Why the coast changes the answer
Glass does not need cleaning because it looks dull. It needs cleaning because what lands on it stays there. Viracon, a glass manufacturer, asks for routine cleaning precisely “to prevent the build-up” of mineral deposits and airborne contaminants.3 On the Mallorcan coast there are three of those at once: salt carried on sea air, dust carried from the south, and limescale from any hard water that dries on the pane.
As we see it, salt is the one that sets the timetable. It is pulled out of the air on to every sheltered surface, and sheltered is the important word: rain rinses the open face of a window, but it rarely reaches the corner of a pane under a balcony, the top of a frame or the track of a sliding door. Those are the places that look worst, and they are the places a shower of rain never helps.
What the makers say about frames
Frames are where the advice gets specific, because deposits left sitting on a coating can damage it and the metal beneath.2 The figures differ, so here they are side by side.
| Source | Near the sea | Elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| Technal1 | Monthly | Every 3 to 4 months |
| Cortizo systems manual2 | Every three months or more often, including near swimming pools | Depends on the location |
| States, Australia4 | Every 2 to 4 weeks within 1 km of the coast (its table is written for hardware) | Depends on the location |
Our reading: if you can hear the sea from the terrace, treat quarterly as the most you should leave it and monthly as the good habit. A rinse is not the same as a full clean. Warm water, mild detergent and a soft cloth are what Technal asks for, followed by a thorough rinse, with no abrasive cleaners, polish or steel wool.1 That part you can do yourself in a few minutes per window, with no equipment worth the name.
A timetable that works for most houses
| Where the house is | Glass | Frames and tracks |
|---|---|---|
| On the seafront or first line | Every 1 to 2 months | Rinse monthly |
| In a coastal town, a few streets back | Every 2 to 3 months | Rinse every 2 to 3 months |
| Inland: Felanitx, Manacor, Sineu and the like | 2 to 4 times a year | Twice a year, more if there is a road or a building site beside you |
| Shut up for the winter | Once before you arrive | Once before you leave, so salt does not sit for months |
This table is our own judgement from the makers’ figures above, not a rule from any of them. Nothing dreadful happens if you miss one. What you are trying to avoid is deposits that have sat for a year or more, because those stop being a cleaning job and start being a restoration one.
Three things that shorten the interval
- A sprinkler or a pool. Water that lands on glass and dries there leaves its minerals behind. If the garden irrigation reaches a window, move the sprinkler first, then clean. Our guide to hard water marks explains why this one matters more than the rest.
- A dust episode. After a spell of calima, do not leave it for the usual date, and do not wipe it dry. See what calima does to glass.
- Building work next door. Concrete or mortar slurry on glass is strongly alkaline and will eventually etch the surface, so it should come off as soon as possible: soak it and flush the grit away with water before anything touches the glass.3
And what lengthens it
A deep overhang, an inland valley, a north-facing wall away from the road: all of these buy you time. So does a habit of rinsing frames while you are watering the garden, as long as you squeegee or dry the glass afterwards rather than leaving hard water to evaporate on it. If a window looks clean in low sun, it is clean, whatever a timetable says. Low sun is the honest test: look along the pane in the early morning or the evening, not straight through it at midday. The glass trade’s bulletin says the same of scratches: they can hide under a grey sky and show when the sun is low.5
When to call someone
Do the ground floor yourself if you enjoy it. Upper floors, glass above a drop and big sliding doors with a heavy track are where the time goes and where people get hurt. Our own limit is the same as yours should be: windows that cannot be reached safely are left out of the job and its price, and we say which.
If you want a regular visit, the price comes from how many windows you have and what size they are, and the worked examples show totals for real postcodes. A one-off clean is fine too. A smaller visit costs €49 at the least, so there is little to gain from booking one window at a time.