You see, our shower enclosure has lots of beautiful, clear glass. Or at least what should be clear glass. As you can see by the above photo which has been taken at a slight angle, we have so many water spots that at certain angles it is impossible to see through the glass at all. Even when you can see through, the water stains are less than attractive.
Now being the clever lad my mother raised me to be, I didn't just rush to our local hardware store for the solution to my problem, I used the Internet and Googled "disolve water desposits" and similar queries. Sure enough, I got answers. Virtually every single cleanser we had in our house was suggested as the cure as well as several I hadn't heard of. I spent several hours trying all the potions we had in our cupboard with little or no success. Some of them looked like they were solving the problem but as soon as I dried off the glass, the white outlines of the water deposits began to show up again. The spots look like little amoeba's in the vast ocean of the glass surface. Several of the potions didn't do anything at all. I had to wonder how serious the water stains were which had given way to those solutions.
When I finished with the on hand potions, I made a trip to Home Depot where I picked up a couple of potions we didn't have including a commercial grade product that had been recommended on a professional cleaning service site. Back home the experiment continued with the same result - nothing.
The only product which seemed to work at all is something called "Nothin's Better", shown in the front row above. And it turns out that it isn't a cleaner at all but a very fine powder that acts as an abrasive/polishing compound for the glass. Using a damp rag, you grind this powder onto the glass surface until it squeaks. Then you do it a little longer. The little "amoeba" spots get smaller and smaller until they disappear and the glass looks like it originally did. The polishing compound is so fine that it doesn't scratch the glass. The only problem with this product is that it takes about 10 minutes to polish a 3 inch square. I have to question whether our shower or windows are worth this level of effort.
Has anyone out there had better luck with some other solution?
You could use a car buffer, but it may not be fast enough. Or you could try to find a soft buffing pad for your drill and use that.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm lazy so I'd try something more low tech and passive first. I'd get some of that daily spray, spray it daily for a while, and see if it softens any of the spots.
ReplyDeleteI just suspect that nothing short of buffing will work quickly, but the stuff got on there because it was disolved in water, it can disolve in water again, but like soaking a pan, over hours or days kept wet (or under the proper chemical) they will start to soften. (But perhaps not the approach you want to use while trying to distract yourself from missing your wife.)