There is a white haze across part of the glazing and no cleaning will remove it. It looks like frosting, but only across one area of the panel. Where someone has already gone at it with a blade, scoring has been added to the original problem.
This is acid etched graffiti. A corrosive gel has been left on the panel long enough to attack it, and the surface is now pitted at a scale fine enough to scatter light rather than pass it through. Nothing is left on the surface to be cleaned away. It is the glass that has changed.
We work on the panel in position, typically completing inside a single day, with no hoarding needed and nothing on order, at a small percentage of a replacement unit.
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The Worst Time To Find It Is The Week The Hoarding Comes Down
Southwark has been rebuilt on former industrial land over the last two decades and a great deal of it is still under construction. That gives the district a problem almost nobody plans for.
A hoarding is a screen. It hides the frontage from the street, which is its purpose, but it also hides the frontage from everybody who might otherwise notice something wrong with it. Glazing installed behind a hoarding can sit for months with nobody looking at it properly, and the moment of discovery is almost always the same: the hoarding comes down, days before handover or opening, and the damage is standing there in front of the client.
That is the worst possible moment to be ordering replacement glass.
New facade glazing is a long lead item. It was specified, made to size and installed by a facade contractor, and a like for like replacement means going back to that specification, waiting for manufacture and arranging installation. Weeks, at a point in the programme where weeks do not exist.
Replacement may also touch the facade warranty. On a building still within its defect liability arrangements, taking out and refitting a unit is an intervention somebody will have a view about. Restoration alters nothing and substitutes nothing, so the question does not arise.
And restoration fits the programme. A pane restored in a single visit, before the hoarding comes down rather than after, keeps the handover date intact.
If you are running a site here, the practical answer is simple: inspect the installed glazing behind the hoarding before you plan to remove it, not after. A week's notice turns a crisis into a scheduled item.
Recent Acid Etched Graffiti Removal Projects
Who Owns The Damage Before Anybody Moves In
The second thing about a district in constant development is that damage frequently occurs when the building has no occupier at all, and that makes the question of who deals with it genuinely unclear.
Glazing gets marked during fit out, during the gap between practical completion and occupation, or on a phased site where one block is trading while the next is still being finished. There is no tenant to report it and no facilities team in place yet.
In practice the answer usually sits with whoever holds the building at that moment, which may be the developer, the main contractor under their obligations until handover, or the incoming occupier if completion has already passed. It is worth establishing rather than assuming, because the cost lands differently in each case.
What we do about it is straightforward. We quote in a form that can go to any of those parties, itemised panel by panel, with a written description of works and dated photography, so whoever ends up carrying it has what they need. On phased sites we will attend across several blocks in one visit rather than treating each as a separate mobilisation.
Where We Get Called Out Around Southwark
Blackfriars Road. A long redeveloped route with new mixed use frontages, ground floor retail and hotel entrances, and a good deal of ongoing work along it.
Southwark Street and Union Street. Office and commercial frontages in converted and newly built stock, with large glazed ground floors.
Great Suffolk Street and the streets behind. Workspace, studios and smaller commercial premises, quiet after the working day and overlooked by very little.
The station approaches at Southwark and Blackfriars. Concentrated pedestrian flow morning and evening, with the nearest frontages taking the heaviest exposure in the area.
Student accommodation and hotel blocks. Large communal entrances and ground floor glazing, managed by operators rather than by individual occupiers.
Hopton Street and Sumner Street. Mixed older and newer frontages towards the river, with a different scale and pace from the main roads.
The Elephant end and Newington Causeway. Newly completed ground floor retail and residential entrances, frequently still within defect liability arrangements.
Facade Glazing Is Not Shopfront Glazing
The glass on a modern Southwark building was engineered rather than bought. Low emissivity for thermal performance, solar control on the exposed elevations, laminated where safety or security required it, occasionally treated to reduce reflection at ground floor so a lobby reads properly from outside. All of those are achieved with a functional coating, and on a good many units that coating sits on a face we would otherwise be working.
