Expert: Robert Lamb - 12/25/2010

Question
After cleaning my mothers Windows today I later noticed there are a lot of long fine scratches now all over them!   I think the Windows are only a few years old and I doubt they had they scratches.  I had used a soft rag with windex and thought that would be ok.  She hasn't noticed them yet and I don't know if she will.  I sure do though since I'm observant and can see things like that.  Do Windows normally scratch that easily?!?  Don't know what to do and feel awful right now.  My gut is feeling so queezy right now.

Answer
Tiffany,

I assume the windows are glass. If that is the case, a simple window cleaning should not have scratched the windows. If the windows were some sort of plastic, then that may be a different story. Plastic easily scratches and there may have been nothing you could do about that.

Here's my guess. You say the windows are only a few years old and that there are a lot of long fine scratches in them. I believe the scratches were already there and only became visible once the windows were cleaned.

In recent years there has been an epidemic of scratched glass caused by unsuspecting home owners, window cleaners, and others. What has been happening is that glass manufacturing companies have been sending their glass to be tempered and in the tempering process, the glass is being damaged by an inferior tempering process. Let me explain. Glass is tempered to make it safer for the end user, in this case, the home owner. If the glass were not tempered, what would happen is that if the glass were to ever break, it would produce large long shards. These shards would resemble the blades on swords or daggers. You can imagine what damage it would cause if the home owner fell on that! So the glass manufacturer sends his glass to a factory to be tempered. that factory runs the glass through a very hot oven, not hot enough to melt it, but hot enough to change the breaking pattern of the glass. Now the newly tempered glass, if broken, will break into tiny squares. The glass is now much safer for the end user. But the problem is that some factories feel in order for them to save time and money, they can skip cleaning the glass properly before the glass is run through the oven for tempering. If this cleaning process is skipped, the end product has tiny glass fragments, glass dust, and other impurities baked into the surface of the glass. This glass debris is then sometimes dislodged in the cleaning process (usually with a razor blade) and then dragged across the surface of the glass. If this is done, fine hair-line scratches are the result. For more information on this subject, please see this web site: http://www.stopscratchedglass.com/

I hope this has been helpful. There may be a remedy to your problem. If you would like to discuss this further, please contact me.

Sincerely,

Robert Lamb
Window Masters
http://www.window-masters.com