I have a few days between Christmas and New Year to take advantage of the fact that the north greenhouse is empty, now that all of the poinsettias have been given away.
One of the jobs I have been wanting to do for a while is wash the inside of the glass on the greenhouse. It is covered with algae, mildew and other assorted nasty looking stuff.
Since the peak of the roof is 15 feet from the floor, I bought a telescoping window brush handle to reach the top without having to stand on a ladder. I tried using a stream of water to rinse off the dirt but, it just sticks to the glass.
At one time I used an expensive window concentrate to wash the glass. After running out of that stuff, I found out that ordinary liquid dish soap works just fine. Also, since dish detergent contains a rinsing agent and, I use RO water to rinse the glass, they turn out sparkling clear.
If I didn’t have access to 300 gallons on pressurized purified water for rinsing, I’d have to sqeegee all that glass… now that would be a huge task!
The worst part of this job happens when you are washing the roof and skronky water runs down the pole and your arm into your arm pit…yuck!
Look at the difference between a washed pane of glass and the adjacent unwashed glass. How much light do you suppose is lost to all of those dirty panes of glass?
The plants will certainly appreciate the effort and the rest of us don’t have to look at all that grime.
Bob
of Almost all of our Poinsettias are grown in 6″ pots, except for a couple dozen 10″ pots.