Wednesday 30 June 2010

Drunk Window Cleaner Holds Up Bank - Takes Hostages, Not Clients



Bank hostage drama - Window Cleaner 'held up cashiers with toy gun and fake bomb and took 15 hostages': The man accused of taking 15 people hostage in a three-hour bank siege held them up with a toy gun and a fake bomb, a court heard today. Matthew Nutley, 36, is alleged to have stormed into the bank brandishing a children's plastic Nerf gun which fires harmless sponge balls and foam darts. The alleged raider, who was also said to be carrying a six inch kitchen knife, fooled terrified staff into handing over cash, claiming that a fake explosive device he had made with rubbish was a real bomb, it was claimed.



Today the suspect appeared in court for the first time to face eight charges of false imprisonment, possession of an imitation firearm and an offensive weapon, blackmail, making a bomb hoax and threats to kill. Prosecutors told Staines Magistrates Court that the man had threatened to shoot bank manager Jonathan Hall and customer Daniel Beedell with the toy gun, which had been spray painted black. He also told police and bank staff that he had planted a bomb in Barclays Bank in Ashford, near Heathrow, magistrates heard.



Yesterday the accused shuffled into court flanked by two prison guards. Nutley, who was wearing a hooded Harlequins Rugby Club sweater, spoke only to confirm his name and address, telling magistrates that he could not hear proceedings because he was deaf in one ear. He showed no emotion as the eight charges relating to the dramatic siege were read to him.

Swarms of armed officers, police helicopters, fire engines and ambulances were called to the bank at 4pm on Monday following reports that a man had entered the building with a gun. The Royal Logistics Bomb Disposal team was also scrambled and surrounding buildings were evacuated amid fears that he had planted a bomb. For hours trained hostage negotiators were locked in talks with the armed raider who appeared to be drunk. Hostages have told how the robber tried to ply them with vodka and forced them to don boiler suits in a bid to confuse police.

After three hours, the masked raider wearing a boiler suit and welding goggles, freed the hostages and surrendered to armed police. None of the hostages were injured in the siege, which has been compared to Spike Lee's hit crime thriller, Inside Man. In the film Dalton Russell, played by British actor Clive Owen leads a gang into a New York bank in painters overalls. They force their hostages to don identical overalls and hide out amongst them when police storm the building to evade capture.



Today it emerged that Nutley worked as a volunteer fundraiser for the charity to help wounded members of the armed forces, Help the Heroes. Neighbours said the window cleaner claimed to have raised hundreds of pounds for the charity and was often seen around his home in Ashford driving a van with the words 'Help for Heroes' on the side. Yesterday his mother Ann refused to comment at her home in Ashford. Nutley was remanded into custody. He will face trial at Guildford Crown Court on September 1 this year.



With the bank in Ashford, Middlesex, sealed, the gunman produced more boiler suits and told the hostages to put them on. He handed out cans of paint and told everyone to spray the windows so nobody could see inside. Their hands were then bound with cable ties. Within minutes the building was surrounded by armed cops. Josh Williams, 20, said: "We heard police cars screeching down the road. The cops jumped out with their guns and got behind their cars." A helicopter circled as a negotiator was brought in. Ten hostages were released. But it was not until 7pm that the gunman emerged - calmly smoking a cigarette. He was cuffed and bundled into a police van. Police said nobody was hurt.

Tuesday 29 June 2010

More Scaffold Rescues & Other Window Cleaning News



Firefighters Rescue Window Washers Trapped 25 Stories Above the Street: MANHATTAN — Firefighters had to rescue a pair of window washers trapped 25 stories up the side of a Fifth Avenue building on Monday morning. The unidentified workers had been cleaning the side of 575 Fifth Ave. at East 47th Street when their electrical lift's motor burnt out around 10:50 a.m., an FDNY spokesman said. FDNY rescue crews cut through a window to rescue them shortly before 11:30, fire officials said. “They had to cut the glass of a window to get him out. It was not a good situation,” said Louis Williams, 41, who works as the doorman in the building where the washers were trapped. Police rerouted onlookers to adjoining blocks, and fire trucks monitored the area to make sure that the hanging scaffolding was not a danger to civilians. Williams said the washers worked for Quality Building Services Corporation. The company did not return several calls for comment. Click pictures to enlarge.


