Glass off a build site is not dirty in the ordinary sense. It carries silicone, mortar, stucco splatter, paint overspray and adhesive, and washing it the way you would wash a dirty window drags that material across the pane and scratches it. Those scratches are permanent. We take it off properly, contaminant by contaminant, for builders at handover and for homeowners who have just moved in.
One small mistake on a brand new house is like the first scratch on a brand new car. Nobody notices the ninety nine panes that came out perfect. They notice the one with an arc across it, and on a house that has just been finished that is what gets remembered.
That is why a lot of window cleaners quietly decline this work. It takes around twice as long as a normal clean, every contaminant on the glass needs its own method, and getting one window wrong can cost you the whole job. I take it because I would rather be the one doing it carefully than the one called in afterwards to look at damage nobody can undo.
Not a wash. A removal job first, and then a wash, in that order and never the other way round.
Silicone, mortar and stucco splatter, paint and texture overspray, adhesive, tape and manufacturer stickers. Each one behaves differently and each one comes off its own way. Bonded material is lifted with lubricated blade work at the correct angle, and on coated or leaded panes with brass rather than steel, because brass is softer than the coating it is working against.
Construction grit sits in the tracks and sills long after the glass looks finished, and the first rain washes it straight back down the pane. Tracks, sills and frames are cleared and detailed, then the glass is finished streak free. Screens get a deep scrub and a disinfection and deodorization process before they go back.
A regular clean is priced on how many panes there are. A construction clean is priced on what is stuck to them, and you cannot always tell from the driveway. A single window can take forty five minutes on its own. The same house that would be a morning as a normal clean can be two days.
The risk is the other half of it. On a finished house the glass is the last thing anybody looks at, and it is the one surface where a mistake cannot be sanded, painted or replaced quietly. Scratch one pane and you are not discounting that window, you are replacing it, and on a large custom unit that can cost more than the whole job was worth.
So the work gets declined, or worse, it gets taken by someone who washes it like an ordinary window and hands back a house full of fine arced scratching that nobody notices until the light hits it in the afternoon.
By some distance the hardest thing to get off glass, and the most common post construction problem other cleaners cannot fix properly.
Silicone does not dissolve and it does not wipe. It has to come off mechanically, and mechanically on glass means you are one wrong angle away from a scratch. There is no spray that does this for you. It is a mag scrubber, stainless, and a great deal of manual work, and then you wash the window, and then you find more of it, and you do it again.
Five or six passes on one pane is normal. The work is felt in the hands and the forearms the next day, which is the honest reason it is rare. It is not that other cleaners do not know how. It is that it is slow, physical and unforgiving, and it is easier to say no.
Stickers and silicone left sitting on glass through a Texas summer do not simply get harder to remove. They etch it. The adhesive and the sealant react with the surface, and what is left behind after the material finally comes off is a permanent mark in the shape of the thing that was stuck there.
At that point no cleaner can help you, because there is nothing left on the glass to remove. The mark is in the glass. That is the single strongest argument for booking the clean when the build finishes rather than six months later when somebody finally gets round to it.
There is no single product that takes all of it off. Treating the pane as one problem is how glass gets ruined.
Loose grit and dust come off before any water touches the pane. Wetting a gritty window first is exactly how you turn dust into an abrasive and drag it across the glass under a squeegee.
Blade work, lubricated, at the angle that lets the edge lift material rather than skid over it. Brass instead of steel on coated and leaded glass. Different pressure and different tooling for silicone, mortar and paint.
Then the pane gets washed, inspected and washed again. What looks finished while wet often is not once it dries and the light moves. Five or six rounds on a bad window is normal rather than exceptional.
Done in that order the glass comes out genuinely clear. Done in the wrong order it comes out scratched, and that part cannot be undone. There is a longer explanation of what is on new glass and why it behaves this way on the blog.
Three groups, and they want slightly different things from the same job.
Scheduled backwards from your handover date so it happens after the final trade is off site. Clean glass is one of the few things that reads instantly in a walkthrough or a listing photograph, and it is the last impression before the keys change hands.
Overspray drifts and silicone goes where it should not. It happens on good jobs as well as bad ones. Calling someone who removes it properly is considerably cheaper than a client noticing it, and far cheaper than a replaced pane.
Most builder cleans are cosmetic rather than thorough, which is not a criticism, it is simply a different job. If you have moved into a new build and the glass still has a film on it, or marks you cannot shift, that is what is left.
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It is the removal of everything a build leaves on the glass, silicone, mortar, stucco splatter, paint and texture overspray, adhesive, tape and manufacturer stickers, followed by a full clean of the glass, tracks, sills and frames. It is a removal job first and a wash second, and doing those in the wrong order is what scratches new windows.
Because it is priced on what is stuck to the glass rather than how many panes there are. A single window can take forty five minutes on its own, and a house that would be a morning as a normal clean can run to two days. The work is slower, more physical and carries real risk, since a scratched pane has to be replaced rather than redone.
Yes, but it is the hardest thing on the list. Silicone does not dissolve and it does not wipe, so it has to come off mechanically with a mag scrubber and stainless, at the right angle and with a lot of manual work. Expect several passes on the same pane. It is the most common post construction problem other cleaners cannot fully remediate.
That is the risk the whole method exists to avoid. Loose grit comes off dry before any water touches the pane, bonded material is lifted with lubricated blade work at the correct angle, and brass rather than steel is used on coated or leaded glass because brass is softer than the coating. If a window cannot be done safely I will tell you rather than attempt it.
After the final trade is off site and before handover, the client walkthrough or listing photography. Clean the glass while trades are still working and it will simply be dirty again, and you will pay twice for the same pane. Tell me your handover date and I will work backwards from it.
Yes, and a good share of this work comes from builders, remodelers and painters. Scheduling is built around your programme rather than ours. Where a job runs wider than glass we bring in contractors we have vetted, run it under one invoice and stay on site.
Possibly, and it is worth knowing why. Stickers and silicone left on glass through a Texas summer can etch the surface, so once the material finally comes off a permanent mark is left in the shape of whatever was stuck there. At that point there is nothing left to remove. The sooner it is looked at the better the outcome.
Yes, and on a construction clean it matters more than usual. Building grit sits in tracks and sills long after the glass looks finished, and the first rain washes it straight back down the pane. Tracks, sills and frames are cleared and detailed, and screens get a deep scrub before they go back.
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