Window Cleaning in Chanhassen, MN

Twelve lakes and a name from the sugar maple

Chanhassen sits about 15 miles southwest of Minneapolis, and its name comes from Dakota words for the sugar maple, the tree with sweet sap. The city has 12 lakes; the largest, 680-acre Lake Minnewashta, has a Carver County regional park on its shore. During the three-day Fourth of July celebration, which draws more than 70,000 people, the fireworks go up over Lake Ann.

The 2020 census counted 25,947 people here. Detached single-family houses are the mainstay of the city’s housing, and census-based estimates put the median home’s build year in the early 1990s. Paisley Park, Prince’s home and studio complex, opened as a museum in 2016, and Chanhassen Dinner Theatres has been staging shows since 1968.

What comes out of Chanhassen’s wells

Chanhassen’s deep wells are high in iron and manganese, which left orange and brown stains for years until the city began filtering them out. Hardness is another matter: the city lists its water at 21 grains per gallon, which is very hard, so sprinkler or hose water that dries on glass leaves white mineral spots. The poles we use on upper panes run purified water, so they don’t add to the problem; spots that have already set are treated separately with hard-water stain removal, once we’ve inspected the glass and given you a price.

Houses that look out on the water

Homes around Lake Minnewashta, along Lotus Lake and on Chanhassen’s end of Christmas Lake tend to put their biggest windows on the lake side: patio doors on a walkout level and wide panes above. We clean the walkout glass by hand and squeegee it dry, work the upper panes from the lawn with water-fed poles, and set a ladder only where a deck or railing blocks them.

Trees the city means to keep

Emerald ash borer, confirmed here in 2021, has spread through Chanhassen’s ash trees, and the city has since tightened its tree rules, adding a Heritage Tree Ordinance for trees at least 25 inches across. In wooded neighborhoods like those on the east side of Lotus Lake, pollen, seeds and leaf bits collect in window screens over a season. Our screen cleaning add-on takes each screen out for a hand wash on both sides, frame and all, then puts it back in the opening it came from.