Window Workers Rescued From Downtown Skyscraper: Atlanta firefighters rescued a pair of window installers trapped on the side of the Bank of America building in downtown Atlanta on Monday afternoon. News Chopper 2 showed the men clinging to the side of the building on the 600 block of Peachtree Street just before 1 p.m. Firefighters gathered on an upper floor of the building, while one firefighter rappelled down the side of the building with equipment. Just before 2:15 p.m., the first window installer began to be pulled up from the platform while the firefighter and other worker looked on. The man could be seen waving at the people inside the building as he was being lifted up. The second installer and the firefighter were lifted together to the top of the building just after the first man was rescued. The men had been installing a window when the engine on their platform failed to operate, according Channel 2's Lori Geary, who was at the scene. The men said they were unable to crawl back inside the building. Officials said the platform the workers were using was stuck around the 47th floor. They were not injured, according to early reports. Click pictures to enlarge.


A window cleaner in Islamabad who falls from the 18th floor due to the rope giving way on a faulty machine is not contractually entitled to medical treatment from his employer, nor can he rely on the state to cover his medical expenses. Watching his story on “Live With Talat”, I learn that the Saudi-Pak Investment Company, whose windows were being cleaned, does pay for his medical treatment. But this is mentioned as a goodwill gesture by his benefactors, not as something that he has earned the right for, or as his entitlement. In another system, the window cleaner would have been approached by a personal injury lawyer who would have taken his case to a court that would have awarded large sums of punitive damages in a precedent-setting tort case. This would have been his due and he would have retired without having to worry about money, but in Pakistan our ways are different. After two years of recuperation, he is up cleaning windows on the 18th floor once more. Hard work gives our people bare subsistence, while cronyism or occupation of high office puts one in a position to extract maximum favours.

WINDOW WASHING: A woman salvaged her belongings in Fuzhou, Jiangxi province, China, Sunday. Floodwaters began receding in southern China as workers finished repairing a dike breach. However, a landslide caused by heavy rains trapped at least 107 people Monday in the southwest. (Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

Interview: Noel Faulkner - “I’ve had a great life and I’ve never had to take any crap from anybody.” Faulkner left the UK for the States where he remained for the next 20 years: “It was great fun although I never made any money. I de-snaked people’s houses in San Diego. I set up a window-washing business with a guy I met on the beach called ‘Pane in the Glass’. We’d do anything for a spare buck. Then I moved to San Francisco and started going to drama school.”

Fans dismayed as England crash out of the World Cup: England are out of the World Cup after losing 4-1 to Germany in South Africa, leaving millions of fans disappointed. Damien Masham, 26, a window cleaner from Peterborough, said he was "absolutely devastated".

As the Jersey City Board of Education’s last public convening of the school year. “I want you all to see what Jersey City Public Schools are doing,” Epps said of the performances and award ceremony, which were followed by votes on over a hundred agenda items. All of these were approved, with the exception of three items — related, respectively, to the award of a bid for window washing services, speech language services for non-public school children, and examination and classification of non-public school children — issues that were tabled and will be voted on at a later date.

St. Louis-based Fish Window Cleaning expanded into three new states this year and has targeted Idaho next with plans for franchises in Boise, Idaho Falls and Coeur d'Alene that could add about 40 new jobs. Fish Window Cleaning has 220 locations in 41 states. Start-up costs run between $80,000 and $110,000 and include equipment, eight days of classroom training and three days of field training with onsite assistance in launching the business. Nathan Merrick, vice president of franchise development for the company, points out, "Once people see our executive business model, they like the unlimited potential of the service‹there is glass everywhere, and the freedom that comes with no evening or weekend work. "Owners typically employ three or more window cleaners at start-up, as well as office and administrative staff," said Vice President Nathan Merrick.

Hector Lopez live lavish lives as members suffer: As president of Metal Polishers Local 8A-28A, Hector Lopez has an unusual living arrangement - the lavish suburban mansion (pictured below) he calls home is owned by a company he bargains with. The Cadillac Escalade he drives appears to have been bought with help from the union's strike fund, and he collects a salary that's $40,000 a year over what's allowed. All of this for a union that's swimming in red ink with cash on hand to cover only a week of operations. Lopez is one of a handful of New York City labor leaders who, critics say, use their unions as personal ATMs, enriching themselves at the expense of dues-paying members. While the rank-and-file struggle with a faltering economy, leaders of some of these smaller boutique unions put family on the payroll, buy luxury sedans and fly off to weekend conferences in Hawaii and Florida. Lopez lives in a brand new 3,600-square-foot two-story Colonial with four bedrooms in leafy Oakland Township, N.J. Records show it's owned by a Linden, N.J., window washing company, Total Building Services Inc., which, records show, has a contract with Lopez's local. Court papers filed in May 2009 indicate Lopez planned to buy the house. No deed transfer was recorded, but The News found Lopez at the house recently where he declined comment, citing the court fight. Lopez has denied charges of financial irregularities. Robert Fabrizio, Total Building Services president and a trustee of Local 8A-28A's welfare fund, did not return calls seeking comments.

