I have been out to several houses now where they have tried using this. No surprise, it does not work. The little fine print on the bottle states that they must have soft, pure water hooked up to their hose to be effective. Obviously, not many have that. So, I get the call saying that they have some weird film all over their windows after trying to clean them. I show them the fine print on the back. They end up hiring me to remove hard water stains from every window on their house and hating Windex.
Yeah…i to saw that at Ace hardware,kind had an inner chuckle! Just as mentioned i see these as well as poles,squeegee’s sitting in wither the garage or side of the house but yet…they (a majority) still call me?
I remember on a couple ocassions showing up after they used this as well as the old school model Bruce mentioned,having to explain to them it doesn’t work and now…i must dub them…Sir Spot Alot
I’ve found that most of the Windex or other spray and rinse products work quite well, provided one also is able to also scrub the window, and then following the consumer product use; is also able to either squeegee or rinse the residue off with distilled water.
Back in July, when Windex was first advertising these things, I was doing a 2 story wing of a 5 story building with my wfp. Someone from the building compared my pole to this Windex thing. My RO/DI cart was right next to the door she came out of. I simply told her mine cost a little more, and mine actually worked.
Spend thousands on a pole and a pure water system and it gets compared to a $10 stick.
Well, it just puzzles me how a national company can promote something that either will take something unusual like low tds garden hose to work for real. Otherwise if you’re pulling out a squeegee it’s just a soap applicator then and not a ‘miracle’ product.
I was curious of anybody’s awareness since the website seems to give the impression that whatever is in the soap will neutralize the tds of the water (our knowledge projected into their little 3 step demo)
Got to give them credit for going a step further - agitation with the scrubby pad, as opposed to the ‘miracle’ spray and rinse of the garden hose inline product from a couple years back that you spray thru screens too and expect a clean window, man that’s really reaching on the believability scale.
I think what gets under my skin is that it seems a big corp just figures they can capitalize on a problem, sell people garbage (versus the miraculous claims, at least in our area with our tds) with this year’s product and make big bucks with a marginally effective product that may only really work for so few and then move on to the next product to siphon money out of peoples wallet next season.
No conscience I guess is what I’m feeling from Johnson and Johnson, no accountability - produce, sell, oh well, move on.
Ok, I’m done
But the gist of my question was valid - if there was anything in the soap that actually helped with higher tds tap water that would be rinsing it off
I haven’t run into anyone who has used the new pad on the pole, but Ihave had many customers use the in-line bottle with the garden hose-- and like others have said – it caused a bad hard water film on their windows and cost more for us to clean them than if they would have just left them dirty since we now have stains/film to remove.
I wonder how the new pad would work if it was used in conjuction with a pure water fed pole – like a pre-scrub to help stubborn windows that are hydrophobic to rinse better/easier? I wonder what’s on the Windew pad that helps the windows to sheet better? Just a soap/surfactant?
I might have to demo/try one on my reach around next time I have a hydrophobic window.
Bruce,
I get several calls / yr to come clean up the aftermath
of a client trying to save a few bucks by not calling us in the first place. Around here the TDS is around 350 or higher with iron being the big part of that number. I tell clients that they will only be happy if they use soft water or distilled water when using the JNJ product .
Dennis
Actually I’ve been testing this cleaning pad using DI water and am pretty impressed with the way it will get a lot of seemingly hydrophobic windows to sheet the water off. I don’t know what’s in them but it does change the rinse.You do however have to rinse thouroughly but it rinses freely, and is sudsy enough you can see it coming off.
I think the scrub material on the pad is rather weak and the “doodle bug” tool they give is rather flinsy. I modified a pad holder I had, to use them on my Unger 30’ or the Ettore Reach w/c poles.
I would not reccommend any one use these with plain tap water.
Ross…I’d be curious to know how this would fair? Instead of using the Windex pad try a regular doodlebug whitepad saturated in plain old Isopropyl Alcohol along with a few drops of window soap and see if it aids in changing the surface tension/condition of the glass.
Seeing you already have the gadget,it should be a good beta test?
You can find them in the cleaning products section at Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe’s Home Imp.stores. There is a kit that comes with a worthless pad holder and then there are the refill pads sold seperately.