Have you ever been able to snake off a window after wetting it with pure water? I mean water with not even a drop of soap of any kind or chemical like TSP or sodium metasilicate. Not even a little ammonia. No GG3 or GG4. Nothing but pure water. Well I have! When I wet the window the pure water completely sheeted over EVERY square inch of glass right to the edge. This is an absolute dream for window cleaners that use water fed poles. But how do we CONVERT a glass surface to love water this much? Convert it to what is called hydrophylic?
I will begin by explaining that ALL glass is naturally hydrophylic. It is in fact very hydrophylic. IF it is as clean as it can be! Which most of the time it is not. You see glass is mostly made up of silicon dioxide. Which is somewhat polar. Therefore it will attract water. Further the surface of "clean" glass has silanol (SiOH) groups which are very water loving and attract water molecules. So why is glass hydrophobic in the field? Why does water bead up unevenly?
Because glass gets dirty on a molecular level. It also collects soap residue, oily contaminants, and other residue. Sorry to tell you but our methods don't really clean glass that well. Also people are using all manor of coatings on glass. Repcon was one of the very first hydrophobic coatings that came to market back in 1971. Which then became Rain X. Which then became the Invisible Shield. There have been over a hundred different aftermarket hydrophobic products that have come to market between 1971 and 2025. Currently we have aftermarket hydrophobic products based on functionalyzed ceramic nano particles. There are also hydrophobic coatings applied to float glass at the factory as it comes off the float bath. It is fused to the glass surface.
To convert a hydrophobic glass surface to hydrophylic we must completely remove all contaminants and coatings. By doing this you will expose all of the surface silicon dioxide and silanol groups. Personally I will go one step further and increase the roughness of the surface which increases the surface area for greater exposure. So the glass acts like a sponge. I do this by using a cerium oxide slurry. The cerium should be as pure as possible so near white. Also a particle around 2.5 to 3 microns is good. This a "mechanical cleaning" or polishing technique. The time needed for this is around thirty seconds per square foot. So it is very time consuming. The results however are unbelievable. Other window cleaners have experimented with other mechanical techniques like using 0000 steel wool or ultra fine bronze wool. Then there are some products that have come out based on nanoparticle slurries. Or some people have turned to using glass etchants such as hydrofluoric acid or sulfuric acid. As they clean with a water fed pole. Using an etchant with a water fed pole is probably one of the most frightening things I can imagine. So of course I would NEVER suggest doing it. The only reason I mention it here is to advise AGAINST using it.
The goal here is to find the most effective, completely safe, most quick ways to "deep clean" glass surfaces on a molecular level for the purpose of returning the glass to its original hydrophylic nature. Here is a complete demonstration of a product that was developed to do precisely what I have been explaining in this post. This product IS available. There are others too. In this video that I made I show not just how to deep clean in this case a mirror, but also how to snake off with ONLY pure water once the glass has been "converted" to a hydrophylic surface. Also exactly what a true hydrophylic surface looks like when covered with totally pure water. If this does not amaze you nothing will. Watch it a few times. Then send me an email and let me know what you think.
Henry
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