Hey everyone. I’m going to doing a big water stain removal job that has stains from 10+ years on a commercial building. I cleaned two by hand and it was murder. If I used a buffer, what kind should I use and how much should I charge?
Any help is always appreciated. Thanks
Mr. Glass
Renu system is a little over kill for removing hard water.
May be over kill but it’s a great system to have. Allows you to expand your services.
If you are just trying to remove the stains, you may be able to get away with a makita 9227c, a warrior pad from harbor freight tools and some cerium oxide. But it may be necessary to remove glass stock if its too bad. Do you have any pics?
Mr. Hardwater removal and charge $60.00 per pane if the pane is 3x3 or smaller
@starbrite’s suggestion is what I use, JFlint kit aka Mr. Hardwater. For a 3x3 that is $6.66666667 per sq ft 
. For heavy stains on resi Im higher than that but commercial may be different. You can also test a 1x1 piece on one of the heaviest sections to calculate how long it takes to clear, and then figure up a round sq ft estimate of the total job to get $100 per hr, or whatever you want to make for HWR. That is one option. All you need is a rotary polisher / pads / polish…unless as was mentioned the stains are too deep and then you could use GR.
I have a video I took that I can post. I wonder if the glass renu may be the way to go since I’m etching the glass to get rid of the stains anyways, but I can’t afford it right now.
I talked with the property manager about it and he said he’d rather live with the etching than the stains because they’re less noticeable. I ask Alex @ WCRA and he suggested diamond dust which worked really good. And since the sprinklers are going to keep hitting it over time I used Mr. Hardwater Glass Sealer so it won’t again happen anytime soon.
Here are my before and after pics. The clean one was done by hand with bronze wool in small circular motions. It took me maybe an hour or a little more to remove the stains, seal, and clean 2 windows.
The “before” is closer to the ground where it was hit more often with the sprinklers, but the “after” is right above it and wasn’t as bad.
Do you have pis for the lower part of the window “after”?
Like @wws said makita 9227c, yellow pad and some cerium oxide works wonders on hard water stains. We do a ton of this work, I would say at least 80% of our new residential in coming jobs have hard water stain.
No, I don’t have an “after” pic of the lower one because it wasn’t coming off by hand. That’s why I put the question on the forum to ask for advice about using a buffering system.
I have a Masterforce Impact Driver and Drill/Driver from Menards that I was going to use for the buffering pads.
Impact and glass don’t mix, don’t let that switch slip on by accident.
Wow, nice piece of err engineering there.
WCR makes an adapter for drills. It’d be cheaper than spending $200.00 on a buffer.
Would you happen to know how long the bronze wool pads might last? I use the pads by hand and they work pretty good.
I cant give “might last” idea, it really depend on how bad the staining is on how long the those pads will last.
Magnificent!
Nice work.