Abrading through a coating does not repair anything. It destroys the coating and leaves a panel reading differently in colour and reflectivity from the ones beside it, which on a repeating curtain walled elevation is obvious from across the street and considerably worse than the original mark.
So identification comes before pricing, always. What the unit is, what it carries, which face, and where the damage sits in relation to it. Where a building is new enough for the facade documentation to exist, that is the quickest route to an answer and we will ask for it. The assessment goes to you in writing, including the cases where the honest answer is that a panel needs replacing.
Replacing Or Restoring
| Fitting a new unit | Restoring the existing unit | |
|---|---|---|
| Programme impact | Weeks of lead time against a handover date | A single visit, bookable inside the programme |
| Facade warranty | An intervention somebody will have a view about | Nothing removed, substituted or altered |
| Coated and specified glazing | Specification must be reproduced exactly | Unit and its performance retained |
| Matching a repeating elevation | New glass beside installed glass | Original panels kept throughout |
| Phased sites | Separate orders and separate installations | Several blocks attended in one mobilisation |
| Meanwhile | A hoarded or screened bay past handover | Nothing covered at any stage |
| Cost | The unit, the installation and the delay | Up to 90 per cent less |
The cost comparison is set out at glass replacement vs protection: the true cost, and the decision at should I replace or restore etched graffiti glass.
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Etched, Scratched Or Painted
Three kinds of damage look alike from a distance and each takes a different route.
Paint or marker sits above the surface. Dense colour, a defined boundary, and a fingernail rides up where it begins. Solvent takes it off and the pane beneath is unaffected.
Acid etching occupies the surface itself. Bleached and foggy while still passing light, with a faint coarseness lying flush with the glass around it. The mark has no hard edge where the gel ran on unchecked before anyone dealt with it. Against a lit lobby it reads far more strongly than it does from the street.
Scratching is cut into the glass. Hard, glinting furrows made with a blade, a stone or a key, which a fingernail will catch on.
On a construction site there is a fourth possibility worth ruling out, which is installation damage: fine scuffing from handling or from protective tape residue being scraped off. It looks different close up and it is not criminal damage. Set yours alongside the images at glass scratching vs acid etching, and see white frosty window graffiti on the milky appearance itself.
The First Hour
Any gel still present remains corrosive. It burns skin and eyes, so nobody handles it, and on a live site that means the area is isolated and the site team told rather than a note left for the morning.
No blades and no abrasive pads. A scraper leaves scoring that cannot be undone on a panel which was entirely salvageable, and wiping wet gel simply transfers the damage to panels that had none. On a site where every operative carries a blade as standard, that belongs in the briefing rather than in an email.
Proprietary removers will not help. There is nothing lying on the surface for them to break down, and on coated facade glazing they introduce a second problem.
Rinse it down with plenty of clean cold water if residue is present and it is safe to approach, wearing gloves and eye protection, letting it run off rather than spreading it about.
Photograph every affected panel, dated, and record its position on the elevation. On a facade that matters more than usual, because the panel reference is what lets us price and sequence the work without a separate survey.
Report it as criminal damage. The reference will be wanted before an insurer engages, and on a site it also matters for the contractual record. The steps to take are set out at what to do when your shop window is vandalised.
How The Work Is Carried Out
Establishing the unit. Float, toughened, laminated, coated, anti-reflective, mirrored or a sealed unit, whether protective film from installation is still present and on which face, and how far the acid has travelled. The facade documentation answers this fastest where it exists.
A concealed trial. The method is proved on a small area out of sight before the full panel is committed to.
Masking and containment. Frames, gaskets, seals, manifestation, signage and any applied film are protected, and the slurry is contained and kept off a completed floor finish or a paved public realm that has already been handed over.
Through the abrasive grades. We step down through the grades, removing a thickness of glass the eye cannot register, and take the treated zone a long way out from the mark so that it disappears instead of terminating abruptly. Restrict it to the tag and you are left with a shallow lens sunk into the panel that bends everything behind it, which on a flat modern facade shows immediately.
