The most common question we hear is “What’s the difference between Glass Gleam-3™ and Glass Gleam-4™?” Well, I’ll tell you that, and then I’ll tell you about Glass Gleam-Solar™ and Glass Gleam-Glide™ too.
Glass Gleam-3 was our first foray into the window cleaning world. We learned quite a lot from the feedback we got from our early users. GG-3 is a super-concentrate; one gallon makes 1,280 gallons of ready-to-use window cleaning solution. For the professional, this is great – only 1/10th of an ounce added to each gallon of water. For other end-users, it means that one quart will probably last them their whole lifetime. Since GG-3 doesn’t contain surfactants (heavy detergents like dish soap) or sodium lauryl sulfate (fake bubbles), we needed to add a dye so that users can tell if its been added to a bucket by looking at it. After some testing, we chose a non-staining orange dye. It turns out, that if your window cleaning solution is not blue, the automotive industry won’t buy it. Bummer. Also, the professionals that had learned to fan their squeegees in dish soap would actually add Dawn or Joy to their GG-3, effectively destroying GG-3’s ability to do its magic. GG-3 isn’t soap, instead it’s some really good science. It uses a water conditioner that makes the water clean effortlessly.
Here I need to pause and briefly explain how this works. See, when glass is made, it has to cool down from around two thousand degrees Fahrenheit down to room temperature so that it can be cut and stacked. That means that the glass is coming out of a furnace and into a process called the tin bath. It will then get cooled down slowly, annealed (strengthened), and air-cooled to its final temperature. Meanwhile, the side of the glass floating on the tin will be perfectly smooth and under a microscope will still look smooth like you’d expect. The other side (the top) is exposed to air and under the microscope will look like hills, more like what you’d expect if looking at a lava bed. These imperfections aren’t visible to the naked eye – you need some pretty serious magnification to see them at all. We refer to the as pits and pores because they hold dirt onto the pane.
Now, when you mix surfactants with calcium (hard water) it doesn’t foam up, instead it creates a soapy and slimy scum. Chemical blenders know this so they add sodium lauryl sulfate, or an equivalent foaming agent, to produce an artificial bubble/foam (it’s usually the second or third ingredient). That’s supposed to make you think it’s working. Instead, this all becomes a mixture of the soap scum it created, the fake bubble residue, and the calcium, which makes a sludge-like goop that fills these microscopic pores on the surface of the glass and slowly destroys window tracks. Avoiding that goop by using a professional solution clears up the microscopic pits and pores, and allows light to fully penetrate the glass and return glass to its intended condition – clean and free of residue. The glass will sparkle as the light bounces around it.
So, your squeegee will make a window look and feel clean, but these micro-pores are now loaded with the original dirt and an extra buildup of the goop. As soon as the next day’s dew-point comes around, it’ll start weeping from these pits and pores. Undetectable at first, but that’s why a window will look dirty again after only a couple of weeks after you’ve cleaned it, depending on the weather.
GG-3 clears everything from the glass, so there’s nothing to attract or hold anything, from pollen to soot, etc. and keeps it that way.
Also, since we don’t add any counterfeit bubbles, and we break down the calcium in the water, you’re left with a perfectly clean new-like pane of glass that is truly clean, and stays clean for a long time.
Next up is GG-4. With feedback from our GG-3 users, we added more of the wetting agent so that it won’t dry in windy or hot conditions, increased the amount of calcium buster, more de-greaser, and colored it blue. Adding these extras cost us some of the concentration, so one gallon will make just over 500 gallons of ready-to-use solution. That’s just ¼ ounce per gallon of water, so price-wise, it’s still just a few cents per gallon of water. This is our #1 selling window cleaning solution.
One day, back in 2009, I read that the US Army’s number one problem was fuel delivery runs. The enemy somehow always knows when and where to attack. So they announced they’d started working on a fold-able, mobile solar panel array to be delivered in 2025. The thing that really caught my attention was that they were promising these new panels would be able to function at 88% efficiency. That means that all the existing panels that run between 12-18% efficiency will be replaced. And these new panel operators will want them to be clean and stay that way. As a US Navy veteran, I know that when the military sets out to do something, they do it.
So we took the basic formula for GG-4 and added a lot more of the wetting agent, de-greaser and calcium killer to make Glass Gleam-Solar. You’ll never see spots, pollen, or anything else on a panel cleaned with GG-Solar. It’s applied, agitated if needed, and free rinsed, even with city water.
By getting into this space early (in 2009), GG-Solar is considered the professional go-to choice for solar panel cleaning solution. It’s not soap, it’s science. And it works. At the time we were developing GG-Solar, we talked to a lot of solar panel owners and installers. We were fairly surprised to learn that cleaning and maintenance weren’t considered very important to installers, and homeowners too were left scratching their heads to figure out how to clean them. All anyone wanted to talk about was installation and profits. We knew there’d be a change coming and wanted to get ahead of it. Now we have distributors in 9 countries, and 2024 will be our 40th year in business.
Lastly, what’s this stuff Glass Gleam-Glide? Well, it’s easy: it’s silicone in solution to give window cleaners more glide. Just a few drops in your bucket and whoosh! More slide than dish soap, that’s for sure. For years, we didn’t make this and I must’ve heard “I just shoot some Dawn in there” a thousand times. I saw that there were some slip agents in the market, so I ordered them to test. What I learned blew me away: They were just dish soaps! Now, by now you must know that anything made with surfactants is going to leave an invisible residue, so my idea of recommending users buy these other products was out. I asked our lead chemist if we could do it and he said “Yes” and here we are. The instructions say to add 1/10th of an ounce per gallon, but I tell folks to just add a drop or two and keep going until you get the slip you want.
Window cleaners that learn to fan with dish soap sometimes complain about the lack of slip and visibility when switching to our professional solutions. So, hopefully they’ll stop adding dish soap and use the GG-Glide instead. We’ll never be able to increase the visibility, since that would leave a residue. Plus, since there’s no fake bubbles in the track, there’s no cleanup!
Now here’s my favorite part: You don’t have to take our word for it! To get a free sample of any of these professional solutions, just send your name & address to Info@TitanLabs.net
