Removing Hard Water Stains

The Problem:

One of the worst things a homeowner can do is spray their windows down with water from their garden hose (almost equal to that is to use Windex Outdoor Spray) which leaves all of the hard water minerals behind as it dries.

The first question (and a reasonable one) is what is "hard water". It's simply this: Water is naturally a solvent, meaning that it likes to dissolve stuff. It absorbs minerals from the ground and pipes, and so forth to help to fill its natural "hunger". So after a while it's not just water, even though it's a lot like water. It's full of silicates, metals, minerals, and so on. Once the water is full of minerals, it's ready to come out of your hose.

Once the hard water reaches glass, it covers the entire surface and begins the evaporation process. Since minerals don't evaporate, the water leaves all of the "junk" behind. These are left in the form of mineral deposits. The worst part is, your windows are made out of silicates. And silicates love bonding to other silicates. So after a while, these silicates begin a bonding process at a molecular level.

After constant or repeated exposure, it's not long before stains are actually part of the window!

If you have sunscreens shading your window the problem can be worse. The dirt that accumulates behind the screens combined with the extra time the water dwells (which can aid in the bonding process) can vastly increase the damage and speed of the hard water process.

The Solution:

The first order of business is to remove the "bulky" top layer so that you can get down to the layer where the bonding is taking place. Imagine that you are taking off the "crumbly stuff" first, even though it's at a microscopic level.

You will want to polish the surface to be cleaned with "Diatomaceous Earth" It can be found in bulk in the pool supply section of any store that carries such supplies. Apply it with a mild scrub pad (a green scotchbrite pad can scratch the glass) or if all else fails, use an old rag. make a paste with D.E. and water and you will see there is a constant friction on the glass. If the stains are mild enough, you may find that you are able to completely remove the stains with this method and then washing as normal. If you clean off the paste after vigorously scrubbing and see there are still stains, you will need to move on to the final step.

Acid Washing:

Sometimes you have to acid wash. There are a few great optioins, but my favorite is:

A product called "Safe Restore". This is an incredible product we used to even restore the Biosphere 2 in October 2008 which was just an enormous job. Anyway, you must follow the instructions on the product and be sure to wear proper personal protection equipment, but you must always remember to rinse this product VERY well. You simply apply this acid to the glass and agitate it with a mild scrub pad, then rinse well. If the glass remains cloudy, (but inevitably much better) you can know for sure that the glass has been changed by the deposits bonding to them and the only option is to find someone to actually professionally polish your glass, or just replace it!

Clean Screens = Happy Screens

Often, when a homeowner tries to clean their screens, the idea is usually quickly discarded after the screens begin looking worse than when the homeowner began. You know, irregular lines where the hose sprayed, patchy & splotchy marks that will not come off. Living in the Arizona desert like we do, there is often a huge demand for this service, and although we use a special (and expensive) chemical that cleans and seals the screen fabric from dry rotting and attracting dirt, there is a way for the typical homeowner to t least clean their own screens.

So the question is:

How do you take screens that looks like this:

And make them look new again, like this:

The answer is this:

First you get some liquid Tide with bleach alternative:

Then you put roughly 4 gallons of water in a 5 gallon bucket. Next, add one capful of the aforementioned tide and mix.

You will also need a stack of terry towels:

Terry towels can be purchased in bags of 25 very inexpensively at Costo, WalMart, or in the car cleaning section of any auto parts chain (ie, Checker Auto Parts, Auto Zone, etc). The towels will be getting quite dirty in most cases and if you opt to use towels that you use regularly in your home, be prepared to have dirt stains that may not come out.

Get a kitchen broom (probably not the one you would want to actually use in the kitchen again... I've never tested the ability to wash out the broom for regular use, although I'm pretty sure it would be okay...) and put the bristles down into the bucket.

Next, stack all of your screens in the drive way laying down flat. With some force, agitate the top screen with the broom, scrubbing it well, evenly spreading the soap and water mixture all over the screen. Once the screen is covered in soap and has been vigorously scrubbed, dipping the broom as many times as necessary to saturate it, flip the top screen over (and notice that the soap mixture is draining down onto the screens underneath to that you won't have to dip the broom as much for the subsequent screens). Now repeat the scrubbing technique for the other side of the screen.