Cerium oxide to finish. What haze is left is taken out wet with cerium oxide, checked with light coming through the panel towards you rather than reflecting away.
Assessed against the elevation. Every treated panel is compared with the untreated panels around it, from outside, from within against the interior lighting and at an oblique angle, so the run reads as one continuous surface.
Reckon on three hours for a single panel, with longer runs phased to suit the site programme. There are separate write ups of the grinding work at acid etched graffiti techniques and removal methods, the final polish at how to polish shopfront glass to optical clarity, and what we use at acid etched graffiti removal equipment and materials.
If the panel cannot be saved you hear it at the assessment rather than later. Exceptional depth of burn, a unit whose seal had gone already, or a coating lying across the surface we must abrade all mean it genuinely needs replacing, and that conclusion is issued in writing before you commit to anything.
Work Completed In South London
- Acid etched graffiti removal in Waterloo
- Acid etched glass graffiti removal in Victoria
- Acid etched graffiti removal in Farringdon
- Acid etched graffiti removal from glass in Shoreditch
What We Restore Around Southwark
- Laminated and security rated glazing in lobby screens, entrances and ground floor retail.
- Curtain walling and spandrel panels at ground and podium level on new facades.
- Float and low iron glass in retail frontages and glazing to the floors above.
- Toughened glass in automatic doors, atrium screens, balustrades and shelters.
- Communal entrance glazing to student accommodation and residential blocks.
- Sealed units, restored from the outward face alone.
- Mirrors and mirrored panels within lift cars, amenity areas and entrance halls.
- Obscured and manifestation glazing, where an applied pattern has to be recreated rather than removed.
- Glass block in retained older elevations and service areas.
- Entrance thresholds and cladding in polished granite and polished marble, and polished metal on frames, handrails and entry panels.
Nothing with a finished surface escapes the same gel, and on a newly completed entrance the stone cladding and the metalwork are frequently marked alongside the glass. It is all cleared in one attendance.
Who We Work For In Southwark
Developers and main contractors. Installed glazing damaged before handover, restored inside the programme rather than reordered.
Facade and fit out contractors. Panels marked during the works, assessed against the specification before anything is decided.
Building and estate managers. Completed buildings still within defect liability arrangements, where an intervention is best avoided.
Student accommodation and hotel operators. Communal entrances and ground floor glazing, worked around occupancy.
Retail and hospitality on the ground floors. Frontages worked around trading rather than around us.
Who Carries The Cost
Before handover it usually sits with the contractor or the developer, depending on the obligations in place at the time. After completion it sits with whoever holds the building, and on a leased unit the repairing covenant decides in the usual way, with the shopfront normally inside the demise and the communal entrance, lobby and envelope outside it.
The point worth making is that this needs establishing rather than assuming, and the earlier the better. Damage found the week before handover, with the parties still arguing about whose it is, is how a small restoration turns into a delayed opening.
Insurance needs the usual arithmetic before anyone notifies. Restoring one panel will regularly cost less than the excess, so a claim pays out nothing while still showing at renewal, whereas a run of panels normally justifies going ahead. The dated photographs and the written works description arrive with every job, and on a construction matter that paperwork is frequently what settles who pays.
Reducing The Chance Of A Repeat
Restoring the panel deals with what has happened. It discourages nobody, and a site frontage behind a hoarding, or a newly completed elevation on a quiet street, is unobserved for long stretches.
A protective film is applied over the outside face precisely so that it takes the next attack and the pane does not, and swapping it is quick work costing a small fraction of a further restoration. On a development the case for specifying it at ground floor from the beginning is strong, because retrofitting after an incident leaves you restoring the same reachable panels again and again over the building's life. Where the glazing is coated or low iron, the product has to be matched to it so nothing changes in clarity or colour rendering.
