Standards, manufacturer documents, trade press, peer-reviewed literature, and the open-data sources our tools rely on. Individual articles cite the specific items they draw on; this page is the aggregated view.
The published standards we cite when discussing tempered, laminated, and safety glazing, plus the rope-access framework for high-rise work.
The industry reference for routine cleaning: soak, agitate with a non-abrasive applicator, squeegee off; no metal contact in routine work; treated water for pure-water cleaning. Cited in the four-stage wash, the vinegar and ammonia pieces, and the scratches piece.
Why tempered and heat-strengthened surfaces scratch under a blade where annealed glass does not — the fabricating-debris paper. Free download from the NGA store.
Ladders; the four-foot general-industry fall-protection trigger; the six-foot construction trigger. Cited in the working-at-height primer.
Insulating-glass unit performance (the seal-failure specification), laminated architectural glass, and pyrolytic and vacuum-deposition coatings — the specifications behind the glass-types and failed-seal pieces.
The mg/L hardness bands used across the Water Atlas, the state pages, and every hard-water article on this site.
The 500 mg/L total-dissolved-solids secondary standard and the classification of hardness as a nuisance parameter rather than a health one.
Exposure limits and incompatibilities for ammonia, including its corrosiveness to copper and galvanized surfaces. Cited in the ammonia piece.
Performance specifications and test methods for safety glazing materials used in buildings. Cited in our pieces on tempered glass and the tempered stamp.
Federal standard for architectural glazing materials. The legal underpinning for why your shower door is tempered.
Specifications for flat glass and heat-treated flat glass. Referenced when we discuss annealed vs. tempered manufacturing.
The rope-access framework that governs high-rise window cleaning operations including the Burj Khalifa work covered in our Field Notes.
Trade-side safety guidance on ladder, pole, and lift work. Cited throughout the Pro Track pillar.
Federal rules on fixed ladders and rope-descent systems. The legal floor under high-rise cleaning work in the United States.
Safety Data Sheets and product literature from the cleaning-chemistry manufacturers whose products appear in our coverage. We cite SDS PDFs by version and date.
Surfactant package and pH characterization for the dish soap that anchors the House Standard solution.
Acid composition (lactic, gluconic, sulfamic) and substrate compatibility limits for the consumer hard-water cleaner.
Ammonia concentration and surfactant load. The basis for our standing warning against use on tinted, low-E, and laminated glass.
Composition and performance specifications for the foaming cleaner most widely used by working route cleaners.
Oxalic acid plus feldspar abrasive. The reason BKF should not be used on coated, tinted, or self-cleaning glass.
Petroleum distillate composition. Cited in our solvent ladder work and warnings against use near gaskets.
Working trade journals in this trade and the adjacent glazing and building-services trades. Each one below is a publication that exists and that you can go and read; we are skeptical of trade press funded primarily by manufacturer advertising.
The trade's long-running independent magazine, founded by Rod Woodward and Richard Fabry and a catalyst for the formation of the IWCA in 1988. Equipment coverage, safety columns, and trade-business reporting.
Glazier-side trade press. Useful for coverage of new glazing products and IGU manufacturing trends — the supply side of the surfaces this site is about.
Contractor-side reporting on commercial-cleaning operations. Note what this is and is not: it is industry reporting, not a wage dataset, and no pricing figure on this site is drawn from it.
Peer-reviewed and institutional literature this site actually cites, with the author, journal and year on each one and a link where the publisher makes the paper reachable. If a paper is listed here, it is named in an article's Sources block too — a bibliography entry that cannot be opened is not provenance.
States the mechanism behind permanent surface alteration directly: where the contact solution cannot be replaced, surface pH rises as hydrogen ions are consumed during leaching, and corrosion shifts from leaching to network dissolution. Cited in the glass-oxidation piece.
The conservation-side account of the same two mechanisms — ion exchange and network dissolution — plus the alkali-deficient gel layer and the vocabulary of the failure: dealkalization, dulling, pitting, glass sickness, weeping, crizzling.
A float-glass manufacturer's own two-stage model, with the number that matters: below pH 9.0 Stage 1 leaching proceeds without visible harm; at pH 9.0 and above, hydroxide severs silicon-oxygen bonds and the network itself dissolves, showing first as microscopic pitting.
Hand and foot forces, torso EMG and L5/S1 loading measured across rung separation, ladder slant and climbing speed. Cited for climbing loads in the working-at-height piece — and explicitly NOT for ladder placement geometry, which it does not address.
The Penn State review behind the artillery-fungus piece, including the mulch field study — large pine-bark nuggets and cypress resist sporulation where shredded bark-and-wood blends support it.
Open-data sources for the regional information our tools rely on, including the water-hardness data that powers the Hard Water Severity Scorer.
Source data for the water-hardness mapping that backs our scorer tool. Updated regularly from the National Water Information System.
Public-water-system reporting we use to validate and cross-check the regional hardness data.
Pollen, humidity, and seasonal data referenced in our seasonal-cleaning pieces.
Individual articles cite the specific items they draw on inline by footnote. If a piece's claim depends on a particular document, that document is named in the article. This page exists for readers who want to see the body of work as a whole.