Big Apple Window Cleaning

The two Nics - Nic Yashchuk and Nic Ivaniuchenko, window washers for Big Apple Window Cleaning.

Let the Sunshine In: A Guide to Washing Apartment Windows: Upper West Side — No one would openly volunteer themselves for vertical living if they weren’t tempted by the prospect of good views and lots of light. Even on the second or third floor, every square inch of blue sky counts. So why do so many New Yorkers ignore the state of their windows? Next time you’re walking down the street, look up at the millions of city dwellers trapped behind their dusty, dirty, darkened windows.

Hiring a window cleaner is one of the great privileges of urban life. Unlike plumbers or exterminators, who often come to your aide during great domestic crises — and are the source of both humiliation and shame — window cleaners can bring with them of one of those rare "Aha!" moments. Finally, after all these years, perfectly clean windows! You won’t want the window cleaner’s visit to end.

Hiring a window cleaner is one of the great privileges of urban life.

This was my joyous realization when I ambushed my aunt’s apartment one recent afternoon. With me were Nic Yashchuk and Nic Ivaniuchenko, a window washer for Big Apple Window Cleaning. The two Nics, who have nine years experience cleaning NYC windows, agreed there are well over 400 different kinds of windows in New York City. “No window is the same,” said Ivaniuchenko, 27, while putting on his cleaning boots for the job. He’s been washing New York City windows for seven years and is one of 30 employees at the citywide agency.

“No window is the same,” said Nic Ivaniuchenko, 27, while putting on his cleaning booties for the cleaning job. He’s been cleaning New York City windows for seven years and is one of 30 employees at the citywide agency.

“But have you seen windows as bad as these?” asked my aunt, an artist on the Upper West Side, gesturing to her loft-like wooden multi-paned windows. “That’s what everyone always asks,” Ivaniuchenko said. “But yeah, these are up there.” It had gotten to the point that the main purpose of my aunt's Venetian blinds was to shield her from her dirty windows rather than prevent others from seeing in. But despite two decades worth of grime, we should all be so lucky to have windows like these.

The hardest windows to clean are in prewar buildings where the windows have not be replaced. They don't snap out and often have storm windows or screens that are stuck in and rusted to their frames. The longer they go without being moved, the harder they are to pull out. My two Nics recommended using WD-40, but they used screwdrivers and some delicate prying to shimmy the windows out.

The hardest windows to clean are in prewar buildings where the windows have not been replaced.

Yashchuk also used this as a cautionary tale: If you’re not gentle, the windows can very well break. Old windows are also the most expensive to clean. I spoke with a handful of NYC window cleaning companies, and here’s a general price range you should look for:

• Standard double-hung windows (up to 6 feet that pop out): $12-$18/window
• Multi-paned paned windows: $25-$30/window
• Storm window: $5-$10 dollars/panel
• Bug screens: $2-$5/screen
• Removing AC: $25-$75
• Chemical wash: as much as double the cost of the window type

Old windows are also the most expensive to clean.

After cost, many people are deterred by the mystery of how they do it. Many old buildings have bolts on the exterior so the professionals can hook harnesses and clean from the outside. But don't panic if your building doesn't have these. Professionals know how to get at the most difficult-to-reach places. If you live in one of those modern all-glass buildings where you hardly even open the window, your building should already be paying for window washing about twice a year — complain about your smudgy views if they’re not.

If you’re in a co-op or condo, there may be rules about regular cleanings or cleaning fees that are already built into your maintenance. The majority of New Yorkers live in brick and limestone rentals that leave window cleaning up to the discretion of the renter. Standard windows snap out and can actually be cleaned without the need of a professional. Follow guides online like this one or ask your super to help you out. Superintendents will clean your windows if you agree on a fee. This is often a cheaper solution than hiring professionals, but if you don’t know what you’re doing it could become a muddy mess.

Twenty years of dirt and grime obstructs the view from this Upper West Side apartment.

One DIY trick is to use a cheap paint brush and dust the dirt off onto a drop cloth before taking soap and water to it. This decreases the mud-bath scenario. But the equipment window washers use may be worth the few extra dollars. Their familiarity with a variety of windows, squeegees, chemical solutions and shammies all ensure streak-less perfection. (They're also ridiculously good at keeping your apartment clean.) If you’re determined to do it yourself, at least invest in a shammy, like the ones used to wax a car. The two Nics from Big Apple Window Cleaning use concentrated soap and water, and noted simple dish soap would do the trick.