The full picture is on anti-acid etched graffiti protection, covering the reasoning behind an expendable outer layer, how many years it should give, installation cost and whether the glazing looks any different for it. There is sector guidance at corporate office glass protection.
Areas We Cover Next To Southwark
- Bankside
- Blackfriars
- Lambeth
- Elephant and Castle
- Walworth
- Kennington
- Vauxhall
- Bermondsey
- Rotherhithe
- Camberwell
The whole service, with our process video and the full question set, is on the main acid etched graffiti removal page.
Southwark Acid Etched Graffiti Removal: Frequently Asked Questions
We found this when the hoarding came down, days before handover. What now?
Restoration, almost certainly, and it is bookable inside your programme. Replacement means going back to the facade specification, waiting for manufacture and arranging installation, which is weeks you do not have at that point.
How do we avoid that happening again?
Inspect the installed glazing behind the hoarding before you plan to take it down, rather than after. A week's notice turns a crisis into a scheduled item, and on a site that is the whole difference.
Will restoration affect our facade warranty?
It should not, because nothing is removed, substituted or altered. The unit stays exactly as installed and only an extremely thin layer of the outer surface is taken back. Replacement is the intervention somebody will have a view about.
Who is liable if it happened before occupation?
Usually whoever holds the building at that moment, which may be the developer, the main contractor under their obligations until handover, or the incoming occupier if completion has passed. Establish it early rather than late, because arguing about it is what turns a small restoration into a delayed opening.
Can you quote in a form we can pass on?
Yes. Quotations are itemised panel by panel with a written description of works and dated photographs, so whichever party ends up carrying it has what they need without anything being reworked.
Our glazing is coated. Can it be treated?
That depends on which face carries the coating relative to the damage. Working through a coating destroys it and leaves that panel out of step with the rest of the elevation. If the facade documentation is available it answers this fastest, and we will ask for it.
Some of the marks look like handling damage rather than vandalism.
That is worth separating out, and it is common on a live site. Installation scuffing and tape residue scraping look different close up, respond to the same treatment, and are not criminal damage. We will tell you which is which.
Several panels across one elevation are affected. How is that priced?
Panel by panel, with the mobilisation charged once. On phased sites we attend several blocks in one visit rather than treating each as a separate call out.
Do we need to screen or board anything?
No. The panel never leaves the frame, so there is nothing to cover and no bay left hoarded past handover.
Will the treated area be detectable?
It should not be. The work runs well beyond the damage and fades out, leaving no boundary. A poor finish comes from abrading only the tag, which sinks a shallow lens into the panel, and on a flat modern facade that is unmistakable.
There is scratching as well as etching.
Both in one attendance, since the same graded abrasion and the same polish handles each. Depth is the only real limit.
What about the stone cladding and the entry panel?
Marked as often as the glass on a newly completed entrance, and both recoverable. Stone and metalwork are dealt with alongside the glazing.
Should we specify protective film now or later?
At ground floor level, now. Retrofitting after an incident works, but specifying it from the outset avoids restoring the same accessible panels repeatedly over the life of the building, and on coated or low iron glazing it lets the film be matched properly rather than chosen in a hurry.
What does it cost?
Against replacing the same glazing, counting the unit, the installation, the access and the programme impact, restoration comes in up to 90 per cent below. What sets the figure is how many panels are involved, how much of each is damaged, the depth of the burn, the glazing specification and whether film is fitted afterwards. It goes to you in writing first. No lazy contractors. No hidden fees.
Should we notify insurers?
Compare our figure with the excess first. One panel usually falls beneath it. A run of panels usually does not, and on a construction matter the written record matters as much as the claim.
How do we start?
Send photographs of every affected panel with its position on the elevation, and the facade specification if you have it. Those two things let us price the work, confirm what the glass is and tell you whether it can be restored before anybody commits to reordering.
Do you need graffiti removed from your property? Get a fast, hassle-free quote today! Click here to get a professional graffiti removal quote or call us today on: 020 8050 5997
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