Deep Cleaning in Longbridge

Sealed flats hold residue, Austin semis hold forty years of it

The two halves of Longbridge disappoint their owners in opposite ways. An apartment on the development typically has an internal bathroom with no window at all, ventilated by an extract fan on a timer, so grout and sealant darken months before anything else in the flat looks tired. The kitchen sits open to the living space with a hood that recirculates through a charcoal filter instead of venting outside, which spreads a fine greasy haze across the whole room when it should stay above the hob. The Austin-era houses have the opposite fault. Ventilation is not the issue, accumulation is: forty years of it behind appliances that have stood in the same spot since they were delivered.

• Internal bathrooms in the apartment blocks, ventilated only by a timed extract fan, where grout and sealant blacken first
• Recirculating cooker hoods in open-plan flats, which push the grease back into the living space instead of outside
• Fine dust from nearby building work, drawn in at trickle vents and settling along deep window reveals
• Freestanding cookers and 1970s and 1980s fitted units in the Austin-era semis, with years of residue behind them
• Soft Elan Valley supply across B31 and B45, so the residue is grease, soap scum and mould, with no scale to speak of

Hood filters out in the flats, cookers forward in the semis

Top down and dry before wet in both, though the dry stage means different things. In a flat it is the deep reveals, window boards and the tracks under the balcony or French doors, where building dust collects into a gritty line, plus the tops of the fitted wardrobes. The extractor filter then comes out and is degreased properly, since in a recirculating installation a saturated filter is the reason a flat smells of last month. In an Austin-era house the cooker comes forward first and the gap behind it is cleared before anything else starts.

• Charcoal and mesh hood filters lifted out and degreased, because in a sealed flat that filter holds the smell
• Window reveals, boards and balcony door tracks cleared of construction dust while everything is still dry
• Freestanding cookers drawn forward on the older streets, with the gap and the wall behind it cleaned out
• Grout and sealant left to dwell rather than scoured, since the growth in them is mould, not mineral

More detail on the equipment and the order of work: our deep cleaning method.

Sealed flats and forty-year kitchens

In the blocks around Longbridge town centre and the station, a deep clean tends to make sense three or four years into living somewhere, once the bathroom sealant has gone from white to grey and ordinary cleaning no longer brings it back. On the Austin-era streets off Groveley Lane, Longbridge Lane and the roads running back towards Turves Green, many owners have lived in the same house for decades, and a deep clean is often timed around a family occasion or a relative moving in. It is about twenty minutes down the A38 from our Selly Oak base, so a Longbridge deep clean can usually be fitted within the week.

Build date sets a Longbridge deep clean almost exactly

Condition sets the number, and in Longbridge condition follows the build date almost exactly. A two-bedroom flat off the town centre with one bathroom, an integrated oven and modern surfaces throughout sits at the lighter end of what a deep clean involves. A three-bedroom semi from the Austin era with an original bathroom, a freestanding cooker, a pantry cupboard and a conservatory on the back is several times that job. Pricing both from one table would tell you nothing useful. What genuinely moves the figure is the state of the oven, how many bathrooms there are, how deep the mould has travelled into old sealant, and whether the conservatory interior is in scope.

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Yearly on the older streets, twice in a flat with no bathroom window

Once a year suits most households on the older streets, generally alongside a regular clean. Flats with an internal bathroom do better on twice, because a room whose only air movement is a fan on a two-minute overrun regrows mould in the sealant faster than a room with a window. Landlords letting long-term on the development can book a mid-tenancy deep clean at the eighteen-month mark, which is cheaper than dealing with it all at the check-out.