Cleaning in Semlalia, Marrakech

Semlalia lies north of Gueliz, at the start of the route de Casablanca, between Daoudiate and Al Massar, close to the university campus. The district is established and mixed, and it takes its identity from an old concentration of hotels, built thirty to fifty years ago.

Three families of buildings overlap here.

An ageing hotel stock, first: medium to large establishments, with lobbies, floor corridors, conference rooms and restaurants. Some have been refurbished in phases, others are waiting to be, and many live with their original floor coverings.

Four- and five-storey residential blocks next, with shops at street level, occupied all year round.

Office floors and public facilities finally, linked to the nearby university and hospital — offices, practices, training spaces.

The floors tell the story of when the buildings went up:

• fitted carpet, in floor corridors, bedrooms and conference rooms;
• marble, in lobbies, landings and grand staircases, often original, often dulled by decades of successive washing;
• tiles in the homes, the odd timber floor in refurbished rooms.

No traditional floors. In Semlalia, the difficulty is not how fragile the material is: it is its age, and the way it was looked after before us.

We may as well start there, since it is what the district's building stock asks for most often: we take on neither fitted carpet nor curtains, any more than repolishing lobby marble, floor stripping or the regular maintenance of an establishment. We say so before the quotation, not after.

What we do take on in this stock, on the other hand, comes down to four lines:

1. The post-construction clean of a refurbished floor or apartment, once the tradesmen have left.
2. Windows: the windows of homes, office glass on the inside face.
3. Mattresses, L- or U-shaped sofas and rugs on a floor being brought back into service.
4. Standard housekeeping by the day in the apartments of the district's blocks.

On textiles, one lesson from the market holds for a sofa as for a rug: the complaint "we had it cleaned, and three weeks later it was worse" is almost never a cleaning problem. It is a rinsing problem.

A badly dosed or insufficiently rinsed detergent leaves a sticky residue in the fibre that catches dust and holds it. Hence our method: the product suited to the fabric, then rinsing that is checked, not assumed — it is described on hot-water extraction, step by step.

And on marble: a stone washed for thirty years with alkaline detergents has lost its polish gradually and evenly. It is not dirt, and no amount of washing will change it. We clean it in a post-construction clean; we do not repolish it.

The order of priorities in Semlalia follows the buildings, not our commercial preferences.

1. Apartment housekeeping. In the four- and five-storey blocks occupied all year round: 800 MAD incl. VAT for a day with one person; each extra person adds 250 MAD per day. Dusting, vacuuming and mopping, kitchen, bathrooms; no specialist window cleaning, no textiles, no residue from works. Two days with one extra person come to 2,100 MAD. See standard housekeeping in an apartment.
2. Refurbishment in phases. The district's establishments are refurbished floor by floor, without closing. The post-construction clean follows the floor handed over: standard tiles at 20 MAD incl. VAT per m², marble or wood at 30 MAD per m², 3,000 MAD minimum for an apartment or premises, +15% if the floor is already furnished. The framework is set out on bringing a hotel back into service after works, and the treatment of older floors on stone and marble floors.
3. Windows in series. The district's façades line up dozens of identical openings: a window up to 2 m² is 75 MAD incl. VAT, a patio door 150 MAD, and we clean them from inside the homes or the bedrooms. On office floors and in practices, glass is done from the inside only, at 15 MAD per m² of faces with a 500 MAD floor: 24 m² of faces are raised to that minimum. From the street, nothing above 5 metres: neither a cherry picker nor ropes.
4. Bedding and seating on a floor brought back into service. Mattresses 300 MAD single, 400 MAD double; L-shaped sofas from 550 MAD; 400 MAD textile minimum — see sofa cleaning at home.

Indicative prices, confirmed after photos or a visit; no surcharge without your agreement.

Vehicle access from the main road is simple; parking gets harder near the establishments and the university. Inside, the constraint belongs to older buildings, and it is checked before the equipment is loaded:

• Water points are not where logic would put them. On a 1970s plan, a floor pantry may be at the far end of the corridor, or missing altogether. The hose length needed is measured on the plan or on photos, not on the day. Without water available on the floor, we cannot work.
• The electrical power available on a floor is limited. Two machines on the same circuit trip a whole floor. That is settled with the technical services.
• The original service lift is small. Car height, door width, load capacity: three dimensions to know, otherwise the equipment ends up on the stairs.
• Noise is kept in check in an establishment that stays open: the order in which floors are done takes occupied rooms into account.
• Drying drives the textile schedule. A treated mattress or sofa needs half a day to a full day, sometimes more, without being used or covered: a room reoccupied that same evening means moving the visit.

In the residential blocks, the constraint is simpler: a narrow lift or none, carrying up the stairs, parking to find. That is time, and it goes into the number of days.

Three commitments, the last of which is a refusal.

1. The method depends on the fabric. Wool, silk, velvet or an unknown fabric: the method is confirmed on photos before the visit. Reporting a stain or an odour helps us prepare the visit, without adding anything to the price automatically.
2. No promise of a perfect result. An old stain, discolouration or a settled odour may not come out completely; we say so before we start, not after.
3. We refuse to charge for a clean that will change nothing. A mattress with deep mould or an infested seat needs a diagnosis: cleaning alone may not be enough, and the conclusion is sometimes that the piece has to be replaced.

The checklist is signed with you at the end of the visit, and if a ticked point turns out not to be up to standard, we redo it at no cost within 48 hours. Certified products, professional liability insurance and over 195 clients complete the picture.

Tell us the surfaces, the floor types and the window during which the floor can stay out of use, and ask for an estimate — replies seven days a week Full coverage is shown on EPUREVA's geographical coverage.