What is DiamonFusion Glass Coating?
In order to talk about what DiamonFusion is, it’s helpful to first understand what glass actually is and why it gets dirty if it isn’t protected by a coating.
Flat glass production line
Without bombarding you with information, let’s briefly explore how glass is made and what it actually is. Glass begins life in a glass factory as granular silica sand along with a few other ingredients (depending on the type of glass) which is heated up and melted into a molten mixture that gets extruded and floated in a chemical bath to form raw flat sheets. It then undergoes a heating and cooling process before being cut to size and sent off to a glass fabricator where it is cut into the shape and size of your shower door and then tempered for safety.
Porous structure of glass under a microscope
With that basic understanding of glass production, it’s easier to understand that at a microscopic level, glass is porous. While it may appear smooth to the naked eye, there are actually lots of micropores and ridges similar to coral in the ocean. Over time all of those micropores collect minerals from hard water, soap scum, dirt, etc., which build up and make the glass appear dirty. Once this happens it can be very difficult to restore it to its original clarity (impossible in some cases). This type of damage often appears as an orange/yellow hue, or as etched water droplets on the glass in areas where water most frequently runs off or dries on its surface.
The best solution we have found here at The Shower Door Place is a product called DiamonFusion (DFI for short). DFI fills all of the micropores in the glass to prevent any of the previously mentioned contaminants from penetrating into the glass making it appear dirty. Having DFI coating does NOT mean that you’ll never have to clean your shower glass again but it does prevent those stubborn water marks/stains and overall makes your life much easier when it comes time to clean the glass. We still recommend that customers with DFI applied also squeegee their glass after each shower because it reduces how often the glass will need to be cleaned by preventing excess contaminants from drying on the glass in the first place.
The best way to clean shower glass with DFI applied is with a microfiber towel and an ammonia free cleaner. It is important to ensure that the cleaner is ammonia free because ammonia will degrade the coating and void the lifetime warranty. If it isn’t labeled or advertised as ammonia free, chances are it has ammonia in it. Also, ammonia really isn’t good for you so you probably shouldn’t be using it as a household cleaner anyways. At The Shower Door Place we prefer to use Sprayway Glass cleaner which is simply a foaming isopropyl alcohol based cleaner that works great on DFI coated glass. Sprayway is widely available and can be found in most stores like Walmart, Target, Costco and most home improvement and hardware retailers.
DFI is offered as an upgrade on all of our shower enclosures (although we think of it as more of a necessity) and it is applied by our staff in house to ensure that we can control the high level of quality that our customers demand. It also comes with a lifetime warranty, and we have never had a claim on it since we started selling it. We’ve been using DFI for 7 years now and our customers have had great success in keeping their shower glass clean and free of permanent damage.
If you would like to know more about DFI, custom shower doors or anything else related to shower glass, feel free to give us a call or visit us in our Roseville or Minnetonka showrooms!
