Rescue end of tenancy cleaning

A rescue clean is an end of tenancy clean on a property that has been let go: grease cooked onto the extractor, limescale you can feel with a thumbnail, black mould in the shower silicone, a smell that has settled into the carpet. The checklist is the same as any other checkout clean. What changes is how long it takes, and how honest we have to be with you first about what will actually come off.

We price it from photographs, and that is the whole trick. A studio somebody has kept on top of and a studio nobody has touched in a year are the same £156 on the price list and nothing like the same day’s work, so we would rather look at your kitchen before we quote than argue about hours on the doorstep.

What counts as a rescue clean

Most people who ring about this already know they need it. If you are weighing it up, these are the ones we see.

Void and abandoned properties sit here too. Landlords ring us about flats handed back with the fridge still full and half the furniture left behind, usually with a new tenancy already booked in.

How much does a rescue clean cost?

It starts at the published price for the size of the property, the same ladder as a standard end of tenancy clean.

Condition sets the hours on top of that. Send photos of the worst two or three rooms and we come back with the time the job needs and a fixed price for it. There is no surcharge for the word rescue, and no revised figure once the van is packed.

Add-ons keep their published rates: oven cleaning from £77, carpet cleaning from £36 a room, upholstery from £33 an item, a mattress at £35, windows at £35. On a rescue job the oven is rarely optional, and if your check-in inventory logged the carpets as clean then the carpets usually are not either. The full list sits on what end of tenancy cleaning costs.

How long does a rescue clean take?

A studio or one-bed in fair condition runs three to five hours. A two or three-bed is half a day to most of a day. Rescue work sits at the top of that band, and where the hand-back time is fixed the answer is a bigger team rather than a longer day, so tell us the check-out time when you book and we will size the crew to it.

Kitchens are where the hours go. An oven used hard for two years without a clean is a strip-down and a soak rather than a wipe, and it runs alongside everything else instead of holding the job up.

What we can shift, and what we cannot

Given the time, this comes off: baked-on grease and carbon in ovens, hobs and extractors; limescale on taps, tiles, screens and toilets; surface mould on tile, grout and sound silicone; nicotine film on hard surfaces; most floor and carpet soiling, improved rather than reset to new.

This does not, whatever anyone charges you. Silicone that has gone black the whole way through needs cutting out and resealing. Enamel and chrome that limescale has already etched stays etched. Scorch marks, carpet stains that have dyed the fibre, and smell that has reached the underlay, the plasterboard or old emulsion are past the point where cleaning is the right tool.

Some damage is not a cleaning problem. You will hear that from us before you book, in writing, so nobody is paying a cleaner to fail at somebody else’s repair job.

What to send us for a real quote

One message with the following usually gets you a figure the same day.

• Photos of the kitchen: hob, extractor, inside the oven, cupboard fronts
• Photos of the bathroom: screen, silicone, taps, toilet
• Anything mouldy, anything that smells, and the floors
• Postcode, bedrooms and bathrooms, and your check-out date
• Whether the property is empty, and what is left in it if not
• Whether the hot water and the electricity are on

That last one trips people up more than you would expect. No hot water or no power means no clean, and it is a better conversation to have on the phone than on your doorstep with a van outside.

When one visit is not enough

Sometimes it is not. A four-bed left for two years, or a flat still full of somebody’s belongings, is not a one-day job with any number of cleaners in it.

Two things usually work. Clearance first and cleaning second, because an empty property cleans in a fraction of the time and we run a man and van service if you have nothing to clear it with. Or two visits: kitchen and bathrooms on the first, everything else on the second once the rooms are empty. Occasionally the honest answer is that you need somebody else before you need us, because damp, pests and repairs are not cleaning jobs.

The 48-hour re-clean guarantee (terms apply) covers our work: if the check-out flags something we cleaned, we come back. What we flagged as beyond cleaning before we started is a separate matter, and it will already be in writing from the day we quoted.

Add-ons worth booking with it