Monday 28 June 2010

Spontaneous Shattering - Tempered Glass - A Guide For Window Cleaners



At some time or another whilst window cleaning tempered glass/safety glass, you may suddenly find a glass door or table just shatter on you without reason. Depending on which country you are in, most new shop glass or public area comes under the safety glass law. And they break quite frequently. This has happened twice for me & each time I was no where near the doors & luckily the business owner/home owner was present. Either way, how you decide who takes the blame, if the window in question is under guarantee or what other factors come into play will decide the outcome to who pays for the damage. So next time you get asked to clean those patio glass tables or shower doors, take heed. Think it won't happen to you? Read on.

The story below gives you the dangers & what happens when that glass shatters without warning. Safety glass is designed to shatter differently from other types of glass, to help prevent injuries from flying shards. Tempered glass is exceptionally strong and heat resistant and gets its strength from a tempering process in which the glass is heated to extremely high temperatures and cooled down quickly. Tempered glass is heat resistant, making it 4 to 5 times stronger than regular glass and harder to break. It is often referred to as "safety glass." Tempered glass is made strong by an extreme heat and then rapid cooling process.

How Tempered Glass Shatters: During the tempering process, the inner layers of a pane of glass become compressed at a higher rate than the outer layers. This process is repeated several times to create a complex web of stress lines that is invisible to the naked eye. When something causes tempered glass to shatter, it shatters along all of these stress lines. The glass breaks into many small bits that are rounded or cuboid in shape, often with relatively smooth edges. The bits are often about the size of the eraser on a pencil. Because the network of stress lines covers the entire pane of each piece of tempered glass, it will all shatter at once when it fails.



Shattered! The danger hanging in your bathroom by Bob Sullivan: I had just finished showering and turned off the water. Soaking wet, I did what millions of Americans do every day - I reached for my snazzy sliding glass shower door. Seconds later, glass was raining down on me. The door had failed somehow and exploded into a million little pieces. The sound was hideous, something between nails on a chalkboard and a torrential downpour. Only this didn't make me wet, it made me bloody. Glass shower doors are a substantial upgrade from old, mold-magnet plastic shower curtains found in many older homes. They look great. They let ambient light into the shower and make the bathroom look larger. If you have fancy tile rimming your tub, they show that off.

The aesthetics come with a cost however, as I recently learned the hard way: Glass shower and tub enclosures can shatter without warning, endangering any person or pet in the path of the raining glass. Interviews with building inspectors, glass companies and manufacturers - along with a quick Internet search for complaints - reveal that it's fairly common for bath doors to shatter, a tendency that isn’t made clear in glossy brochures with beautiful images of modern bathrooms. It's important to note, however, that the doors are made of special tempered safety glass, required by federal, state, and local building codes and designed to break into small, relatively harmless shards. A shattered shower door will produce a pile of glass chips similar to the glass left in your back seat after a criminal breaks a car window to steal a GPS. In doing research for this story, I found no reports of life-threatening injuries from a broken shower door.

In my case, I was left with about 20 cuts - not much worse than paper cuts - along the right side of my body and on my feet. I had one fairly large gash on the top of my foot that bled profusely, perhaps because a piece of the door hardware fell on it. And I had quite a scare. I had to figure out a safe way to climb out of the pile of broken glass without suffering more cuts, and then I had to shower in bath No. 2 to get broken glass shards off my body. Even so, I was picking small pieces out of my skin for the next day or so. I sent pictures of the incident to Kohler, the manufacturer of my shower door, which confirmed it was their product. "Glass doors do shatter," said Kohler spokeswoman Kristine Cristina. "We really can't give you an answer to how often because many people don't call to tell us." She said she believed the incidence was very low, however -- in the past two years, she said she knew of fewer than 10 incidents like mine. "It is very few and far between," Cristina said.

