets, he asks for the vet emergency number. Once he even walked in on a home invasion and was able to call the owners as well as the police.

He's learned some tricks as an entrepreneur. New shoes with a strong rubber sole are a must to safely scale ladders and roofs. A heavy bristled brush cleans the pollen and cobwebs from the casements, and horse-feed buckets last a lifetime compared to the regular industrial ones. Clean towels are essential (he pays his teenage daughter $5 a load to wash them) and surgical rags leave no lint behind.

Most important, however, is the swirl technique. If you wipe the soapy windows in straight lines, you leave lines of water. An angled cut of the squeegee leaves clean, clear glass with no streaks when sunlight cascades in. He finds ways to arc the 14-inch squeegee across the narrowest of windows.

The house Tuesday was not one of his more challenging -- it was only two stories, and the casements were pretty standard, unlike many of the historic homes he deals with throughout Orange County.

Still, by mid-morning he had shimmied up a 22-foot ladder and cleaned the skylights. He said if the ladder were longer, he would have slid down it like a firemen. In addition to his resolve, his muscles have hardened, too -- he's as fit and lithe as a man half his age. By afternoon, he had killed at least one black widow nest and drunk multiple cups of coffee -- another addiction.

As a salesman he was always a people person, and little has changed, but he prefers to work alone. He's had a hard time finding workers who last. They typically complain about the heat (the top of a roof can be 30 degrees hotter than the temperature at ground level) or the cold (dip your fingers in the cold wash water to warm them, he says) or they refuse to master the "swirl" technique.

"It's a swirl motion and away you go!" he said.