Student Residence & Common Area Cleaning · Waterloo
Student Residence and Common Area Cleaning in Waterloo
Waterloo has more purpose-built student housing per capita than almost anywhere in the country. These buildings are the hardest-used commercial floors in the city, and their whole year comes down to two weeks.
Between the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier, the blocks along Columbia, Lester, Phillip, Hickory, Regina and King North hold a dense stock of purpose-built student buildings, plus conventional apartment blocks that lease heavily to students. They are run by property managers, not by the universities, and they need two very different services from the same contractor.
The year-round part: common areas
A 200-suite building generates lobby, corridor, elevator, stairwell, laundry, gym, study room, mail room, bike storage and garbage room traffic every day of the week. That is a daily or six-day scope, not a weekly one:
- Lobby and entrances: glass, mats, hard floor, seating, salt removal through winter, entrance washroom if there is one
- Corridors and stairwells: vacuum or mop, spot-clean walls and door frames, railings and touch points, fire door glass
- Elevators: tracks, floors, panels and mirrors - the single most visible surface in the building
- Amenity rooms: study rooms, lounges, gyms including equipment wipe-down, party and games rooms
- Laundry rooms: machine tops and fronts, lint traps flagged, floors, folding surfaces
- Garbage and recycling rooms: chute rooms, bin areas, floor washing and odour control - the room that generates the most complaints
The two weeks that matter: term turnover
The last week of April and the last week of August are the crunch. Suites empty, get cleaned, and are re-occupied within days, across the whole building at once. We handle that as its own project:
- A written per-suite scope agreed before the week starts, and a fixed per-suite price
- Suites worked in the order they are released, not the order they were listed
- Full kitchen and bathroom detail: fridge and freezer stripped and degreased, oven and range hood, tub and shower surrounds, hard-water scale, cabinet interiors, closet shelves, baseboards, floors washed twice
- Date-stamped photos of every suite on completion, filed per unit number
- A running maintenance list back to you - damage, missing hardware, mould behind a fixture, anything that is a repair rather than a clean
- Common areas and corridors kept running through the week, because the building is not empty
Book the turnover early
These weeks are staffed months in advance, and once they are committed they are committed. Property managers who call in early April looking for August capacity are already late in this city. Send your lease-end dates as soon as you have them and we will hold the crew.
Frequently asked questions
Do you clean inside occupied student suites?
Only if that is part of your building's service offering - some buildings sell in-suite cleaning as an add-on to tenants, and we can run that on a schedule. Standard contracts here cover common areas year-round and suites at turnover.
How do you price the turnover?
Per suite, at a fixed price agreed from a sample walk-through of a typical unit before the week starts. Units in unusually bad condition get flagged and quoted separately rather than slowing the whole run down.
Can you do a whole building in one week?
Depends on the unit count and how the leases end. Tell us the number of suites and the release schedule and we will tell you honestly what is possible with the crew we can put on it - including when the answer is that you need to stagger the handovers.
Serving Waterloo and surrounding areas. Contact us for a no-obligation quote specific to your property.