Exterior window cleaning in Pelican Bay.

Pelican Bay is a large gated community set back behind the beach, and its glass faces a mix the other areas don't — Gulf salt drifting in over the dune and mangrove preserve from the west, plus the damp, organic air that comes off those mangroves. The community runs both ways too: mid-rise and high-rise residences alongside single-family homes, some lived in year-round and many seasonal, so the cleaning has to fit a unit on a tower balcony as readily as a house on a quiet interior street.

For the lower and mid-level residential glass, our exterior window cleaning reaches it from the ground with the water-fed pole and finishes with a deionized rinse, so a unit's exterior panes dry as spot-free as a home's. The single-family homes on the streets behind the dune get the same two-track clean — brush and pure-water flood on the high glass, hand squeegee at ground level. Because the air here carries mangrove film as well as salt, the every-two-month rhythm keeps that dull layer from settling in between visits.

Seasonal owners benefit most from the plan running while they're north, so the glass is clear when they return. Where a pane has already spotted from salt or irrigation, our hard-water stain removal lifts it first. More on the community in Pelican Bay.