The Best Resin for Window Cleaning
I have done a fair amount of research and looking around at different mixed bed resins to find out what worked best at purifying water for window cleaning and at what cost. You may also be wondering: How do you get good quality resin for window cleaning at low prices?
The best mixed bed resin for window cleaning is a strong acid or cation and a strong base or anion. This strong acid and base will remove the most impurities or dissolved solids leaving the purest water for cleaning windows.
Please read on as this article will pinpoint how to find strong acid and strong base mixed bed resin and how to buy it at a low price.
It makes sense to use purified water, that is water that has had the minerals removed from it using mixed bed resin in a DI tank, as it does not require you to use a squeegee thus saving you time and making you more money.
How Does Mixed Bed Resin Save You Time and Money?
Pure water will not leave spots when drying, so simply mopping and washing is enough for you to get a spot free finish. Not having to squeegee windows, especially those that are difficult to reach or high up will save you a lot of time.
Mixed bed resin is a medium in which water impurities are removed through ion exchange. To get an in-depth but easy and simple explanation on how mixed bed resin works please check our article: What Is Mixed Bed Resin?
Factors To Consider When Buying Mixed Bed Resin or DI Resin
The most important factor to consider when buying the best mixed bed resin is quality. If your resin is poor quality then it will leave spotting and will not perform well.
Here is why:
Tap water contains dissolved solids such as magnesium, silica, calcium to name a few which leave spots on your windows as the water they are suspended in evapourates.
This can cause lasting damage to the glass over time as the spotting becomes deeply etched into the glass and no amount of washing will remove it unless you use a special compound.
The dissolved solids are measured using a TDS meter (Total Dissolved Solids) as Parts Per Million or simply ppm.
You want your ppm reading to be as close as possible to 0 once your tap or source water has passed through your mixed bed resin.
The closer to 0 ppm reading the less dissolved solids remaining and the better the finish. I have personally found that ppm readings of 15 and below to be more than adequate for a spot-free window clean.
But here’s the kicker:
You also need to consider the ppm reading at your tap. For example, if your ppm reading at your tap is 100 ppm or less then your di resin (di stands for deionization and is the process involved in removing ions from water to make it pure) will cope with this adequately without getting used up too quickly.
DI resin or mixed bed resin has a ‘lifespan’ and can only be used the clean so much water until it becomes fully spent and needs to be regenerated or replaced.
However:
Once you get above 120ppm you will find your mixed bed resin will lose its ability to remove ions (charged particles) quickly and so a RO or reverse osmosis unit in front of your mixed bed resin may be needed. This will reduce the workload on the resin as the reverse osmosis unit will bring the total dissolved solids down before the water passes through the tank of resin.
Most water sources are below 120ppm making a RO unit unnecessary unless you want to make your resin go further or are using underground bore water out in the country for your water supply. These water sources can have a lot of minerals and TDS readings can be above 200ppm. Best to use a squeegee in this case and save your mixed bed resin.
Now:
How To Keep Mixed Bed Resin Quality While Reducing Cost
The higher the grade of mixed bed resin (its ability to remove ions in water), sometimes called di resin, the higher the cost. And this can be a big factor in your profit margins as di resin in New Zealand is not cheap. This is especially so of the resin that claims to take your water down to 0ppm. The cost of mixed bed resin in New Zealand can be around $15 per litre.
The smaller DI resin tanks are around 5 litres and some tanks can be 20 litres or more. So you are going to need at least 5 litres of resin to start with.
This will set you back $75 before freight and GST. Depending on how often you use the resin and the TDS reading (in ppm) at the tap, this amount of resin (5 litres) may last you a couple of weeks or more.
Want to know the best part?
Being window cleaners ourselves we wanted to know how to get a good quality resin (0ppm) at a low cost.
How did we achieve this?
We used a cheap resin that will do the bulk of the work and take our reading down to 15ppm or so along with a small amount of a very high-grade resin at the bottom of the tank (i.e. put a litre or two of high-grade resin in the tank first then fill the rest of the tank with the cheaper resin). We call this high-grade resin a polisher as it polishes the ppm down to 0ppm.
Because the more expensive resin is not doing much work, that is its only taking the water down from 15ppm to 0ppm and you are only having to use a little, it lasts a long time.
We even run tandem tanks where we put the low-grade resin into the first tank, then the second tank has a couple of litres of high grade in the bottom with the low grade on top. We connect the two tanks together and use it like this for our window cleaning. Our resin lasts us a long time before needing to be changed.
We no longer need to use a polisher as we have now sourced a high quality mixed bed resin that is cost-effective and will reduce your Total Dissolved Solids in the water down to almost zero.
This mixed bed resin for sale is the best quality resin (0ppm) and very reasonably priced in New Zealand and can be used for car washing as well as window cleaning. Please Click Here to Check Out The Mixed Bed Resin