Water Fed Pole System:
Pure Water Window Cleaning
Pure Water System
At Squeegee Klean, we are always staying on top of industry advancements and we are one step ahead of the learning curve. We pride ourselves on safety and our track record shows it.
The latest and greatest advancement in our industry is the introduction to the water-fed pole system. This system allows us to clean windows using a brush and water… it’s that simple. The best part about this system is most brushes can reach up to 60 feet which means we never have to leave the ground to clean windows. Each day that we use this system, is another day that we slap serious injury in the face. No one said cleaning windows on a ladder 30+ feet in the air was a safe job. However, somebody has got to do it. Our goal is to do it safer…
How Our System Works.
Water is pumped through a hose reel, up a telescopic Water Fed Pole and through jets in the brush where it is sprayed onto the glass. When the brush contacts with the surface of the glass and frames, it lightly agitates the surface, loosening the dirt. Any dirt or dust particles are flushed away by the constant stream of water.
What would happen if normal tap water were used to wash a window?
It will result in the glass appearing milky white in color when it dries, and you will be able to write your name on the glass surface with your finger. Try it! This effect on the glass is due entirely to the mineral content of the tap water.
Water Fed Pole Systems work because they use the equivalent of water.That is: Water without any mineral content, or demineralized water, so that when pure water dries it leaves the windows perfectly clean. In addition, pure water does not exist naturally and will always absorb atmospheric elements as it returns to its natural state. When applied to the window, pure water automatically absorbs the dirt.
All water from out of a tap contains a quantity of minerals. The quantity differs from one area to another because of the variety of enviroment and ground rock strata that rainwater passes through before it reaches our rivers and ground-water storage reservoirs. If you were to buy bottled spring water from the supermarket and read the analysis label you will notice that water contains minerals such as calcium, magnesium, chlorides, nitrates, sulphates, bi-carbonates, sodium, potassium and silica etc…that are dissolved in the water.
A TDS meter is required to identify the total quantity of minerals that are dissolved in your water.
TDS: Total Dissolved Solids.
This hand held meter will give a three digit reading.
If you were to test the water at your tap, the meter would probably show a reading of between 035 parts per million (035 ppm) and 600 parts per million (600 ppm). This is ok for drinking, but it is not of any use at all for window cleaning!
If you want to wash glass and end up with perfectly clean windows, all the minerals need to be filtered or extracted from the water, giving a TDS reading of 000 ppm indicating zero mineral content or total demineralization.
OUR SYSTEM CONVERTS REGULAR TAP WATER INTO “PURE WATER” BY USING THE METHODS LISTED BELOW
Reverse Osmosis
In simple terms, reverse osmosis is the process of pushing a solution through a filter that traps the solute on one side and allows the pure solvent to be obtained from the other side. More formally, it is the process of forcing a solvent from a region of high solute concentration through a membrane to a region of low solute concentration by applying a pressure in excess of the osmotic pressure. The membrane here is semipermeable, meaning it allows the passage of solvent but not of solute.
The membranes used for reverse osmosis have no pores, the separation takes place in a dense polymer layer of only microscopic thickness. In most cases the membrane is designed to only allow water to pass through. The water goes into solution in the polymer of which the membrane is manufactured, and crosses it by diffusion. This process requires that a high pressure be exerted on the high concentration side of the membrane.
How R/O Works
Reverse Osmosis uses a very fine filter or membrane. The membrane is so fine that the pores only allow passage of water molecules. The dissolved impurities do not pass through the membrane.These impurities can include calcium, sodium, and other elements that normal water can contain. The membrane itself is made from a synthetic material, such as polyamide or polysulfone. This membrane is delicate and could be damaged by organic matter, iron, chlorine, and other impurities found in normal tap water. These impurities must be removed by pre- filters.
This membrane, begins as a large flat sheet, is spiral wound into a tube , and housed in a pressure vessel. The pressure of the water entering the vessel is sufficient to squeeze the water molecules through the membrane to produce a flow of pure water. The remaining water passess through the vessel carrying the impurities with it and exits to waste. This is known as reject.
The reject water has a higher content of dissolved solids but is not hazardous and can be safely drained away.
Deionized water (DI water)
Deionized water (DI water or de-ionized water is water that lacks ions, such as cations from sodium, calcium, iron, copper and anions such as chloride and bromide. This means it has been purified from all other ions but H3O+ and OH-, but it may still contain other non-ionic types of impurities such as organic compounds. This type of water is produced using an ion exchange process.
Deionized water is similar to distilled water, in that it is useful for scientific experiments where the presence of impurities may be undesirable.
The lack of ions also causes the water’s resistivity to increase. Ultra-pure deionized water can have a theoretical maximum resistivity up to 18.3 M-·cm-1, compared to around 15 k-·cm-1 for common tap water. Deionized water’s high resistivity allows it, in some very highly speciallized instances, to be used as a coolant in direct contact with high-voltage electrical equipment. Because of its high relative dielectric constant (~80), it is also used (for short durations) as a high voltage dielectric in many pulsed power applications, such as Sandia’s Z Machine.
Deionized water easily changes pH while storing it. This is because carbon dioxide from the air dissolves in the water and causes a drop in pH by forming carbonic acid H2CO3. Boiling the water will remove the carbon dioxide to restore the pH.
The uses of ultrapure deionized water are many and varied, often having application in scientific experimentation such as when very pure chemical reaget solutions are needed in a chemical reaction or when a biological growth medium needs to be sterile and very pure. DI water is also used extensively in the semiconductor industry to process and clean silicon wafers and sometimes in the optics industry when very highly clean optical surfaces are required for coating.
DI water is also often used as a final rinse when washing scientific glassware. Deionized water is very often used as an “ingredient” in many cosmetics and pharmaceuticals where it is sometimes referred to as “aqua” on product ingredient labels. This use again owes to its lack of potential for causing undesired chemical reactions due to impurities. A recent use of DI water is that of window cleaning where because it contains so little dissolved solutes so the glass dries without leaving any spots.
