After Builders Cleaning
Dealing with after builders cleaning happens whenever you’ve had builders in your home for replastering of rooms, new walls put in or removed. Even painting and repainting existing rooms can create quite a lot of unwanted staining on floors, windows and even carpets.
Tracked-in dirt from outside, without setting up a proper mud-room, will always be awful for any homeowner. This is why the EasyCleaningLondon.co.uk team decided to create a short list of stains often left after the builders leave your home, and how to deal with them properly.
Contracting construction cleaners during the renovation or build is one way of keeping the dirt and grime to a minimum, however, that’s not always possible due to budget constraints. Here are cheaper solutions.
What are the Most Common Builder’s Stains and How to Clean After Builders
While builders clean after themselves and by contract, are obliged to deal with any construction debris and refuse, there might be minor things that are left behind. If you are not present at the construction site to oversee the cleaning process, you might be surprised with how much is left to clean.
Here are some of the most common after builders cleaning in London issues you will face:
- Plaster stains on floors;
- Paint and plaster on floor skirting;
- Construction dust on carpets;
- Dirt and grime on all room surfaces;
- Pain stains on entrance and doors.
Depending on the type of construction, there might be quite a lot of dust for instance from electrical work. When electricians run their cables, they prefer to do it in prepared channels inside the wall.
Some older buildings, like central London town houses, are made from brick and mortar – electricians use wall chasers or groovers to make channels in the walls to run cabling. These wall chasers produce quite a lot of fine dust which, even with proper dust extraction, can get airborne and grime up your property.
Some building cleaning services provide preliminary services before the construction starts to reduce the risk of grime and stain accumulation. They provide:
- Temporary floors for floor protection;
- Temporary dust barriers and walls;
- Proper dust extraction for post building cleaning.
How to Deal with Them
Most common issue property owners find after the builders leave, are stains from plaster on floor skirting, doors, windows and hardwood floors. The issue with these stains is that they are often produced from highly alkaline construction materials containing gypsum.
Highly alkaline substances like plaster glue can cause discoloration on unprotected woods and can even damage existing wood laker. In order to deal with such stains, you need to first carefully remove the plaster from the floor as to avoid further mechanical damage.
An essential part of post build cleaning is to avoid making the issues worse, so walk carefully and remember to clean the floors so you don’t scratch them any further.
Dealing with Plaster Stains on Floors
Due to the high alkaline levels of gypsum-based plaster, it’s best to quickly act. Alkaline substances cause acidic damage to natural surfaces like carpets and hard wood flooring causing discoloration or reduced flexibility of fibres.
The best way to counteract this is to neutralized the lowered pH of the surface with a lower intensity acid, such as citric acid. Avoid using vinegar as it can make things worse – better rely on lemons since they are actually bases which can neutralize other bases and acids.
Paint from unglazed glass can be remove with a mechanical remover like a sharp paint scraper. For the best results use denatured alcohol because it will soften the paint, especially if its water-based, and make it easier to remove the stain from windows.
Water-based paints, like some latexes, require a bit more work, however, other variants are really easy to remove. They can even be washed away from carpets of fabric fibres since they are water-soluble.
After Building Cleaning in London – Dealing with Construction Dust
Construction dust is one of the biggest issues which professional after builders’ cleaners in London have to deal with. What’s the reason for it?
Construction dust is really fine, some particles are as small as 2.5 micrometres, that’s so small that it can be seen only though a microscope or under specific lighting conditions.
This means that it can be extremely difficult to keep this dust from spreading through the property. What are some solutions that post build cleaners use to deal with this? They rely on artificial, temporary walls or masking-off rooms with sheets and wraps which go from ceiling to floor.
They prevent a dust barrier which contains all dust to a specific area, which is fantastic, but how do you deal with dust so fine it can pass through pretty much any M3 mask? You use dust extractors and air purification units to really draw in that dust.
There are also vapor barriers which use moisture to capture the dust in the air. Brick and mortar dust, as fine as it is, is still hydroscopic, meaning it will attach itself to water molecules in the air, making them heavier and no longer airborne.
What are Some Tips to Keep Your Home Clean Even When Under Construction
Some builders cleaning services work 24/7 to completely clean the entire property from any construction debris, dust and grime.
Other services use specialised equipment and rely on skill rather than manual labour to completely transform and restore a domestic property to above liveable conditions.
Dust extractors and water barriers and humidity control systems are used to remove fine dust, while specialised anti-alkaline cleaning solutions are applied on paint and plaster stains.
To keep your property clean, in cases where you can manage to oversee the building process, we recommend masking of rooms with tape and plastic barriers. Make sure that they reach all the way around the wall – mask off areas of the property that are not under construction.
Use packing boxes and line the floors to avoid scuffing and damage to surfaces – it also helps avoid floor construction stains like paint and plaster which are impossible to remove form natural floors like hardwood.
For a complete cleaning of your property for any reason whatsoever, feel free to contact our professional cleaning team EasyCleaningLondon.co.uk at any time.
