A few questions for the community, specifically those who use a WFP regularly. I been actually interested in this topic of hydrophobic and hydrophilic glass. Phobic has water stick and philic does not. I’m learning that hydrophobic glass have more of the water kind of spot on the glass even with 0 tds, and hydrophilic glass produces no spotting.
Is there a way you can tell glass is hydrophobic or hydrophilic without knowing how the WFP will respond?
Also, are the techniques you use different with WFP depending on if its hydrophobic or hydrophilic?
In regards to having the glass come out cleaner, is it damaging to glass to try to convert hydrophobic to hydrophilic?
I thought it is other way around…Hydrophobic repels water. It should bead up and run off via sealer, occasionally the beads stays there and that how you get spots. May need scrubbing to get more residue off or use fan spray instead of stream spray.
Hydrophilic surface gets wetter uniformely throughout and stay wet longer. That how you can tell. I dont know any other way to tell.
Philia means ‘love’ hence hydrophilic glass has the water wash over it like amcurtain, the water loves to sheet down the glass in one complete sheet. This is easy to clean as you just chase the water down the pane of glass in one pass.
Phobia means to hate/dislike so hydrophilic glass gives a beaded effect as the water is repelled off the glass into tiny droplets. The effective way to clean this is to make sure every bubble and bead of water is washe doff the pane. This takes more time and you need to be really thorough in getting it right or you can leave spots. The brush heads with pencil jets are harder in this regards than a wash bar mounted on the brush top, these give a fuller washing line than pencil jets.
Hope this helps
I have also had some weird stuff like that. We tried this once and it seemed to help. Scrub the window with a MR Clean white pad (magic eraser?). I didn’t think it would work but it did…
I think the hydrophobic glass is a result of the glass not being thoroughly washed by the annealing or tempering process when it is being formed. There is more about that at the GANA website (Glass Assoc of North America)