But it is not hard to find similar tales of bathroom floors covered in broken glass. In many cases, consumers report shower doors spontaneous exploding even when no one is in the bathroom.
"That's called a spontaneous blow," said Kathleen Bond, president of Sunset Glass in Bellevue, Wash., which occasionally is called on to replace broken shower doors. "Somebody is at the dinner table and they hear this crash." What would make shower doors suddenly explode? It turns out that their greatest strength – safety - is also their greatest weakness. When glass is heated in the tempering process, its tensile strength is altered. While it becomes much stronger and resistant to direct impact, it becomes much more susceptible to a side impact. As a result, tempered glass dropped on its edge will readily shatter.

"I've broken tempered glass just trying to remove it,” said Terry Love, a Seattle-area plumber. “When it pops, it's just instant. It's pretty amazing when you see it, how quickly it happens." Cristina, the Kohler spokeswoman, said that sometimes a small fracture will occur on the edge of a shower door that won't immediately cause it to shatter. Hours or days later, the door will then explode, creating the appearance of a spontaneous blow, she said. "It can happen for 100 different reasons," she said. The door could be incorrectly installed, rubber stoppers might be missing or cracked or the runner which lets the door slide is damaged. Or abusive treatment by consumers, such as rough openings and closings, could cause such a crack. Bond said many incidents of breakage she's heard about involve cleaning staff who improperly handle the doors.

I don't know why my shower doors broke; there's not enough of them left to do honest forensic work, and the Kohler company declined to inspect them. I installed the doors myself about five years ago, using one of Kohler's "EZ Install" systems, and they worked flawlessly until last week. Still, it's possible there was some kind of operator error. My memory is distorted by the surprise of the event, but I remember it this way: I grabbed for the door, felt it slip down slightly and then it exploded. I believe my door fell off the overhead runner, perhaps because a plastic wheel supporting the door broke. Slipping just an inch or so onto the bottom frame of the door could cause an explosion, according to several people interviewed for this story. Still, after expressing concern for well-being, Cristina noted that "the tempered glass did what it was supposed to do."

My still-swollen right foot doesn't necessarily agree, but in truth, my injuries are remarkably negligible given the amount of glass that showered over me, and I am lucky that the tempering worked as well as it did. I shudder to think about the injuries I might have sustained were this normal glass. It's important to note that there's nothing special about Kohler shower doors. There are scattered complaints about shower doors and tempered glass involving several manufacturers. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, the agency charged with tracking complaints and issuing voluntary product recalls, uses a variety of statistical methods to estimate the number of injuries caused by thousands of consumer products to build a database it calls the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System. The information is generated from actual consumer complaints as well as sampling of data providing by hospital emergency rooms, said agency spokeswoman Nychelle Fleming.

The system tracks and estimates injuries caused by "glass bathtub or shower enclosures," and a query showed that they were involved in an estimated 1,986 incidents during 2009. There were another estimated 4,470 injuries involving "bathtub enclosures" where the word “glass” was not used by the consumer or hospital. Reading a random sample of those reports, however, made it clear that most involved glass enclosures. But accidental shattering is not the only cause for those injuries. The supporting reports suggest that about half of the injuries were caused by a direct impact with the door, such as slipping and falling into it. For perspective, there were an estimated 86,000 injuries related to toilets during 2009 -- most involving some variation of "falling off."

There have been no recent voluntary recalls of shower door products, but Kohler voluntarily recalled 41,000 doors with swinging hinges -- different from the sliding doors on my shower – in 2001. In its press release about the recall, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said the hinges of the door could fail, "causing the shower door to fall and injure nearby consumers."

WHAT TO DO:

Glass in the home is a hazard, as any family with an aspiring athlete will tell you. Glass doors and windows are no match for thrown baseballs or footballs – or even a child who falls into one. There is no such thing as an injury-proof home. Glass shower doors are hardly the most dangerous glass in the house. Consumer Reports last year made the case that glass coffee tables pose a far greater risk, precisely because tempered glass is often not used. It said the tables cause approximately 20,000 injuries per year. “This is a serious safety hazard with a simple remedy,” wrote Donald Mays, senior director of Product Safety and Technical Policy for Consumers Union. Still, the risk posed by glass shower doors is real. Russel Ray, a San Diego-based home inspector, said he believes injuries from falling into doors – as opposed to spontaneous shattering -- are a greater concern. As a result, he thinks glass doors probably aren’t suitable for homes with elderly residents. “In assisted living facilities, you just don’t see them anymore,” he said. Parents with small children might also consider the added risks of glass shower doors. In case of a spontaneous blowout, Love, the plumber, said it’s important to have a bath towel handy and to use it to throw over broken glass on the floor to create a safe route out of the bathroom. Bond, of Sunset Glass, said she believes frosted or otherwise less transparent shower doors tend to shatter more often.

