"Self-Cleaning Glass Saves Times, Money, and Water," by Kylie Wroblaski, Buildings magazine, March 2010
Factoring in the price of window cleaning for your building may be a thing of the past, thanks to self-cleaning windows.
Self-cleaning glass includes an applied titanium-dioxide (TiO2) metal coating, which helps windows clean themselves in two ways: 1) the breakdown of organic materials deposited on the glass, and 2) the sheeting of rainwater, which washes the glass.
"The titanium dioxide is activated by UV light exposure," says Russell Davies, senior project manager at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc. "It takes about 5 or 7 days of exposure before it becomes fully active."