July 5, 2023
Listen, if your dealing with hard water stains on the windows of your home or business in Logan, Utah and aren't doing anything about it, you're basically ruining your windows little by little.
See, here's the problem? Glass is porous, which means that anything sitting on it's surface will slowly be sucked into the glass permanently. When the calcium deposits are left in your glass, this is known as "etching", and your windows will basically look foggy for the rest of their existence. And the only way to get rid of it is with some $$$.
So what can a homeowner do to proactively prevent hardwater from building up on their windows? Well here's a few tips and tricks we've learned that make big differences.
This is the biggest, and often only reason that hardwater stains end up on your windows. The sprinklers spray them over, and over, and over, leaving mineral deposits all over the glass afterwards. In fact, we've seen windows so badly beaten up by them that the glass had literally turn white!
However, simply adjusting your sprinkler heads until they don't hit the windows is the best thing you can do in order to keep your windows clean. Most of the time this can be done by simply adjusting a screw in the top of each sprinkler head while they're running. Tightening the screw both adjusts the direction of the spray and the distance it will shoot out water.
When a little bit of hardwater has made it's way onto your windows, scrub it off with 4#0 steel wool (you want to make sure it's this specific size, otherwise you'll run the risk of scratching your windows). We wet the window, scrub away, and then squeegee the excess water off. This is a really simple way to get them clean without diving into a world of chemical mixtures and concoctions.
Another option here is to use a glass scraper. Removing hardwater this way can pose a little more risk to your home in Cache Valley, so you'll need to be careful. Make sure the window is really, really wet before you get to work, and constantly clean the edge of your scraper, otherwise you might end up scratching the glass if it drags a piece of concrete or rock across the glass.
If you have some pretty bad hard water stains on your glass, and you're struggling to get it off by just scraping, try one of these two products! You can get either one from Home Depot or even Walmart! CLR and Bartender's Friends are great at cutting through hardwater that's a little thicker. We usually put on gloves, apply Bartender's Friend directly to the window, or a half-water, half-CLR mix, and scrub with steel wool until everything's gone!
You'll definitely want to mask up while applying CLR and keep the window wet! You'll also want to throw away your steel wool as soon as your finished (because CLR will cause it to rust).
Clean windows without those obnoxious hard water spots. But don't just take my word for it, check out the before-and-after pictures below. As a homeowner, try this before you try anything else! And if still can't get it, call or text us at (435)292-7658, or shoot us an email. We can help get you some other stuff to try or come out and take care of it ourselves!
