Dirt between the panes on new windows?

Commercial
1

I completed a small office building, when checking the windows after, I noticed that the main office windows had a strange haze in between the panes.

Sorry, I didn’t get any pictures. But there were 2-3in strips of brown haze running across the windows. On some it was horizontal and on some it was vertical. It was only visible when looking at the windows from an angle in the sun.

Also, almost every interior pane had 1” of deep scratches along the vertical edges. The exterior panes were quite pitted and scratched.

All this considered I thought that the windows were old and that maybe the hazing was due to the seals going bad.

However, it turned out they had got new windows put in that office only 6 months ago!? I was the first cleaner they hired.

Has anyone ever seen this kind of hazing strips in between the panes of new windows? Was it some kind of error in the installation?

2

What you’re calling hazing sounds like a factory defect in some coating. Interior scratches sounds like it was done with sandpaper, a painter perhaps. The pitting on exteriors could easily have been done by a weed wacker.

3

Thanks a lot! The inside frames were freshly painted so the makes sense.

As for the defect with the coating, could that coating have been the tint? Are tints usually placed between the panes?

4

So I guess the only coating applied between the panes is a low-e coating. It looked kind of similar to these failures:

5

yes, coatings are usually though not always on the in-between surfaces.

6

Have you tried cleaning the windows first to see if its dirt?

7

Defective windows. Inform the customer, move on.

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