Cleaning in M'hamid, Marrakech

The dominant building type in M'hamid is neither the developer's scheme nor the architect's villa: it is the individual house on a small plot, put up in phases over several years.

The ground floor is poured, tiled and occupied as soon as it is weathertight. The first floor follows a year or two later. Starter bars are left standing on the roof terrace for the level above, which will come when the budget allows.

Three direct consequences for a clean:

• The floor is not the same from one level to the next. The tiling on the ground floor was bought on one date, the tiling on the first floor on another. Two batches, two hardnesses, sometimes two surface treatments — so two dilutions, not one uniform pass.
• The same house is lived in, handed over and under construction at the same time. There is furniture on the ground floor and sand on the first. The clean is therefore never carried out in an empty house.
• Dust travels downwards. For as long as the level above is open, everything disturbed up there ends up in the stairwell and on the floor below. That is the fact which governs all the rest.

The area also holds four- and five-storey blocks of small-scale flats and affordable housing schemes, for which the logic is the one set out on post-construction cleaning of an apartment and, when several units are handed over together, on preparing an apartment block before handover. Traditional floors are absent in M'hamid, apart from the occasional decorative zellige — the cut glazed terracotta mosaic — in a formal reception room.

The real question asked in M'hamid is not "how much does it cost", it is when to call. The answer comes down to one rule: we come once every trade has finished — and here, that means the level being treated is complete, and nothing is under way above it on the day.

Not when the tiling is laid, not when the paint is dry: when the level above is closed or out of dust.

What that means in practice:

1. Isolating the finished area. Sheeting off the stairwell at the level being treated, closing the openings that give onto the part still under construction, blocking the route for the duration of the visit. Without that, the result lasts half a day.
2. Windows last, never first. We do not touch the ground-floor windows while the first floor is still producing dust: an hour of sanding upstairs undoes glass that was cleaned in the morning. That is the item you have to be willing to postpone.
3. Pricing on the area actually treated. 20 MAD per m² incl. VAT on standard tiles, 30 MAD per m² on any other floor, on the square metres of the level concerned — not a whole-house package that would charge you for a storey still in blockwork. The minimum for the type of property applies: a 90 m² tiled level comes to 1,800 MAD of line items, brought up to the 3,000 MAD apartment minimum. Below 150 m², you are often better off waiting until there are two levels to treat on the same day.
4. A second visit is planned for, not endured. When the level above is finished, dust will come back down, and a visit after new works is never included in the first one. We say so on the first quotation instead of discovering it together two years later.

Prices are indicative and confirmed after photos or a visit: the real state of a floor is not judged over the phone.

If the house is coming out of a heavy job — screed spread about, tile adhesive, paint spatter —, many marks add 20% to the base price and thick residue on almost every surface 40%, after a diagnosis on photos. We do not sand and we do not repair: the treatment is matched to the material.

1. The partial builders clean, level by level. That is most of the demand in M'hamid. 20 MAD per m² on standard tiles, 30 MAD per m² on other floors; minimum 2,000 MAD for a studio, 3,000 MAD for an apartment, 7,500 MAD for a villa.

Included: floors and skirtings, accessible windows, bathrooms and toilets, the staircase and small marks left by the works. Offcuts, cement bags and packaging have to have left the level before we arrive: we do not clear out.

2. The terrace, saturated with construction dust. The ground-floor terrace and the roof take the sand, the cutting waste and the mortar for as long as the build lasts, which is to say for years. They are added to the clean of the level: 10 MAD per m² on standard tiles, 30 MAD per m² on any other surface.

A roof is only treated if it is flat, guarded and reached by a staircase — one where the starter bars wait for the next level, with no parapet, is not. Garden and bare ground are not included. The principle is set out on treating external surfaces after building work.

3. The upholstery in the reception room. In M'hamid, the ground-floor salon is often furnished well before the house is finished — and it takes the dust from everything being built above it.

L-shaped sofa 550 MAD (small) or 600 MAD (large), U-shaped 650 MAD or 750 MAD, rugs 30 MAD per m², mattresses from 300 MAD, textile minimum 400 MAD. Treated in the home; stains and odours trigger no supplement, but no 100% result is guaranteed. See how a sofa is treated without being dismantled.

For the level already lived in, standard housekeeping of an apartment by the day — 800 MAD a day, one person included, 250 MAD for each extra person — takes care of routine upkeep. Building dust that has come down from upstairs, on the other hand, belongs to post-construction cleaning, not to housekeeping.

Vehicle access poses no problem at all: the roads take a vehicle and parking is free outside the plot. The constraints lie elsewhere, and they are the constraints of a permanent building site.

• Electricity. Many houses still run off a temporary site supply rather than a permanent connection. A hot-water extraction machine and a wet-and-dry vacuum do not run on any old circuit. We ask what kind of supply there is before we set off, and adapt the equipment we load rather than trip the house.
• Water. On the most recent builds, the supply sometimes arrives by tanker. That is not a deal-breaker, but it changes the protocol: controlled rinsing, no flood washing, priority to mechanical removal. Without water and power on the day, however, we cannot do the job.
• No lift. Everything goes up by hand. On a three-storey house that weighs on the duration stated in the quotation, and we say so rather than smoothing it over.
• Safety. Staircases with no permanent handrail, open stairwells, unfilled service holes. Our teams work under professional public liability insurance, and a level whose safety is not secured is not treated that day.

Dust is high all year round in M'hamid, not only during the chergui, the hot desert wind: the urban edge keeps advancing, and bare plots and unfinished roads produce dust continuously.

The quotation names the level treated, its area, the floor type declared and the supplements applied. It also states, in plain terms, what is not included: the level still under construction, the terrace if it has not been added, clearing out, sanding, repairs, and any visit after new works.

At the end of the visit the checklist is walked through room by room and signed on site. If a ticked item is not up to standard, EPUREVA comes back free of charge within 48 hours, on that point. That is the return guarantee, and it applies here as everywhere else.

What we do not do in M'hamid: promise a lasting result on a level with an open building site on top of it. We are not going to sell it twice by pretending not to know. All prices are incl. VAT and remain indicative until the photos or the visit; no supplement is committed without your agreement.

For a figure, describe the level concerned, its area and its condition on our quotation request page, or find the sectors of Marrakech and its surroundings on the map of where we work. A home cleaned just before the family moves in comes under preparing a new home before moving in.