Window cleaningin Deerfield Beach, FL.

The Cove runs from Federal Highway to the Intracoastal, with the Hillsboro River bending around it and private docks on the waterfront lots. The back of those houses faces the water with sliders and windows that take salt every onshore day, and the salt film scatters the light so the view looks hazy.

The glass is washed and squeegeed by hand, frames and sills wiped because they hold salt too, and tracks brushed and vacuumed so the sliders run. Screens come out and get washed. Because salt returns within months, a three to four month cycle on the water side keeps it from building, and the street side can go longer. Frames that are wiped regularly pit far more slowly.

Deerfield Beach treats its water at a nanofiltration plant that came online in May 2004 and a lime softening plant, both drawing on the Biscayne Aquifer, and blends the two. Membrane filtration and lime softening both take out hardness, so the city's tap water is not what spots the windows.

The spotting on lower panes comes from irrigation, on the two days a week the county allows. Recent spotting lifts in an ordinary wash. Spots that have dried on again and again can etch into the glass and need a mineral remover, pane by pane, and some only lighten. One pane is tested before the quote. Turning the heads away from the house is the cheapest way to keep them off.

West of I-95, the salt fades and height takes over. Where a Hillsboro Ranches or Deer Creek home is two stories, the bedroom windows and any arched transom upstairs are hard to reach from inside and risky to reach from a ladder on the stucco.

A water-fed pole reaches that glass from the ground, scrubbing with a soft brush and rinsing with purified water that dries without spots. Ground-floor glass and sliders onto the pool are done by hand, screens are washed, and tracks are cleaned. If a transom sits over a roof section the pole cannot reach, that is said when the job is quoted. Inside glass can be added room by room if you want both sides done.