Screen Clean Upgradein Covington

The screen clean upgrade, in our own words

Screen Clean Upgrade: Screen cleaned using our screen cleaning stand for a deeper cleaning over the basic wipe down.

Why a stand changes the job

A screen is easy to underestimate. It looks like a flat panel of mesh, and it seems reasonable that a wipe would handle it.

Mesh is not flat. It is a woven grid with depth, and every crossing point in that weave is a small pocket that holds what lands in it. It also has two faces, an outside taking the weather and an inside facing your home. Wiping a screen while it hangs in the opening reaches one face of that weave, from one angle, with the screen flexing away from the cloth as you press on it. Most of what comes off is the loose surface layer, and some of what is sitting on the surface gets pushed further into the weave.

Taking the screen out and standing it up changes what is possible. The screen is supported rather than flexing. Both faces are reachable. Water can pass through the mesh instead of being dragged across it, which is the only way to move what is lodged in the weave. The frame is accessible all the way around, including the corner channels where grit and cobwebs collect out of sight.

That is the whole difference between the wipe down that comes with a window cleaning and this upgrade. Same screens, different job.

What is actually in your screens

Pull one screen out and look at it in the light before you book anything. It is usually persuasive on its own.

In the South Sound the load has a predictable makeup. Conifer dust is the big one: firs and cedars shed a fine particulate all year and it is exactly the size to lodge in a mesh weave. Spring adds pollen, which is sticky enough to hold the dust already there. Road grit rides in on the wind, more of it if you are near a busy or unpaved stretch.

Then there is the frame itself. The channel around the outside of a screen frame is a sheltered, undisturbed space, which makes it prime habitat for cobwebs and egg sacs. Screens on the shaded side of a house can also carry a mildew film, because the mesh stays damp and out of the sun for months at a time.

None of that is unusual and none of it means anything is wrong with your house. It is simply what a filter does after a year of filtering.

The part that shows up on your glass

Here is the mechanism that makes this upgrade worth the money rather than a nicety.

A screen sits directly in front of your window and above it in the path of running water. When rain hits a loaded screen, it does not run off the face of it. It goes through the mesh, and on the way through it releases what the mesh has been holding. That water then continues down the glass, carrying a fine suspension of dust and pollen with it, and dries there.

The result is a window that was genuinely clean and is spotted and hazy again within a couple of weeks. The glass is not the problem. The filter above it is. It is one of the main reasons a cleaning seems not to last, and we cover the rest of them in why your windows look dirty again after a cleaning.

Clean the screen properly and the window behind it stays clean the way you expected it to.

What else you get back

Two smaller benefits, both real.

Light. A loaded screen is a denser screen. A mesh clogged with dust and pollen passes noticeably less daylight than a clean one, and because it happens gradually over years, almost nobody notices until it is reversed.

Air. The same clogging restricts airflow. If there is a window you open for a cross breeze in the summer, the screen in front of it is part of how well that works.

Marking, resetting and what we tell you

Screens are made for a specific opening. Even in a house where every window looks identical, the screens are not reliably interchangeable, and a set put back at random gives you a handful that are tight, a handful that rattle and at least one that will not seat at all.

So they come out marked and go back where they came from, seated in the track properly, with the pull tabs facing the right way.

While they are off, we see things you cannot see when they are in. A small tear starting at a corner. A frame bowed from being forced in or out. Spline pulling out of its groove, which is what lets mesh go slack. A missing pull tab. We are not a screen repair shop, so we will not pretend to fix any of it. We will tell you what we found and where, which is worth more than finding it yourself the first warm week of the year.

Adding it to your window cleaning

The upgrade makes the most sense on an inside and out window cleaning, because the screens are already coming out and the glass is being done on both faces at the same visit. It also works with an outside only clean.

If you are putting the outside of the house on a yearly rotation, this is a natural thing to keep on the list along with the gutters and a soft wash of the siding. Our season by season rhythm for South Sound homes lays the whole sequence out.

We serve homes in Covington and across South King County, Pierce County and Thurston County, and the full list of cities is on our service areas page.

Book a window cleaning with the screen upgrade or get in touch and ask about it.