Functional Additives and Non-Routine Window Cleaning

Hydrophobic, oleophobic, and hydrophylic surface properties can all be attained with specific chemical additives for your cleaning solution.  All of these go easily into water and will blend with most of the window cleaning soaps out there.  They are functional in that they will react directly with the free oxygen atoms of the glass surface.  Testing is required for application techniques and longevity however.  Certain additives will only last for a very short time.  They must also be applied to an "activated" surface.  In other words the surface must be either physically polished and or chemically cleaned to expose as many of the reaction sites as possible.  If not the additive/chemical will not bond to the glass and comes off very quickly.  Most times it will not bond at all.

      


    


This is a technology.  Not just a product.  It is like the tools that we use.  You can hand anyone a squeegee,  but will they be able to use it?  That is why as I continue to develop these tools/chemical additives to change the water loving/hating properties of glass surfaces, I need to produce a series of hands on seminars for training purposes.  These seminars will become available first on the east coast and then move out.  They will focus on non-routine window cleaning.  But this will include changing surfaces with functional additives.  For example can defective surfaces which are very scratch sensitive be altered?  Can they be made scratch resistant?  The answer is absolutely.  Both Mark Tanner and myself have done just this.  WE HAVE ALREADY DONE IT.  Now we just have to market it.  This is also something that the seminars will reveal.  How to do it and how to market it.  Here is a little bit of the science behind it.

http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/FIELD/Cairo/images/Self_Assembly_Lab.pdf

Jordie of  "The Window Cleanse" will be helping me to create videos demonstrating this technology.  They will be very educational and entertaining.  I know you will enjoy watching!

If you want to have the edge over other cleaning companies you absolutely MUST step into the future.  This is NOT the same industry that we had 20 to 40 years ago.  It is very different.  We are engineering precision surfaces because glass is coming out defective.  I do know the glass industry does not see it this way.  Simply because they do not have to clean it.  But when the cleaning becomes non-routine we must go to alternative cleaning techniques which can be exceptionally special if the surfaces are defective.  I do have to applaud GANA however because they have recognized this and have been working with the IWCA by helping to write at least two bulletins.  Which essentially state that when general contractors or anyone else allows debris to get on windows which cannot be removed with a squeegee and an applicator, then the glass is destroyed.

Written by Henry Grover Jr.
henrygroverjr@gmail.com

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