One major obstacle when dealing with old windows and especially storm windows is oxidization. If you don't wash your windows, enough acid rain actually oxidizes the panes, leaving cloudy spots and streaks. This is also what happens when rain water drips from concrete or metal onto old glass. Sometimes you can fix the problem on your own with 0000-grade steel wool. Professional services use a chemical wash that must be dried off so it doesn't burn the glass. It usually costs double the price, and there's no guarantee how long it will last.

After a professional window washing, these Upper West Side windows stand out in the neighborhood.

After the professional cleaning, my aunt's windows were so clean a bird could have flown into it. She could finally read the awning across the street advertising "colon hydrotherapy." When the two Nics were packing up, we were jumping for joy. Through those big beautiful windows on that clear afternoon, Manhattan looked like the shiniest, most colorful place on Earth. We ran down to the street below and gazed up; we could see clouds and blue sky reflecting in the windows.

But with traffic tearing down every street and delivery trucks idling on every corner corner, and now this revelation about the effects of acid rain on the view, how long can you really expect clean windows to last? The Nics said you see the difference after two months, but that "all windows after six months look about the same." That's comforting for New Yorkers who have been wrestling with the embarrassment of dirty windows — you're no worse than the rest of us!

Glass Shower Doors Can Shatter Without Warning

Classic meandering pattern of heat-related stress crack, accompanied by evidence of edge damage. In this case, the building had both: edge damage and underspecified glass. Reflective blinds and a South exposure combined to create a high frequency of this type of breakage.

Glass Shower Doors Can Shatter Without Warning (Chicago): If your shower door is made of glass, you may endure injuries, a big clean up and thousands of dollars down the drain. CBS 2′s Dave Savini first exposed tempered-glass patio tables suddenly exploding. Now he found the same happening with shower doors. Dorothy Malinski’s shower door suddenly exploded while her mother was bathing. “I heard this big bang, this big boom,” said Malinski.  “I couldn’t enter all the way because there’s glass all over the counter, in the sink, on the floor.” Her mother was cut on her hands and face.

Even though tempered-glass shower doors are supposed to break into small pieces — to prevent injuries from larger, sharper pieces of glass — they can break in bigger shards. That is what happened to Larry Kucharik, who was injured while cleaning up the shattered glass from his shower door. “I just tapped the top of it and a chunk of it came down and hit my ankle,” said Kucharik, whose ankle is still scarred. “It started bleeding, and there was a lot of blood all over the floor.”

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reports more than 60 complaints of shower doors shattering for no reason — just suddenly exploding, causing lacerations and bleeding. People reported needing stitches and even surgery. Mark Meshulam, a glass and window consultant, reviewed the reports. “These are the types of injuries and situations that I would expect to see when something goes wrong with shower doors,” he says. He says a microscopic imperfection during the manufacturing process can grow and migrate, weakening the glass until it suddenly shatters. It can even shatter without it being touched. “I would say treat the doors gingerly,” Meshulam warns. “Do not bang them. Don’t allow children to hang on the towel bars.”

He also says look for chips near brackets, the towel bar and along the edges. Also, make sure the door only moves the way it is supposed to and is not loose on the track or hinges. In Larry Kucharik’s case, the manufacturer replaced his shower door at no cost. This has also been a problem at hotels. Meshulam says one reportedly had 50 doors shatter. He would like to see protective film on shower doors to catch breaking glass. This is a tempered glass problem, so it involves various door manufacturers and the ages of glass. If this happens to you, call the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the door manufacturer.

Also see here & here. 

Chicago Window Expert - Mark Meshulam (pictured) is a consultant for glass breakage and expert witness for personal injury due to glass breakage. When tempered glass breaks, the energy retained in the glass due to internal tension/compression releases explosively and produces a breakage pattern sometimes called “cubes’.

Seeing a cubist breakage pattern does not tell you why the glass broke, it only tells you that the glass was tempered. Generally, there are three reasons tempered glass will break: impact, edge damage or inclusions. Inclusions are tiny impurities in the glass. The most well known are nickel sulfide, however there are also silica and gaseous inclusions which look like tiny bubbles.

