On Tuesday, in lovely sunshine, we went around cleaning our new windows, on the outside surfaces. We will do the inside later on after we have sealed the inner glass to frame joints.
So having a large bucket of hot water and detergent, we proceeded to cut into the dirt and dust on all twelve windows. We could see a faint shadow of a large circular effect on the glass, which we assume was caused by the giant suction cups the glass factory was using to grab and lift the completed glazing unit. There were also smaller circular ones too, from our own rubber suction cups attached to our handles that was used by our cohort during the installation session two weeks ago.
We did some research on the web and apparently, one can remove them by using a very fine scouring cream, like the traditional Windolene Cream glass cleaner and scrubbing hard. So this is what we did and went around again to all twelve windows, scrubbing, wiping, drying and polishing.
But we made a disappointing discovery, we found defect marks in the glass itself.
Some were surface effects like little splatters of metallic looking droplets, a tiny air bubble embedded inside the glass but most seriously, scratch marks, three of them so far on three different windows. All look very similar, a bent line, coming down vertically and then sweeping sideways, the whole thing about 70mm long.
Window-H-Scratch
Two of these scratches are on the inner surface of the outer pane of glass so we cannot possibly be the culprit and the third one is so similar that somewhere in the manufacturing process, the same “mishandling” caused these scratch marks.
We decided that we will wait until after we have cleaned the inside surface of the windows before compiling a full report and decide whether we can live with them or not. To this goal, we went around with a black PU sealant to seal the glass to the aluminium framework to stop any water and dirt from dribbling into the joint.
On Saturday, we had a moment in the morning to go around and wash the windows on the inside this time, now that the sealant have hardened nicely. This allowed us to really inspect the glass, looking for defects.
Here are a gallery of photos showing these defects ..
Window-A-Scratch-From-inside
Window-C-Scratch-From-inside
Window-H-Scratch
Window-H-Bubble
Window-I-mark
Window-M-Bubble
We did some research on the web, read an industry’s document of expected “allowable” defects and even compared to that document, the scratches we found are classed as unacceptable. Therefore, we will be raising an issue with the glass suppliers on the strength of the poor quality.