Two houses a block apart off Cole can have completely different glass. One subdivision put its sprinklers in when the lots were graded in 1978 and the heads still throw at the same west windows. The next one over got redone with drip and gets nothing. That is the whole story of hard water out here.
West Valley did not go in all at once. The blocks closest to Franklin and Curtis were platted in the mid-1970s, and the pockets north toward Emerald and the mall filled in through the late 1980s and early 1990s. That fifteen-year spread is why severity changes street by street. An original 1970s system runs brass impact heads at low pressure with big droplets, aimed at whatever looked even from the middle of the lawn. The systems that went in later use pop-up spray bodies at higher pressure, throwing a finer mist that drifts on the afternoon wind. Both reach windows, but they leave different marks: impacts leave heavy spotted rings low on the pane, spray heads leave an even haze across the whole thing. We can usually tell which one we are dealing with before we knock on the door.
Two sources feed lawns in this part of Boise. Hose-bib and city-fed systems run the municipal supply, which on the west bench leans on deep wells and commonly tests in the 10-to-13-grain range. That is dissolved calcium and magnesium, and it dries clear before it turns white, so it sneaks up on you over a couple of seasons. Canal water off the Settlers and Farmers Union systems is untreated. It carries silt, algae and field minerals, and it dries to a gritty tan film with white underneath. The silt film washes off easily. The mineral under it may not. If your system draws out of the ditch you will also see that tan line on the vinyl frames, the garage door and the bottom of the siding, which is a quick way to confirm the source without opening a valve box.
Overspray is never evenly distributed, and pricing a whole house as if it were is how people get overcharged. On a standard West Valley lot the worst glass is west and south, because those panes are still hot in the evening when most timers run and the water flashes off before it can sheet down. Ground-floor windows within about fifteen feet of a head take direct hits. On the split-levels through here, the half-height basement windows sit low enough to catch spray a taller window never sees, and they go unnoticed for years. Corner lots are the other bad case, with street-side heads on two sides plus whatever the city parkstrip or a shared common strip along an arterial throws when it runs. North elevations are usually fine. We quote what is damaged, not the full pane count.
This is the part worth reading before you pay anyone. Hard water sits on glass as a deposit at first, and a deposit comes off. Left through repeated summers, the mineral slowly eats into the silica and becomes etching, which is a change in the glass itself rather than something sitting on top of it. No acid, no polish, no amount of pressure reverses that. The field test is simple. Wet the pane, drag a fingernail across the worst area, then look at it edge-on with the sun behind you. If it feels slightly raised and the haze moves when you scrub a corner, it is deposit and we can take it off. If the glass feels smooth and the cloud stays put in the same shape, it is etched, and the honest answer is a new sash. We run that test in front of you before quoting.
Cleaning the glass without touching the cause buys you exactly one season. Once the panes are clear we walk the zones with you and flag the heads actually hitting the house, usually two or three out of thirty. Most are a ten-minute fix: a nozzle swap, an arc adjustment, or dropping a riser so the throw clears the sill. Where a head has to reach past a window, a pressure-regulated body or a rotator throwing bigger droplets keeps mist off the glass. That walk-through is free. The restoration itself is quoted by severity, because a first-season film and a five-summer crust are not the same labor. It is included on the Monthly membership. Final rinse is 100% pure deionized water, so nothing we leave on the glass can dry into a new spot. Call (208) 453-6760.
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Almost always aim, not water. One head throwing at your west elevation for eight summers does more damage than thirty heads aimed correctly. Check whether your system was ever redone. A lot of these lots still run the original 1970s or 1980s layout, and the shrubs planted since then have changed what the spray hits. Two feet of arc adjustment is usually the whole difference.
On light first-season spotting, vinegar and a lot of patience will work. On anything older it will not, and the two things people reach for next cause damage. A razor blade will scratch tempered glass, which most modern lower sashes are, and any acid product left to run down will burn the anodizing on aluminum frames and cloud old vinyl. If a mild acid and dwell time do not move it, it is not going to move.
You can, and some customers do. Understand the tradeoff: every season the deposit sits there, a little more of it converts to etching, so you are paying repeatedly while the glass gets permanently worse underneath. If the head cannot be re-aimed and the window is one you care about, monthly service on that elevation only is far cheaper than replacing a slider. We will tell you which of your windows are worth that.
We can restore the glass, but we cannot adjust a head we do not own, and we will not touch someone else's system without permission. What we can do is photograph the head, the arc and the affected elevation and hand you something concrete to take to the board or the landscape contractor. That documentation gets it fixed a lot faster than a complaint at a meeting does.
It is quoted by severity rather than by pane, because the labor difference between a light film and a five-summer crust is enormous and pane count tells us nothing about it. Most West Valley houses only need a handful of windows treated, usually west and south ground floor, so the number is smaller than people expect. It is included on the Monthly membership. Call (208) 453-6760 and we can give you a range from photos.
Both, with different methods and different odds. The chalky white film on first-generation vinyl frames out here is often a mix of mineral and oxidized plastic, and only the mineral half comes off. Aluminum frames from the 1970s houses clean up well unless someone has already run acid down them. We treat frames separately from glass and tell you up front which surfaces will look new and which will just look better.
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