Normally, when tempered glass breaks, it falls down into a pile of little cubes. Only the most patient window consultants with the most generous client would ever consider piecing the cubes together to determine the cause of breakage. That being said, I have personally spent many hours picking through the rubble looking for an important clue: a pair of adjacent hexagons, known as a butterfly pattern, that borders a nickel sulfide inclusion.

If you look closely, you can see the point of impact on this tempered glass. A laminated interlayer holds the cubes in place.

However, occasionally the pieces of broken tempered glass will stay in the opening, locked to each other like blocks in a masonry arch. And just like in a masonry arch, if you remove the keystone, the arch – or glass in this case – comes tumbling down. This picture above shows broken glass which was a part of a laminated unit. The PVB (polyvinyl butyrate) interlayer held the pieces in place, giving us an opportunity to observe that impact damage is visible, even in tempered glass.

Spontaneous Breakage in Tempered Glass: Glass, and especially tempered glass, sometimes breaks all by itself. This can be quite disconcerting when, as has happened in a public place which will go unnamed here in our great city, large, thick panes of tempered glass basically blew up fairly frequently. The unusual cause in this rare instance: the glazing contractor attempted to grind the edges of the glass after it was tempered, creating a series of time bombs. It is a very bad idea to modify glass after it is tempered!

A more well-known, but also quite rare cause of spontaneous breakage is nickel sulfide inclusions. If you read the previous post, you will already be down with the fact that glass is made from melted powders. A nickel sulfide inclusion is a tiny rock of unmelted material that remains in the glass. Below see an artists graphic representation of a nickel sulfide inclusion.

Artists representation of nickel sulfide inclusion.

You can well imagine that a little rock embedded in a slab of glass which is under high tension/compression forces, could weaken the glass and eventually cause breakage. But the story gets worse. Nickel sulfide grows an additional 4% of its size over time, especially in the presence of heat. If it is located in the strata in the glass between tension and compression, and it grows, kaboom!


Exploding Glass Shower Doors: One of the scariest, yet somewhat common type of tempered glass spontaneous breakage is in glass shower doors. They are exposed to banging against bumpers, heat from the shower, wrenching action of through-mounted towel bars and of course, nickel sulfide inclusions. In hotels, multiply the risk factors by the number of rooms and the lack of care typically taken by a hotel patron. There can be a delay between impact and crack propagation in tempered glass, just like any other glass, and sometimes the time the glass finally explodes seems ironic and and Machiavellian. Quite often the perverted glass will explode while the unsuspecting victim is in the shower.
Let’s count the problems: 1. The victim is naked. 2. There are sharp cubes of glass projectiles flying around. 3. The victim is bare footed. 4. The victim must walk barefooted over a field of freshly shattered glass shards. So here’s a tip for readers who actually do take showers: If your shower door shatters, stand still for a moment and take stock of the situation. Hopefully you are not cut too badly. Without moving your feet too much, look for a towel. Try to grab it and lay it down on the glass so you can walk out. Then get the hell out and never shower again.

Stress Cracks (see head picture): A “stress crack” will usually only happen in annealed or heat strengthened glass. Stress cracks emanate from the edge of the glass and meander about apparently without purpose. But there is a purpose: to relieve stress. However, the term “stress crack” can be misleading. If annealed glass is subjected to thermal fluctuations beyond its capabilities, it will break in a way that will relieve the stresses induced by thermal changes. This type of failure is a design issue. Heat strengthened glass should have been specified for the application. However, there can be a near-identical breakage pattern which emanates from damage in the glass edge that fails as stresses, such as thermal, are applied.
To tell the difference between a true stress crack and a crack due to edge damage, look at the edge of the glass for a chip, which we window linguists call an “oyster”. You might have to look hard because the oyster could be buried in the primary seal on the #2 or #3 surface. Another clue would be the distribution of glass breakage in the building. It would be normal to find stress-like cracks on elevations with greater temperature swings. But does the breakage also coincide with the use of reflective interior blinds, especially in a partially opened position? That would be indicative of a true stress crack, rather than a crack induced by edge damage.

Low E Windows - A Quick Guide

Low E Glass - Types and Benefits

Summary: Low e glass windows offer insulation against heat and cold. Two types of low e glass, soft and hard coat, look and perform differently. Soft coat low e glass has a higher r value (see r values lower down).