Kohler also offered this set of safety tips for long-term care of shower doors:
* Ensure moving panels are securely attached to the door system. If concerned, consult your instructions or contact the manufacturer.
* Periodically check the shower door hardware to ensure fasteners remain secure. Tighten them if needed.
* Ensure moving glass panel is not directly contacting the wall or metal during operation. That means checking the panel alignment and making sure the bumpers and seals are in good condition.
* Inspect glass regularly for any chips or cracks, paying special attention to glass edges, notches, and around holes in the glass for hardware. If there is any evidence of a crack, replace the glass panel immediately.
* Do not use the shower door towel bars as a safety grab bar or as a lift assist when getting in and out of the bath, or lowering and lifting off a toilet.

Sunday 27 June 2010

Psychic Window Cleaning Cat Predicts England Win Over Germany



Meet Felix the cat. Felix, born in Ludwigshafen, Germany but now living in Bognor Regis, England, has quite an incredible ability for a cat. Not only does he clean windows, he leaves predictions in writing on major sporting events & even world affairs. To name a few, Felix has predicted Obama's Presidency, the world recession & even the BP oil spill. He has predicted every major premier league game result this year & all the NFL major football games since he was born. Naturally being a window cleaner, Felix shows his predictions through his work and if it wasn't for Mrs Ivy Robinson of Upper Bognor Road snapping this picture of Felix we would have been none the wiser. When interviewing Ivy & why she thinks that Felix has the correct result, she quoted "of course it's an England win, Felix is never wrong - Felix eats frauds like Paul the Octopus for breakfast." When asked what she'll think of spending the fifty quid on for this story, Ivy said, "Felix definitely needs a break, I was gonna take him to Mallorca, but I think I'll buy him some professional window cleaning equipment instead."

You may have heard of Paul the Octopus (story below), but some people in the know have said he is a fraud & cheat. Why, only the other day "Bad Psychics," a website dedicated to exposing the truth - admitted that Paul was ousted from the UK at quite a young age due to his total lack of credibility or any noticeable career & his real name is GĂ¼nther!



Oracle Octopus picks Germany to beat England at Cup: An octopus born in England and living in a German aquarium that has correctly picked the winner of Germany's three World Cup results so far Friday tipped Joachim Loew's side to beat England in Sunday's match. Oddly Enough - The eight-legged octopus named Paul, a denizen of Sea Life in Oberhausen, has become a celebrity oracle in Germany after accurately predicting Germany would beat Australia in the opening Group D match, would lose to Serbia and then beat Ghana.

Friday, Paul once again was given the choice of picking food from two different plastic containers lowered into his tank -- one with an England flag on it and one with a German flag. The container Paul opens first is seen as his pick. Paul moved quickly and opened the box with the Germany flag, a selection that soon made it into national news broadcasts across Germany. Paul was born in Weymouth, England.

Saturday 26 June 2010

Home Owners Get Their Own Water Fed Pole

The amount of homeowners that have bought their own squeegee's, pressure washers & now water fed poles will count for nothing even after they have laid out money for all these home cleaners, they often end up in the garage with a pile of other unused weekend toys. Although these DI filters & brushes aimed at the home owners have been sold in UK stores before now, it will be a matter of time before home owners actually repeatedly use them.

Ionic Clean® Washing System. PRICE: $249.00
Benefits: The Ionic Clean® uses de-ionizing (DI) technology to create purified water that has unique cleaning qualities. As water flows through the Ionic Clean, ionic exchange occurs that removes minerals and impurities from the water. The DI water leaves the Ionic Clean hungry – looking to regain the ionic particles removed during the exchange. It finds them on dirty surfaces – like on your home’s windows or your car. The DI water in the Ionic Clean grabs the dirt particles and rinses them away, leaving an ultra-clean spot-free surface.

• Spot-free, streak-free cleaning with no drying required.
• De-ionizes water so there are no minerals that cause spots and streaks.
• Ionically cleaned surfaces repel dirt and stay clean longer.
• Homeowners can save hundreds of dollars cleaning windows themselves. Pays for itself with one use.
• Also use on cars, boats, RVs, airplanes, and more!

