Within about a mile of the water, plan on cleaning the glass every one to two months. A few miles inland, quarterly holds. The twice-a-year rule that works in most of the country does not survive here — salt spray, humidity and afternoon storms re-film Miami glass in weeks, not seasons.
That’s the South Florida version of it. If you’d rather not run this schedule yourself through a Miami summer, tell us about the place and we’ll send a price for keeping it on one.
Why “twice a year” is a rule from another climate
National guides settle on twice a year because they are describing glass that gets dirty from dust and rain. Coastal Florida glass gets dirty from a different thing: salt. Onshore wind carries a fine aerosol of seawater inland, it lands on every east-facing pane, the water evaporates and the salt stays. And salt is hygroscopic — it pulls moisture out of humid air and holds onto it — so a salted pane sits faintly damp for most of the day even when it has not rained. Dust and pollen do not blow off that; they stick to it.
Then the five o’clock storm arrives, carries part of it away, and lays down a fresh mineral deposit on top that the sun bakes on within the hour. That is the cycle. It is why a coastal pane can look worse two weeks after a cleaning than an inland pane looks after three months. Nothing failed. The surface is simply being re-coated on a schedule of its own.
The cadence, by how far you sit from the water
These are the intervals we plan coastal homes around. Not a law — a starting point:
- Front-row, ocean-facing glass — Miami Beach, Sunny Isles, Key Biscayne. Monthly, with a plain water rinse in between whenever the wind has sat in the east for a week.
- Anywhere within about a mile of open water — Surfside, Bal Harbour, the bayfront. Every one to two months. This is the band most coastal homes fall in, and the one the twice-a-year advice fails hardest.
- A few miles inland — Kendall, Doral, Miami Springs, most of Cutler Bay. Quarterly. Salt reaches you thinly; humidity and pollen do the rest of the work.
- Sealed interior glass in an A/C-run condo that never opens a window. On whatever cadence your regular cleaning already runs — that film is indoor, not salt.
None of that can be imposed on your particular house. Wind direction, whether you have a screen enclosure, whether the panes live under a deep overhang, and how close you sit to a cut or an inlet all move the number in both directions. The honest version beats any table: stand with the sun behind you and look at the glass in low, raking light. If you can see a haze against the sky, it is due.
What skipping the cycles actually costs
Nothing dramatic happens the first time you skip a cycle. The cost is slow, and it lands on the hardware more than on the glass.
- The glass. Salt on its own does not etch a pane, but the mineral-heavy water it holds does leave deposits, and every rain-and-bake cycle stacks another one on the last. Deposits that have sat through enough cycles stop coming off with soap and a squeegee and start needing a mineral remover and patience — the same thing that happens to a shower door.
- The screens. A salted mesh stays damp, and in Miami damp mesh grows exactly what a lanai grows. Aluminum and fiberglass screening both go chalky and brittle, and the frame corners are usually the first thing to give.
- Tracks and rollers. Salt plus beach sand is grinding paste. The slider you open every day rides on small wheels in a channel that collects both, and a track nobody flushes gets stiff first, noisy second, and expensive last.
That list is the argument for a rinse, not a reason to panic — and it has a clean edge: hardware that has already pitted is replacement work for a window or door company, not a cleaning. No amount of washing brings back a corroded roller. The maintenance half we do price, as published rows in the booking flow: Window-screen cleaning from $7 per screen (“Per removable screen; final scope requires confirmation”), Window-track cleaning from $10 per track (“Per reachable track; final scope requires confirmation”), and Sliding-door track cleaning at $25 per door (“Vacuum and detail each sliding-door track”). The full menu, and which extra belongs on which service, is in what cleaning add-ons cost.
The habit between cleanings: fresh water, never dry
The highest-value coastal habit costs nothing and takes ten minutes: rinse the ocean-facing glass and screens with fresh water on some kind of schedule, and never dry-wipe a salted pane.
Both halves matter. Rinsing dissolves the salt and carries it off before it can settle; a dry cloth drags those crystals across the glass, which is how fine scratches get into a pane that was perfect last year. Do it early or late — glass hot enough to flash-dry water spots itself while you work — hose from the top down, let it sheet off, and leave it alone. You are not cleaning the window. You are unloading it.
Every couple of weeks in the dry season, weekly if you are on the water and the wind has not let up, is plenty. And when it is time for a real cleaning, the method is the ordinary one: shade, a dish-soap solution, a squeegee pulled top-down, and a dry microfiber on the edges. The whole technique is in how to clean windows without streaks.
What JAS covers, and where another trade begins
Sills and tracks are already inside the ordinary visit: “Window sills + tracks” and “Patio sliding door” are two of the 28 named items on the residential checklist, and a residential clean starts at $189 — a “2–3 hour visit · 2-person team”, “28 items verified by photo”. That is the maintenance pass, not a glass day.
Panes are their own published add-on. Interior windows & frames is $12 per pane in the booking flow (“Per reachable interior pane; sliding tracks are separate”), and on a deep clean the published card on services reads “interior windows from $10 per pane” (the move-in/out card carries the same figure, $10 per pane). The outside has a row of its own too — Exterior window cleaning, from $15 per pane, “Per accessible ground-floor pane; confirmation is required” — and that wording is the boundary, not a hedge.
Here is the honest limit. JAS covers interior glass and reachable exteriors as an add-on. Full exterior window washing on a two- or three-story house, a tower’s balcony line, or anything needing tall ladders, lifts, or rope access is a specialist trade, and we do not sell it. If that is what your coastal home needs on the outside, the right call is a window-cleaning company carrying the equipment and the insurance for height work; we keep the inside on the same cadence. The scope, line by line, is in whether house cleaning includes windows.
We price before you commit: you request a quote, see it, and then request a time. — our terms, and the order is the same for panes as for everything else.
FAQ
Does a screen enclosure or a deep overhang change the interval?
Yes — anything that breaks the wind before it reaches the glass slows the deposit down, and panes tucked under a deep overhang stay clear noticeably longer than the ones beside them on the same wall. Which is why the pane beats the calendar: check it in low, raking light and clean the ones that are hazy.
Can I just clean them twice a year and live with a hazy view?
You can, and plenty of people on the water do — the view is a preference. The hardware is not. Screens and tracks holding damp salt for six months at a stretch is what turns a cleaning question into a replacement question, so if you stretch the glass, still rinse the screens and flush the tracks.
Doesn’t the rain rinse the salt off for me?
Mostly the opposite. Rain carries off some salt and leaves its own mineral load behind, and in Miami it tends to land on hot glass that dries in minutes, so the deposit bakes on instead of sheeting away. A hose on the cool end of the day is a rinse. A five o’clock storm is another layer.