Have you seen a new home lately? Well, I mean, have you looked at the windows from the outside at a distance? Did they appear coated or colored like some new office building? If so, there probably was Low-E glass in the windows. Low-E glass is one of the technological marvels of today's residential construction. Who would have thought 25 years ago that glass could be coated with an ultra-thin layer of metal? Who would have guessed that this metal coating would allow you to see through the glass and provide actual insulating value? Not me, that's for sure!

The E is for Emissivity: My Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary defines emissivity as "the relative power of a surface to emit heat by radiation." Emit means to "throw or give off." Okay, so Low-E glass obviously is a special glass that has a low rate of emission. In other words, if there is a heat source inside your house (or outside!), the glass bounces the heat from that object back away from the glass. So, in the winter months, if you have Low-E glass in your home, much of the warmth (heat) given off by the furnace and all the objects which the furnace has heated, is bounced back into the room.

In the summer, the same thing happens but in reverse. The sun heats things up (the air, sidewalks, driveways, next door neighbors bricks, etc.) outside of your house. This heat radiates from those objects and tries to get into your house. Of course, it tries to take the path of least resistance, that being the glass. With Low-E glass much of this heat bounces off the glass and stays outside.

The Two Types of Low-E: There are two types of Low-E glass: hard coat and soft coat. As you might imagine, they have different properties. In fact, they actually look different. Hard coat Low-E glass is manufactured by pouring a thin layer of molten tin onto a sheet of glass while the glass is still slightly molten. The tin actually becomes "welded" to the glass. This process makes it difficult or "hard" to scratch or remove the tin. Often this glass has a blueish tint to it.

Soft coat Low-E glass, on the other hand, involves the application of silver, zinc or tin to glass in a vacuum. The glass enters a vacuum chamber filled with an inert gas which is electrically charged. The electricity combined with the vacuum allows molecules of metal to sputter onto the glass. The coating is fairly delicate or "soft."

Furthermore, if silver is used (and it often is) this coating can oxidize if exposed to normal air. For this reason, soft coat Low-E glass must be used in an insulated glass assembly. Sealing the soft coating in between two pieces of glass protects the soft coating from outside air and sources of abrasion. Also, the space between the two pieces of glass is often filled with argon gas. The argon gas inhibits oxidation of the metallic coating. It also acts as an additional insulator.

The two types of Low-E glass have different performance characteristics. The soft coat process has the ability to reflect more heat back to the source. It typically has a higher R value. R values are a measure of resistance to heat loss. The higher the R value of a material, the better its insulating qualities. Look at Table 1 for a comparison of R values and the different types of glass.

GLASS R VALUES

Type of Glass                                                    R Value

Single Pane regular glass                                       0.85

Clear Insulated Glass 7/8 inch overall thickness    2.08

Hard Coat Low-E insulated glass                           2.45

Hard Coat Low-E insulated glass with argon         2.75

Soft Coat Low-E insulated Glass                           3.50

Soft Coat Low-E insulated glass with argon          4.35

Low E glass helps to reduce condensation on glass. The inside surface temperature of the glass is warmer. The differences can be dramatic. Imagine a cold night with an outside temperature of 0 degrees and a 15 mph wind. The inside temperature of a single pane window would be approximately 26 degrees. Regular double pane glass might register 35 degrees. Hard coat low E glass would be very near 49 degrees. And weighing in at champ would be soft coat low E glass at 62 degrees. Some glass manufacturers have gone even farther. They have suspended thin, low E transparent films in between pieces of glass. This system has excellent performance characteristics. Some of these films can block 99.5 percent of UV light. Some boast an insulating value twice that of soft coat low E glass. Low E glass is worth the price, especially since houses tend to lose 25 percent of their heat through windows.

Ten Window Manufacturers and Their Type of Low E Glass.

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.

A Home Owners Guide To Window Cleaning

Having been a window cleaner in Mallorca, Spain for Eleven years now & also "shining" in Australia & UK previously - I always shudder to see the mess of the windows when I get to them. I've also yet to see a window cleaned properly until I've reached it (blows his own horn). Yes, window cleaning sounds easy - but we all know that when the sun shifts down towards the horizon, often the windows look worse than when they did before as a whole load of streaks, cloth marks & fly vomit shows up on the glass as if you hadn't touched them at all. Here is a home-owners window guide to attempting to have a go yourself. Although I can't agree with all the methods as any professional window cleaner will agree (yep, we're all got our own fantastic way of cleaning them), but the following guide will help you along to a point. Having also run a building/reform business I can also tell you that building is a lot easier than window cleaning & trying to train someone is a chore in it's own right. Anyhow, here's the guide - & once you have finished cleaning your own windows - you may just decide to spend your day on the golf course instead & hire a trained, insured pro' to do the work for you!

