It seems like every house I clean with andersen windows, the exterior side of the pane, the one with the white trim, always reeks havoc. It seems almost impossible to detail the ‘ghosting’ away.
Any advice?
EM
Wfp. In my opinion cleaning the frames well with pure water allows you to get it off pretty well along with a heavy rinse.
Other wise, with traditional, after cleaning glass try hard not to touch the frame at all while detailing.
I have resorted to a white scrub pad. Scrub the frames while cleaning the glass. More time consuming but sometimes it’s better than detailing 2 or 3 times. I don’t own WFP yet.
I am finally to the point where I check the window frames before bidding. This allows me to add an extra $100 - $150 just to clean the frames first and follow up with traditional or spend the extra time with wfp.
Probably half the windows I touch have bad oxidation, most of the homes around here are newer with vinyl windows. Here’s our procedure, wipe the frame with a wet towel scrub the window, squeegee, detail then detail again with a completely dry towel. Adds very little time and gives good results. We see so much of it its just normal everyday operations for us.
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Make sure you always detail with dry towels…I get on my helpers if they don’t consistenly switch out there micro towels or surgical towels because if u don’t your going to leave smudges when detailing no matter what the style of the window is
add vinegar to your water. It will change your life…oxidation wise. May need a little more soap…but it really takes care of the chalkiness problem. Ive been using this trick for years
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We hit the windows with a soft scrub brush on a pole using siding cleaner. We wash the window until the milky mess stops running. We check by rinsing the brush in clean water then washing again. Once the window frame is cleaned we then switch to a WFP for cleaning the glass and final rinsing. We found that if we don’t do that, the windows run milky again after the next rain. We educate the owner on the extra steps required and double our fee. We haven’t had a single complaint on the fee or the end result. During the cleaning we change out the rinse water often and make sure the brush that is loaded with paint does not cross contaminant the soap solution. Lengthy process but works like a charm.
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Don’t get the frames wet
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Clean the frames first then clean the glass and make sure your finial detail is done with a clean dry towel. As soon as your towel gets any of the white oxidation on it you must change it. Keep towels for glass off frames. 
One thing I stumbled upon when doing these type in colder weather was that the alcohol added to the solution made a huge difference in detailing. Also don’t use dishsoap, you are much better off using gg3/4 or whichever window cleaning specific soap you use.
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That’s my line, tbh
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Tbh, that’s my abbreviation
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Thanks for the tip. Friday I had a wfp job that the window frames are always oxidized badly, so I added vinegar to my normal traditional cleaning solution and prewashed the frames and windows, rinsed with a water hose, then wfp with pure water. I was amazed! Actually saved time over trying to use the wfp to do all the work and since the window were already clean, wfp time was minimal.
With the dilution that either of you were using, did you get a vinegar smell while working?
I put about 8 oz to three gal. You could smell the vinegar only slightly and it didn’t linger. I didn’t really smell it while I was working, just when I mixed it.
I’m happy that it worked for you! Its so simple, and yet I am still amazed at the magic of vinegar. New window cleaning tools and technology are great, but I never look past the old tricks I learned early on. Now we can mix the old knowledge with the new technology for even better efficiency!
Yes, thanks for the tip. It came just in time as I used it today on some chalking Andersen frames.
Nice to see you posting Melody, your experiance is quite valuble.
Dale.
Thanks Dale. That means a lot to me. I really love being of help to people, and I enjoy that in this forum its reciprocal.
do you know why it’s effective?
and does it take the chalkiness off faster or how exactly does it help?
I have never heard of this one before.
