[Ad – This post is in collaboration with Pilkington UK. As always, all opinions, thoughts and words are our own.]
High ceilings, ornate plasterwork and parquet flooring are all things that drew us to our current home, but do you know what the biggest reason was?
The light!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a total sucker for original features but you just can’t beat the quality of life that a light and bright space gives you!
Our apartment is so bright and airy which, apart from our 3.6m high ceilings, could be down to the fact that we have 68 windows. Yep, you heard right – we have a whopping 68 windows (no, we don’t live in a mansion – that’s counting every individual window not the opening in the wall).
Whilst we love how bright our home is, having so many windows does come with a few drawbacks. Maintaining our original 100-year-old+ windows is timeconsuming and keeping them clean is an epic task which we regularly fail at!
So, you can imagine my excitement when I recently discovered self-cleaning glass! Yep, you heard right – self-cleaning glass!
Can you imagine having windows that are almost always clean? Hardly ever having to balance precariously with water buckets on wobbly ladders and fewer window cleaner bills?
It almost sounds too good to be true but it is real and it’s called Pilkington Activ™.
So how does self-cleaning glass work?
The revolutionary Pilkington Activ™ glass has a dual-action coating that helps keep the glass clear of dirt. During the first stage of the cleaning process, the coating reacts with daylight to break down organic dirt.
Then, in the second stage, instead of forming droplets, rainwater hits the glass and spreads evenly, running off the glass in a “sheet” taking the loosened dirt with it. It also dries quickly without leaving streaks!
For once you’ll actually want it to rain to help keep your windows clean!
Image: Pilkington UK
The coating will last as long as the insulating glass unit and it’s environmentally friendly, too! Pilkington Activ™ glass contains no harmful chemicals and because you need fewer products to clean your windows it’s actually more beneficial to the environment than normal glass!
You will obviously still occasionally have to wash your windows but because Pilkington Activ™ glass helps break down the dirt, your windows will always appear cleaner than ‘normal’ glazing.
Because of our high ceilings, we have a lot of windows that are difficult to reach. Cleaning them honestly feels dangerous sometimes (that’s my excuse anyway!) and Pilkington Activ™ glass is ideal for any difficult to reach areas like roof glazing or skylights that, let’s face it, often aren’t the cleanest of windows as they are so difficult to reach.
As much as we love our home, it is close to a busy road which is why our windows are almost always covered in dust and dirt. Pilkington Activ™ would be the perfect solution to help us reduce the amount of time we spend cleaning our windows! You’ll actually want it to rain before your MIL comes to visit so that your windows look cleaner!
Before we can think about new glazing, we’re going to have to restore all of our window frames first. After the last few months of cold and wet weather, they are in a worse condition than ever.
We’ve definitely got our work cut out! All of our windows need adjusting, they all need seals so that they are more airtight, almost all of them need to be stripped, sanded and repainted.
It’s going to be an epic task but I’m sure it’ll be worth it, especially if we can update the glazing to not only give us better insulation but also glass that helps clean itself!
I’m so excited about this discovery, that I’ve even made a start on stripping, sanding and repainting our first window! Now I just need to find the motivation to tackle the other 67 windows!
It’s safe to say that I’m going to be spending a lot of time working on our windows this summer, especially as it took me almost 2 full days to completely strip sand and repaint this one! Hopefully, I’ll get quicker with practice, as we have loads of other projects we’d like to complete this year, too!
Now that I know that Pilkington Activ™ self-cleaning glass exists why would I ever chose anything else?!
Life is definitely too short to be cleaning windows!
If you want to find out more about the genius Pilkington Activ™ Glass, we’d recommend heading over to the Pilkington website where there’s lots more information.
Do you have any renovation plans for this summer? Did you know that self-cleaning glass exists? Do you hate cleaning windows as much as I do?
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