What people think about window washing..

• 80% of homeowners avoid cleaning outdoor windows.

• While 72% of homeowners think windows should be cleaned at least a few times per year, only 42% say they actually clean their windows that often.

• 48% of homeowners would rather clean the toilet or shower than clean outdoor windows.

• 38% of homeowners admit they avoid outdoor window cleaning due to the time and effort required.


Time to rid your windows of a winter's worth of dirt: The bright days of summer bring welcome relief - and a problem. Too often, the gorgeous sunshine is diminished as it tries to stream through cloudy windows. While there are a variety of products that will get your windows crystal clear, the thought of washing them can seem draining. Done the wrong way, your windows will have streaks or a film, even after you've spent all day cleaning them. So make the task easier by following some basic rules.

Wait for the clouds. Cleaning windows in direct sunlight could cause your cleaning solution to dry too fast and cling to the window, leaving a streaky film. Wait until clouds are overhead, then get busy, says Ken Kopchick, 52, owner of Summit Window Cleaning in Clinton Township.

Start at the top. Clean from top to bottom, not the other way around. "That way you can catch water drips," says Mike Szandzik, 51, owner of Window Genie, a residential and commercial window cleaning company in Warren.

Get the streaks out. Streaks usually are caused by leftover cleaning solution, so don't overspray. Lightly mist the surface and wipe in a circular motion, overlapping your strokes to be sure to cover the entire window. You can use a squeegee, pulling it across the window to overlap swipes, Kopchick says. Dry the blade after every pass and work quickly.

Find a friend. If you have windows that don't tilt in for cleaning, it works best to have a two-person team cleaning them on the outside and inside at the same time. That way you can see if streaks are on the inside or outside and fix them as they happen. "You can help each other out," Kopchick says. "Two people can see streaks from different angles."

Go organic. If you're worried about chemicals, clean the way Grandma did, with a solution of 1/2 cup non-sudsy ammonia, 1 cup white distilled vinegar and 2 tablespoons cornstarch in a gallon of water. Wash the windows with a sponge and dry with an old T-shirt or paper towels. You could put it in a spray bottle. Or you could use a squirt of Dawn dish soap mixed with water. Szandzik says this cuts through dirt while making it easy to slide a squeegee.

Paper towel savvy. So, what makes the best polishing tool? Some swear by crumpled newspapers; others think paper towels are the way to go. But Kopchick swears by lint-free cotton cloths available at hardware stores. Do it cheaper with old cotton T-shirts, as long as they don't have clinging lint or other fibers that will stick to your window.

Wash, dry, repeat. To make sure your windows are absolutely streak free, Kopchick says it's best to do them twice. You're there already with tools in hand, so make the effort worth it. "A final buffing on a window that's clean really makes it shine," he says.

Call a professional. A professional window cleaning might be less expensive than you think, at $8 on average per window for the inside and outside, Kopchick says. Make sure any professional produces proof that they are fully insured and bonded to avoid liability, Szandzik says.

Use new products. SC Johnson, owner of Windex, conducted a survey of American households in 2008 that found cleaning windows outside to be such an arduous task that most homeowners try to avoid it. Windex is trying to solve that problem with two new products designed to make cleaning faster and easier. One is a water-activated cleaning pad attached to a pole that reaches up to 11 feet. It's called the Outdoor All-In-One Glass Cleaning Tool, and sells for $15 at most local stores. It won the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. To use, spray the windows with water, wipe them with the tool, then spray again with water to polish. Another product, the Outdoor Multi-Surface Concentrated Cleaner, sells for about $8, attaches to a garden hose and sprays the same streak-free way. The garden hose spray solution is meant only for quick touch-ups, so it won't cut through dirt the way the tool does.
See here for the "canning" of this product.

Summit Window Co. worker Ryan Gasparotto uses a squeegee.