What's actually happening
Hard water means water carrying dissolved minerals — mostly calcium and magnesium. When a droplet lands on your window and evaporates, the water leaves and the minerals stay.
Do that a few times and you have spots you can wipe off. Do it for a few seasons, in the sun, and those deposits bond to the glass surface itself. At that point you're not cleaning anymore — you're doing restoration.
How hard is Davis County water, exactly?
Hard enough to matter. The Weber Basin Water Conservancy District — the wholesale supplier for most of the county — reports hardness ranging from about 10 to 18 grains per gallon (roughly 171 to 308 parts per million). Farmington City reports its own supply at around 8 to 10 grains per gallon.
For reference, water above about 10.5 grains per gallon is generally classified as "very hard." Most of us here are living in that range or above it.
The number one culprit: sprinklers
It's not the rain. It's your irrigation system.
Rain is soft — it's distilled by evaporation before it falls. Sprinkler water is your hard tap water, sprayed directly onto glass, in the sun, over and over, all summer. That's the ideal recipe for mineral buildup.
If you have windows that are noticeably worse than the rest of the house, walk outside during a watering cycle and watch. Nine times out of ten, there's a head hitting the glass.
The fix is usually free: adjust or replace the head so the spray pattern misses the house. Ten minutes of work saves you a restoration bill later.
The three stages, and what each one costs you
| Stage | What you see | What it takes to fix |
|---|---|---|
| Fresh deposits | Spots that wipe off with water | Regular cleaning |
| Built-up deposits | Cloudy film, resists normal washing | Restoration treatment |
| Bonded/etched | Permanent haze that doesn't improve | Often can't be fully removed |
The whole point of a regular cleaning schedule is staying in row one.
What we can and can't promise
We'll always look at your glass and tell you honestly which stage you're in. Sometimes the answer is "this comes right off." Sometimes it's "this needs a restoration pass, here's what that costs." And sometimes — not often, but sometimes — the answer is "this has been here too long, and I don't want to take your money pretending I can fix it."
Hard water stain removal is quoted separately from regular cleaning, and we quote it before we touch anything.
Prevention, in order of effectiveness
- Fix sprinkler overspray. Free, and it solves most of the problem.
- Clean on a schedule. Deposits that never get a chance to build up never bond. Our quarterly plan exists mostly for this.
- Don't let it sit through a whole summer. Sun and heat accelerate bonding significantly.
Not sure which stage your windows are in? We'll take a look and tell you straight. Get a free quote.