Window Cleaning in Orono, MN

One city, two very different kinds of homes

Orono’s own planning documents describe a city with two personalities: the historic lakeshore, and the rural woods and fields behind it. About 40 percent of Lake Minnetonka’s shoreline lies inside Orono, wrapping Crystal Bay, Browns Bay, Maxwell Bay, Stubbs Bay and the North and West Arms. Much of it was built up as summer cottages that became year-round homes after World War II. Back from the lake, homes sit on wooded lots of two to five acres, many of them on private roads.

We come in from Delano on Highway 12, 20 to 25 minutes depending on the part of town. And if your mailing address says Wayzata, Long Lake, Mound or Maple Plain but your home is in Orono, you’re exactly who this page is for: plenty of Orono homes carry a neighboring town’s name in their address.

Lakeshore glass, old and new

Along the bays, converted summer homes sit next to brand-new estates. The city sees about 20 older lakeshore homes torn down and rebuilt each year, so on the same street we’ll clean wood windows with storms and two-story walls of glass facing the lake. Water-fed poles reach most of the tall glass from the ground; for the rest, we bring the ladder.

Well water leaves its mark

Outside Navarre and the Highway 12 corridor, Orono homes run on private wells instead of city water, and the groundwater around here is very hard. When a sprinkler reaches your windows, those minerals dry right onto the glass. The purified water in our water-fed poles rinses clean without adding spots, and if buildup has baked on over a few seasons, our hard-water stain removal is a separate treatment we’ll look at first.

Wooded lots, heavy canopy

Orono was carved out of the Big Woods, and maple-basswood forest still stands on Big Island and across the wooded interior. That canopy is beautiful and hard on windows: pollen in spring, sap in summer, and shaded glass that stays damp longer and shows every streak.