Sure, if softcoat low-e is exposed, it’s going to look awful, and you can easily see it with the naked eye.
But softcoat low-e is not supposed to be exposed.
You’ll never see it that way unless someone goofed up at the glass factory in assembling the IG unit. Then it’s a workmanship issue for the glass company, and should be replaced under warranty. Otherwise the customer will have awful looking windows, and lose the heat blocking effect as the coating wears away.
When the softcoat low-e coating is in it’s proper location inside an IG unit, it’s not easy to see at all.
Hardcoat is more visible than softcoat. I don’t think it looks good when the light hits it wrong, but I wouldn’t say most of the time it’s easy.
what else can you tell me about glazing is there a material other than silicone that you use to seal glass in place that can get wiped all over the windows even the solar cooled kind or is just silicone@PatrickRoedl
OK.
My point was that there’s no benefit to using polarized lenses before scraping - if they see that purple effect, it’s a softcoat low-e that’s inside the IG, and impossible to mess up.
I’ve never had a chance to compare Solarcool and hardcoat low-e side by side, but I believe the hardcoat low-e is even easier to feel.
I think Anderson’s low-e 4 is one of those packages that includes softcoat on a surface inside the IG unit, and hardcoat low-e on the #4 surface.
Softcoat low-e is supposed to be inside the Unit. To the untrained eye, when softcoat low-e is inside an IG unit, you can’t even see it.
If the softcoat is mistakenly put on the outside, it’s because someone had the glass flipped the wrong way when they built the IG unit.
This mistake will be obvious by the time people start cleaning the window. It feels wrong, and makes your squeegee drag. It also looks bad because the softcoat deteriorates so fast; it starts to discolor, to where you can see it.
I really don’t think you need to worry about finding softcoat low-e on the outside of a window.
You can’t do anything to keep it from looking bad.
And you can’t do anything to keep it from weathering away. (BTW it might be gone in a couple of years on its own.)
You could maybe offer to remove a soft low-e coating if you have polishing equipment, but I dunno why a client would pay you to do that instead of calling their contractor and getting it replaced under warranty.
So to recap - if low-e coating is inside the IG where it’s supposed to be, there’s nothing to worry about.
If softcoat is outside the IG unit, it’s something your client can worry about, but not you.
So to sum it up, all glass is safe to squeegee??? I been reading up on low e glass and they say to stay away from squeegees and only use cloth and pure water… Is that correct?
That’s the hardcoat low-e. It’s a different animal.
It is, as the name suggests, harder than the softcoat.
Hardcoat low-e is also harder than the glass it was applied to.
In case anyone forgot how we got off on this tangent, someone suggested you can see low-e with polarized glasses.
I tested that and found you can see the softcoat with polarized glasses - but not the hardcoat.
Anyway, cleaning instructions for hardcoat vary a bit, but some of them warn you not to use a squeegee.
Apparently somebody at that glass company thinks rubber will leave a black mark on the coating.
That’s one of the things we’re going to check out at the Picnic.
I got some hardcoat low-e samples, so window cleaners can test different ways to abuse hardcoat, and see for themselves what they really need to worry about.
You should come up for that next month.
(It’s not too far - people travel here from all over.)
I think I may have ran into hardcoat low e glass before, I remember gliding my squeege accross the glass and detailing was a royal B! I would have to really put lots of pressure to my scrim to buff out inperfections… I was so confused! Although I didn’t cause any visual damage(they looked great after) I can see how maybe the low e coating can wear off… Then again I’m only guessing here, but Ive never cleaned glass that reacted so easily to staining and smears ect… Could this have been hardcoat low e?