Includes:
Base unit with filter
20-foot hose
Telescopic pole
Auto/window brush with nozzle
Filter-life tester

Ionic Clean Washing System Review by John Schettino:




The HomeRight Iconic Clean Washing System is a large blue canister that takes your tap water and turns it into de-ionized (DI) water. The canister has a 20 foot hose with a soft bristle brush attached, and a three way (Off – Bypass – DI) switch on the end. You’re supposed to be able to wash windows, cars, boats, and other similar surfaces with the system and water only. Having just spent a weekend scrubbing windows “the old way” (soap, water, elbow grease) I was pretty skeptical. I was also interested to see if it could best my results. I am pleasantly surprised to report that for the most part, it works exactly as advertised. Parts Parts Parts..

The Ionic Clean comes in a long box that (at least for my review unit) didn’t fully protect it during shipping. Once you dig out the parts you’ll have the following spread out on your floor:



The initial setup involves connecting the 20′ hose to the wand, attaching the wand to the brush, and putting the hose attachment onto the bottom of the canister. You can just see the small pile of plastic bits in the photo – that’s what’s left of the on/off valve the UPS guy managed to kill:



Fortunately for me, this is an inexpensive part (a few bucks at the local home center) or it can be unscrewed from the wand and then you simply use the OFF position on the canister itself. In either case, I proceeded to put it all together. Then, I had a go at getting the end-cap off to see what the filter looked like, and how hard it is to replace:



I’m no body builder, but I do hit the gym nearly every day. Let’s just say you want someone strong to help you with getting that end cap off! After a bit of struggling, I got it to release. You can see in the photo the orange stuff in the middle. That’s the ionic filter that does the magic of converting tap water into de-ionized water. It’s also the only down-side to this whole thing. Those filters have a run-life of MINUTES. If you have really hard water, just 35 minutes. Most people’s city water comes in around 200ppm, so you should get 70 minutes or so out of a filter. The filters cost $50 each, so you’ll want to pay attention to that… washing a car and using 5-10 minutes of rinse is the same as $3.50-$7.00. Washing windows, where you spend a minute or two per window rinsing, is 75 cents per window.

The Test Subjects: Sadly, there is no way to review this product without first showing some of the dirt. So, for your pleasure, I give you some shots of a dirty garden window (which is truly a pain in the back to wash) and my neglected car:





1 & 2. Garden Window… yuck. This is only a few weeks after washing it by hand, with soap. 3. This is the rear window of my car. 4. This is the passenger side window of my car. 5 That’s the roof.

For this test I just followed the directions. First I scrubbed (gently) with the brush and the canister on Bypass. That got rid of most of the dirt, but if left alone at that point the result would be a spotty mess. After the scrub, I flipped it to the DI setting and gave a few scrub/rinse passes. Then I left it alone.

Action Photos: Here’s a few shots of the ionic rinse. It’s very noticeable when you are in DI mode – the water just sheets right off of any surface. I found the 20 foot hose to be long enough that I could leave the canister on the ground nearby the car or window, and the telescoping wand/brush was long enough to reach across the car window, or up and over the top of the garden window. So other then keeping an eye on the clock when in DI mode, the whole thing was a breeze:



Weird sheeting action of DI water. Long reach of the wand.


Closeup of DI water sheeting action.

Results. Wow. Like I said, I was prepared to be disappointed, but in fact it worked exceptionally well. With no soap at all, just a pre-rinse with regular water and then a quick rinse with the DI water, both the garden window and the car came out sparkling clean. The glass results rivaled those you get after a lot of windex and a pile of rags. The car finish sparkled, and all the grime was gone.


Garden window, nearly perfectly spotless. Two drops… that’s all that I could find on the glass after the rinse.



Windshield… clear, spotless, and shiny. This is with no wipe-down. The same side window as before, only now you can see reflections.

Yes, there are still a few spots. But this is about as bad as it gets, and the car was filthy before. Rear glass. You can see a few spot-trails, but again with no wipe down, and no soap at all, that’s pretty good.

Conclusion -I’m a believer. The whole process went very quickly, since there isn’t much more cleanup then re-capping the canister (or letting it drain out for a while) and then putting it away. The actual cleaning process was done in minutes – a scrub pass and then a DI rinse pass, and you’re done. The only lingering doubt I have is the cost over time of the filters. My guess is I wasn’t as efficient as possible since I was doing this for a review and was pausing for photos – even though I was turning off the canister I expect I used a few more minutes of filter time then I otherwise would have. Still, washing a window and a couple cars, I used at least 10 minutes of filter time. So I could see needing a new filter after washing all the windows in your house twice, or washing your cars once a week for a couple months. On the up side, the Ionic Clean system is very gentle on your car, or whatever is under your windows!


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