Once the screen has been coated and scrubbed well, hold the screen in both hands and gently (yet firmly) slap one flat edge of the screen on the ground, allowing a good amount of the suds to fall to the ground, probably looking quite dirty... the idea here is that you lifted the dirt off of the screen with the soap during the agitation process and now the majority, if not all, of the dirt is now inside the suds. When you slap the screen on the ground, you are removing quite a bit of the dirt just by sending the heavy suds down to the ground.

There will still be a large amount of suds on the screen, so you will now lean the screen against the garage door and systematically "flick" the screen (you know, locker room style) with a clean, dry terry towel. You will be sending the remaining suds flying onto the garage door and the ground below the screen. Zig Zag down the screen making sure that you are getting the bulk of the soap off, but understand you are only trying to get about 90-95% of the soap off this way. You will spend forever trying to get all of the soap off, besides, you want to have a little left for the final polish.

You will notice that the towel will get saturated in the corner that is doing the "flicking" and will begin to lose it's effectiveness. Change "flicking corners" of the towel as necessary in order to maintain efficiency, and also to keep from leaving marks on the screen from heavily soiled corners.

After you have finished "flicking" you now take a reasonably dry towel (probably the one used for flicking if it's not too wet) and use it to wipe down the screens frame, which is probably quite wet still. After wiping the frame, you may need to get a new towel, but if it is stillreasonablydry, fold it in quarters, exposing the cleanest section of the towel as the wiping surface. Systematically wipe the entire screen for the final polish with a zig zag motion again, and notice that any water or suds that was on the screen will easily come right off in this stage. The screens will look perfect after this 90% of the time. If not, they were probably very dirty or not scrubbed well enough, but a second time through will do the trick.

A few important notes:

Screens are pretty delicate by nature. You need to be sure to not slap them on the ground too hard. Particularly if the corners are made out of plastic.

Also, when agitating the screen, be sure not to put too much pressure on the screen that results in pressure that wants to pull the screen out of the frame. This will cause the screens to look "saggy". The reason I recommended laying them flat on the driveway is because that allows you to put a good amount of pressure on the screen as you scrub, without pushing the screen out of the frame. As the stack gets taller, you may notice that there is enough airspace to cause it to be possible to get the undesired effect of pulling the screen away from the frame. If that's the case, make sure to decrease the size of the stack by breaking it into 2 or 3 stacks.

It should also be noted that this method will work only on "Bug" screens. If you have "Sun Screens" or "Solar Screens" which usually cover the entire window and are made of much heavier screen material to shade the building's interior like this:

You will need to do the same thing as far as cleaner and brooms go, but instead of "slapping" and "flicking" the screens, you will need to use a garden hose with a trigger that allows a "flat" or "fan" spray and rinse it off in straight line passes and allow them to dry well before re-installing them. You may need to repeat the process numerous times for perfect results (Sun Screens usually hold a lot of dirt and cling quite vigorously to it!), but it is possible.

Also, this method is for cleaning, and does not include the professional sealing process, but you will find that if you clean your screens every 6 months, you can achieve a similar result.

Even though I'm sure that I don't need to point it out, but I will anyway...

A screen that looks like this:

Which is rotting from the sun, getting saggy, and is quiteliableto tear, should not be cleaned as it will only do more damage, and certainly will not improve it's look or add any life. Kind of like a torn up or damaged shirt... throwing it in the washing machine is not going to bring it back to new.

I think that's it. Contact me or leave a comment if you have any questions... I know this was long!

Newspapers are for Reading

Newspapers are actually great for a lot of things, but for some reason there is an old wives tale that says that for best results you should wipe your glass down with newspaper. First off, you will never see a professional window cleaner using newsprint. Although this is probably a good clue that newspaper is not a proper window cleaning tool, let me tell you why this is bad advice.

Messy:

When newsprint gets wet, it turns soupy and starts tearing apart. That's not to mention that the ink begins to come off on anything it touches (think dropping the wet stuff on your carpet).

Inefficient:

In order for it to even look like newspaper is working at all, you have to make sure you are always keeping dry stuff on the glass. That means you are constantly reaching for a few dry sheets, and throwing down the afore mentioned "messy stuff" on the ground to be picked up later.

And worst of all-- It doesn't work:

When you clean your windows by smearing solution and dirt around, under very few circumstances will you be successful in actually removing much of anything off of the glass. When we clean windows that have been washed by newspaper and *gasp* Windex, we find that there is naturally an "ink haze" that has attracted dust and dirt within the first few days, creating a consistent dirty film. When we wash it properly, inevitibly, a thick, dark residue runs off, and our scrubbers turn black in no time.

