Hey all, I’ve run into this problem a couple of times now, and can’t seem to find anything about it on the forums. It seems that when after I clean 4 to 6 newly installed commercial windows, they remove the soap suds and slip from my solution, and leave my tbar/rags and water feeling oily. Would this be something that the installers use to install the rubber seals? And what would be best to use to remove this residue so I won’t keep running into this problem?
Thanks
Just use a LOT of soap. Like a bunch.
Edit: all new glass is coated like that. It will eat your soap like crazy.
Apply a few drops of soap directly to your wet strip washer and see if that helps.
Oils and many adhesives reduce the surfactant/emulsifying property of ‘soaps’.
On fresh storefront glass, I hit it once with a lot of soap (dawn for me) and scrub, then come back with some variation of solution. So far, I’ve found some stuff called Glisten (from my store next door), combined with a squirt of ecover to be great for maintenance cleans. I use this combo for everything except CCU’s now.
Try putting some straight vinegar on a white (non-scratch) scrub pad and scrub the whole window down with that before using your t-bar. I have a customer with rose bushes in front of a glass wall. The gardener sprays neem oil on the roses and it gets all over the glass. Huge pain in the ass but it definitely works. Any degreaser should work but I prefer to use vinegar on glass because it’s gentle. Hope that helps.
Great thread. I agree with most of the replies. Chems and safe abrasives put together are the answer. I am working on some way to glue the 2.6 micron silica particle in my SKRUB product to the outer surface of some loose burlap along with a 75 micron acrylic particle. Then use a good dose of ammonia with Dawn. This should remove most oily films. But I know what you are talking about. Over the last 35 years I have run into this problem several times.
Henry
i use a squirt bottle so a killer window never kills my whole batch but i have sometimes found there are no suds on a couple windows, hey where’d my soap go? then later oh yeah my mix is fine.
Yeah, when doing CCU the new windows are always soap killers. So going into the CCU I make sure that I’ve got an extra bottle of soap and then just keep adding it to my squirt bottle.
Thanks all! I’ll give some methods a try.
What about for WFP work? Maybe add some distilled vinegar to the water tank?
