Just thinking. I was cleaning one of my storefronts the other day that sees a lot of road dust. And was thinking what if I were to coat the glass with a hydrophobe that would make them real slippery? Then I should be able to run a microfiber cloth on a doodlebug. Only a very fine mist of pure water should allow me to remove the dust in about ten seconds. I could cut my time by about 75%. Has anyone ever thought about doing something like this?
I would think a fine mist won’t be enough to thoroughly remove the dust. High pressure or higher amount of water would still be required to remove faster.
I think what it comes down to is how strongly the dirt/dust adheres to the surface which in this case is not glass. This is what I mean. The product WinDOcoat sticks like crazy to hydrophobic surfaces such as Nanovations NG1010. But NOT glass. It peals off glass real easy. This property of adhesion is a chemical term. One that we have NOT looked at as window cleaners. It also applies to the different syn-dets that we use for cleaning glass. It is the reason why Dawn works so well and others leave a bad film. Another term is cohesion. This defines how strongly water molecules are attracted to each other. It is otherwise called hydrogen bonding and is responsible for surface tension. But I diverge.
People love their mechanical labor. Scrub scrub scrub scrub scrub.
It’s a Chemo-mechanical procedure and we all roll our eyes at 50% of it. We hate soap wars but we love tool wars. The right soap and bye bye antiquated tools.
“Soap costs less than labor.” - every other post on PW forum.
Might we need to look at our PW counterparts as examples?
On a complete side track: this is why I don’t mind spending a couple bucks on electricity (even though I currently have no way of expensing it from my taxes) to heat my pure water tank overnight. The hot water melts off stubborn gunk much more quickly ands saves a lot of scrubbing and labor.
You use hot water with your wfp? Thats interesting. How hot? How do you go about heating it and keeping it hot? Are you ever worried about cracking cold glass with hot water?