If the haze lightens when you wipe it, even a little, it is sitting on the surface, and that is usually hard water mineral film a cleaner can remove. If it wipes clean from neither the inside nor the outside, the fog is sealed between the panes and no cleaning reaches it. Here is how to tell in two minutes.
Start outside. Wet a corner of the cloudy area with plain water and drag a clean microfiber across it in one pass. If the haze lightens, breaks into streaks, or leaves a clear track behind the cloth, it is sitting on the glass surface. Now do the same on the inside pane. Interior film from cooking, wood smoke, or off-gassing blinds behaves the same way. It moves. If both surfaces come up clean and the cloud is still there when you step back, the haze is between the panes. A second confirmation costs you nothing: watch the window through a temperature swing. Surface mineral film looks identical at 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. Moisture trapped inside a failed unit fogs when the glass is cold and often shrinks or vanishes once the sun hits it. That daily cycle is the tell.
Hard water film reads as a pattern, not an even haze. Look for tight dot clusters, arcs, or a fan shape across the lower half of the glass on whichever side faces a sprinkler head. Treasure Valley water carries a lot of calcium and magnesium, so every drop that dries on glass leaves mineral behind, and each cycle stacks another layer. Six weeks of daily overspray builds a crust you can feel with a fingernail. There is a second, worse stage. Once deposits sit long enough, roughly a year of sun baking them in, the mineral starts to eat into the glass and leaves a permanent etched shadow, sometimes with a faint rainbow sheen. Deposit comes off. Etching does not. The fingernail test sorts them: raised texture you can catch is deposit, glass-smooth haze is etching.
An insulated glass unit is two panes with a sealed air or argon gap and a strip of desiccant hidden in the spacer. When the seal fails, humid air works its way in, the desiccant saturates, and moisture condenses on the inner faces where nobody can reach it. The classic signs are fog low on the pane in the morning, a chalky tide line or dried drip trails running between the panes, and in bad cases a slight distortion when you look through the glass at an angle. Nothing a window cleaner does changes any of it. The repair is replacing the sealed unit, which is often just the glass rather than the whole window and frame, and a glass shop handles that. Get a unit-only quote before anyone sells you full replacement windows.
Restoration is abrasive work, not washing. It means a mild polishing compound or a fine pad worked over the glass to lift mineral off, followed by a full rinse. Done right it takes glass from cloudy to clear. Done carelessly it hazes the surface, scratches tempered panes, or damages the coating on low-E and tinted units, which is why the glass should be identified before anything abrasive touches it. Anyone quoting total removal sight-unseen is guessing. The honest sequence is a test spot on the worst pane first. If the deposit lifts there, the rest of the house will lift too. If a polished spot still reads cloudy, the glass is etched and your money belongs at a glass shop instead. Ask for the test spot. It takes a few minutes and it settles the question.
Use criteria, not marketing. Four questions sort most companies fast. One: will you do a test spot before quoting the whole house? Two: do you price hard water restoration separately from a standard clean? Mineral removal is much slower work, and one blended number usually means one of the two jobs is getting shortchanged. Three: can you send a certificate of insurance covering abrasive work on glass? Four: what will you tell me if it turns out to be a seal failure? That last answer matters most. An answer along the lines of we would clean it anyway and see what happens is selling you a wash that cannot fix your problem. An answer that sends you to a glass shop comes from someone who wants the right outcome more than the invoice.
Reflekt is a Meridian company Hunter Stevens and Ethan Seusy started in April 2025, and that is the plain limitation to weigh: several valley companies have been doing this a decade longer and carry longer review histories. Ours sits at 4.9 stars across 115+ Google reviews. On a cloudy-glass call we check both surfaces, run the wipe and fingernail tests with you standing there, and do a test spot on the worst pane. If it is surface mineral, we quote the restoration. If it is a blown seal, we say so and point you toward a glass shop, because Reflekt does not replace glass. Routine cleaning is 100% pure deionized water with no soap, finished with our RainShield treatment. Windows start at $199 by pane count, screens add $50, and we are fully insured.
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No, and neither can anyone else with a squeegee. That moisture is inside a factory-sealed unit with no access from either room or exterior side. The fix is replacing the insulated glass unit, which a glass company does and which usually costs far less than a whole new window. We will confirm the diagnosis during a quote visit rather than sell you a cleaning that cannot help.
On fresh, light spotting it sometimes helps. A 50/50 white vinegar soak with a non-abrasive pad can loosen a few weeks of sprinkler overspray. On a year of baked-on mineral it does almost nothing, because the deposit is thick and partly bonded. Never let an acid dry on hot glass in direct sun, and keep it off painted frames and gaskets. Vinegar does nothing at all for etched glass.
Three usual causes. Tap water dried on the glass and left its own mineral behind, which is why we clean with deionized water and no soap. Soap residue stayed on the surface and grabbed dust within a day. Or etching was always there, hidden under dirt, and only became visible once the dirt came off. Sprinkler overspray the same evening is the fourth. Call us and we will look.
Window cleaning starts at $199 depending on pane count, and screens add $50. Hard water restoration is quoted after we see the glass, because six weeks of sprinkler film and three years of baked deposit are genuinely different jobs and pricing them blind would be a guess. If you are bundling, gutters start at $199, house washing runs $0.18 per square foot soft-wash, and pressure washing is $0.20 per square foot.
Partly, and with tradeoffs. The method drills small ports, flushes the cavity, and leaves it vented. Appearance often improves, but the sealed gas gap and its insulating value do not come back, and the unit stays open to outside air. Some homeowners accept it as a stopgap and many replace the glass later anyway. Reflekt does not offer it, so we would send you to a glass company to weigh that call.
Aim sprinkler heads away from the glass. That single change prevents most of it, and rinsing quickly when overspray does happen prevents most of the rest. Then keep a cleaning cadence tight enough that deposits never harden. Reflekt Monthly and Quarterly memberships have no contract and include a free annual screen cleaning, plus a 7-Day Rain Guarantee. Same-day and next-day slots are usually available at (208) 453-6760.
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