Pure water window cleaning in Shrewsbury

What pure water actually is, and why it leaves no spots

Every window I clean in Shrewsbury is reached from the ground with a carbon pole. The soft brush on the end does the agitating and the water does the rinsing. That only works because of what is in the water, or rather what is not.

Tap water carries dissolved minerals: calcium, magnesium, sodium and whatever else it has picked up on the way to your kitchen. You cannot see any of it while the water is on the glass. You see it the moment the pane dries, because the water evaporates and the minerals stay put. The white haze and the drying streaks people blame on a rushed job are usually not dirt at all, they are the water itself, left behind. A traditional window cleaner gets round that by drying the pane with a cloth or a blade before it can dry on its own.

De-ionised water skips the problem rather than chasing it. It goes through a sediment filter, then carbon, then a reverse osmosis membrane, then a resin vessel that strips out the last of the charged particles. What comes out reads at or near zero on a TDS meter, which is the gauge for total dissolved solids. Water that pure is unstable and wants to pick something up, so it actively lifts dirt off the glass and holds it in suspension, then rinses away and evaporates leaving genuinely nothing. No minerals, no residue, no cloth marks. The glass dries itself clear.

No detergent goes near it either, and that matters more than people expect. Soap has to be removed, and the part that never quite comes off is a faint tacky film. Dust and pollen land on that the same afternoon. With nothing on the surface to hold them, the finish stays looking right for longer.

Because it is a pole and not a pair of hands on a ladder, the whole window gets covered rather than just the pane. Glass, frames, sills, the rubber seals and your front and back doors are brushed and rinsed on every visit, in the price. On white uPVC that is the part people actually notice, since the grey tidemark creeping along the bottom of a frame is what makes a house look neglected even when the glass is clear.

Two Shrewsburys, two different window jobs

Shrewsbury is really two towns for a window cleaner, and the glass tells you which one you are standing in.

In the centre, round Town Walls and Belle Vue, it is Georgian frontages and timber framing: tall, narrow-fronted, often three storeys, with sash bars, old putty and paintwork that has taken a fair few winters. Nothing wants leaning against that. A pole and a brush touch the surface and nothing else, there is no ladder foot planted on a narrow pavement, and nobody is standing on a sill that was last made good a long time ago. I keep the water moving on old timber rather than parking the brush in one spot, and I work the bars and the putty line rather than skating over them, because on a sash it is the bars that hold the muck.

Out at Radbrook, Sutton Farm, Bicton, Copthorne, Monkmoor, Meole Brace, Shelton and Bayston Hill it is a different job again: uPVC, render, wide picture windows, and more often than not a conservatory sat right in front of the back elevation. The pole goes over the conservatory roof instead of anyone climbing onto it, and the tall panes above a rear extension get done from the lawn.

What makes them dirty is different too. Houses on the main approach roads into town pick up road film, a fine oily grey of exhaust soot, brake dust and rain spray that bonds to glass and does not simply rinse off in a shower. It shows as a dull sheen that never quite clears, and it wants regular attention rather than an occasional heavy clean. The tree-lined avenues have the opposite problem: a heavy load of pollen and sap in late spring that lands on warm glass and bakes on, plus lime and sycamore drip that dries hard on sills and painted timber. A house set back on a quiet estate road catches neither in any quantity. That is why two Shrewsbury homes of the same size can honestly need two different rounds.

What it costs here, and what moves the figure

Plenty of window cleaners will not put a number on a page. Here is mine. Window cleaning starts at £18, and £18 is my minimum charge for window cleaning, so no window round comes in under it. A small terrace with a handful of windows sits on that minimum, and it climbs from there with the property.

What moves it:

• How much glass there is, and over how many storeys and elevations.
• Extras on the building, a conservatory, French doors, a porch, a glazed extension.
• Access, whether a pole and hose can get round the back without a fight.
• How bad it is, since a house that has been left a long while takes real work on the first visit.
• How often you want it, because an 8-weekly round costs roughly 15% more per clean than 4-weekly, the longer gap giving road film and pollen the time they need to bond hard to the glass.

The instant quote on this site will give you a figure in about a minute. Whatever it says, I confirm the price with you before I start, and it does not move afterwards. I am fully insured for domestic and commercial work, and rated 5.0 on Google from 46 five-star reviews, plus 169 recommendations on Facebook.

Blades and scrapers, and why old Shrewsbury glass never forgives them

The damage I get asked about most in this town is not dirt, it is scratches.

Old glass is soft. The cylinder and early float glass in the Georgian and Victorian houses round the centre is nothing like a modern sealed unit, and it carries a fine surface skin that marks if you attack it. A metal blade or a scraper dragged over paint flecks, mortar splash or hard water spotting will take the dirt off and take a little of the surface with it. You rarely see it on the day. You see it the first time low winter sun catches the pane at an angle, and then you see it every time after that, because scratched glass cannot be polished back. On a sash light or a leaded panel, replacing the pane is not a five minute job either.

Grit does the same damage more quietly. Anything pulled across dry glass with sand or masonry dust under it behaves like fine abrasive paper. That is why the glass gets flooded first and brushed second, never the other way round, and why the brush goes back into clean water before it goes near the next window rather than carrying half a driveway with it.

Ladders are the other one, and the reason everything here is done from the ground: leaned against render, guttering or lead flashing they leave their own marks behind, on top of everything else that can go wrong up one.

Then there are the frames. A clean pane sitting in a green sill reads as a job somebody rushed, so on my rounds the frame is part of the clean rather than something you have to ask for.

While I am set up outside

If I am already there with the water on, the rest of the outside is easier to get done at the same time and saves me coming back out to you separately.

The one that comes up most on the Shrewsbury estates is the conservatory roof, from £60. Those panels sit almost flat, they are shaded by the house for a good part of the day, and they green over long before anyone notices, because you look up through them from underneath rather than at them from outside. Doing the roof on the same visit as the windows means the thing looks right from the garden as well as from the sofa.

Everything else, price and page:

• Gutter clearing, from £55. Gutter clearing in Shrewsbury
• Fascias and soffits, from £60.
• Driveways and patios, £3.50 per m², plus £1.50 per m² to brush kiln-dried sand back into block paving joints. Driveway and patio cleaning
• Solar panels, £6 a panel. Solar panel cleaning
• Roof soft washing, from £250, at low pressure, never a jet wash. Why that is, on the roof page

Say so when you book and it goes on the same quote, confirmed before anything starts.