Window cleaning in Plano.

Plano built out earlier than the towns north of it, and the difference is written into the housing. Most of the upper-tier stock in west Plano went up between the mid-eighties and the mid-2000s, on larger lots, with landscaping that has had decades to fill in — and most of those homes have been renovated once or twice since.

Age is what makes Plano different from Frisco. A house from the late eighties is carrying insulated glass units that are now around forty years old, and those units weren't designed for that. Seal failure shows up as haze or visible moisture between the panes, and it can't be cleaned out because the problem is sealed inside. Homes from the nineties and early 2000s are heading the same way. If that's what you're seeing, it's a glass replacement — the unit, usually not the whole frame — and it's work we do ourselves.

Mature landscaping is the second difference. Decades-old trees over a house mean sap, pollen and leaf debris in the tracks and gutters, and shaded elevations that hold a film the sunny sides don't.

The water is the same story as Frisco. The North Texas Municipal Water District serves this area at roughly ten to fifteen grains per gallon, so any sprinkler head reaching a window is depositing mineral onto it. On a house that has been on the same irrigation layout for thirty years, that deposit has had a long time to accumulate.