What to try:

A squeegee and a T-bar is always best (you'll notice all professional window cleaners have them), but it can be a bit tricky to master. Try watching this video and see if it helps. Otherwise stay tuned or look around here for other techniques.

Woes of the Hose

It never ceases to amaze me. I get to a new customer's home: large, ornate, beautiful to say the least. And then as I get close, I see it. Hard water. You see, the irony of ironies is that this home owner was doing their best to clean up after all of the spiders had left their mark, after the kids put their paws all over the glass; then their first instinct kicks in... they reach for their garden hose to wash away all of the grossness.

At least it looks like it does.

But it left something much worse. Since we live in the desert of Phoenix, AZ we are consigned to water that comes out of the spout at 400 parts per million (ppm).

If you're lucky.

Many times we find that residences have even harder water than that. Upwards of 900 ppm in some neighborhoods. If that doesn't mean anything to you, don't worry. Here is what that means in proper English:

"Arizona hard water has tons of minerals dissolved into it. When the water evaporates, it leaves behind the minerals which love to bond onto the glass. If you make a habit of spraying down your house with your hose it will eventually do this:

And it's really hard to get off. Especially if it builds up for a long time and has many layers."

So, is getting your windows sprayed down by the hose all bad? No, not necessarily. In fact every time we powerwash a building, we get all of the windows wet. The trick is to get the hard water off as soon as possible. This can be done with a squeegee or towels, just beware of evaporation.

You may have noticed that rain water and a specialty tool used to clean your windows called a water-fed pole doesn't leave spots or hard water. That is true. In those cases, only dirt mixed with that water will make spots. This is because both of those water sources are 0 ppm, otherwise known as "De-Ionized Water", "Pure Water", or "Distilled Water". Isn't there always an exception?

If you have any questions, we're always happy to help.

What's the Solution?

You may be interested to hear that I am NOT a soap snob.

That's not to say that I don't use designer soaps, because I do. I even blend a few things to make my favorite solution. But that's not what this blog is about.  I have to assume that you readers want to get this done as a homeowner without having to order all sorts of crazy supplies and paying big bucks, so that said...

You could use any of the following and get pretty good success (using a squeegee):

Dishsoap (Palmolive or Dawn)

Palmolive is the dishsoap that I recommend over all others because it has good cleaning power on fingerprints, dog and cat spit, and who knows whatever else gets all over glass while still being a mild detergent.  You will find that anything other than the "original" version will streak and be difficult to squeegee without chatter.  Mix it highly diluted, perhaps one ounce to every 2 gallons.  It foams up a lot which is not ideal for window cleaning, but it looks cool when you spread it on the glass with a T-bar.  Just know that more is not always better when it comes to soap because your squeegee will have a tough time effectively shaving all of it off if it's too heavy. This results in streaks and leaving behind a fairly sticky film when it dries that will attract dirt and dust...

Ettore Squeegee Off ($4.95 at Lowes)

Squeegee Off is a specific product for window cleaning, and thus has a pretty good track record.  I like it mixed a little stronger than it suggests, but on hot windows (with direct sun) it will be very difficult to squeegee it off before it vaporizes.  If it does, it leaves behind a white haze that will only come off properly by re-washing the glass. But when done right... Oh the shine!

Unger Easy Glide ($5.96 at Home Depot)

This works quite similarly to the Squeegee Off, but the smell is quite pleasant.  Again, the label has the proper dilutions on it.

If you have bought the squeegee and t-bar and you think you can handle it, get all of the tips you can handle here.

Rag Method:

If not- there is a more tedious rag method that we use and will work in a pinch.  It is even a little faster in the case that you are washing little french panes (sometimes called cut-ups).

So here's what you need:

Head on down to your neighborhood drug store and buy a gallon of DISTILLED water. Must be distilled. It will cost you about a dollar.  You will then need to fill a squirt bottle halfway with this.

Then go down to a paint store (or the paint section of a hardware store) get out your wallet and fork over about $15 for a gallon... It's gonna hurt a little. Then fill the squirt bottle the other half of the way with this.

So there you have it... a 50/50 solution of Distilled Water and Denatured Alcohol.  You will spray this solution directly on the glass and use a good quality microfiber towel to lift the dirt and scrub the glass, then immediately buff the glass with a dry version of the same towel to get a polished shine.

There you go... the solution to make your windows shine!