Storm Window Cleaning in Huntsville
Most window cleaners won't touch storm windows. The panels are thin, the screws are painted over, and half of them haven't been opened since they were hung. If you've ever spent a Saturday getting two of twenty-two panels out of the house, you already know the job.
The panels come off, everything gets cleaned (both sides of every pane, the frames, the tracks), and it all goes back on. 12+ years, roughly 150,000 panes of glass.
What's living between the panes
A storm window's whole job is a pocket of still air between itself and your regular window. The gap is open only at the bottom, at the weep holes, which makes it a good trap. North Alabama's pine pollen washes down behind the glass and dries into a film. Flies get in and don't get out. Condensation turns track dust into paste. After enough years the debris holds the sash off its seat, the still air leaks out, and the storm stops doing its one job. The window still opens. The draft is the tell.
Why the screws won't move
The seized screw on a storm window is usually paint: decades of it, sealing the head to the frame. Some are worse: heads snapped off by a previous attempt, or steel screws in aluminum frames, corroded into each other. Each kind comes out with its own approach: a tap to crack the paint seal, a driver that still bites, penetrating oil, patience. Force is what breaks glass: a bound sash that finally lets go usually lets go sideways, and the pane, thin single-strength glass on old storms, doesn't flex. It cracks.
How removal actually works
Depends on what's on the house. Aluminum triple-track comes apart in order: screen out first, then each sash lifts from its track once the bottom is cleared. Wooden storms screwed to the trim are another job: every screw head is buried under forty coats of paint, and the panel doesn't move until the last one does. Pinned panels have their own sequence; get it wrong and nothing moves. And houses settle, so a panel that went in plumb in 1972 comes out at a slight angle in 2026. Sequence and patience, not muscle.
If a pane breaks
Thin glass, old panels; occasionally one gives. When it does, we measure it, Huntsville Glass Company cuts the replacement, and it's back in place on a return visit. One call, to us. $1,000,000 liability coverage.
What gets cleaned
- Both sides of every pane. The gap side is the point; that's where the years are
- Frames, tracks, sills
- Screens, washed and reinstalled
- Stripped or missing screws replaced. We carry them, because every job needs them
Pricing
Quoted by looking, not by formula: in person, or a same-day video call. Storm houses aren't priced by a form; a person looks at your windows and gives you the number. Stubborn houses take most of a day. That's priced in.
Our 1960s rancher had 10+ years of dirt caked between storm windows and Taylor removed every screen and window to deep clean them. He even went above and beyond to replace outdated screws and replace missing window elements.
(Molly, Huntsville, Google review)
Call or text: . Huntsville, Madison, Owens Cross Roads, and across North Alabama.