After builders cleaning in Feltham, TW13

Older Feltham grew in two bursts. The railway arrived in 1848, and after the First World War the town spread around a railway marshalling yard and aircraft and tram factories; the appraisal calls it outer suburban, mostly built in the late 1930s and after 1945. In the Council Tax figures 40.0% of properties around Hanworth Park with a recorded build date are from 1919 to 1939 and 26.8% from 1945 to 1972, and at the 2021 Census 31.8% of households in the ward lived in semis.

Feltham Green and Town Centre conservation area, designated in November 1990, keeps what is left of the old village round the Green and Bridge House Pond, plus the Victorian streets east of the station. Hanworth Park conservation area takes in the park and Hanworth Park House. In the semis a common job is a rear extension or a loft: dust from the new room runs through the whole house, so the crew works from the top floor down and dusts the stair rails, door tops and skirting twice. Carpets that stayed down are vacuumed; a deeper carpet cleaning after building work is an add-on.

A 1-bed new-build flat at handover usually takes 2 cleaners for 3 hours: £212 all in. A 3-bed semi after an extension and redecoration is more often 2 cleaners for 5 hours at £332, and each extra bathroom adds roughly an hour and a half. The sum is £30 per cleaner-hour plus £32 for equipment and detergents; what a builders clean costs has the table.

Feltham's water is hard. Affinity Water, which supplies postcodes such as TW13 4ES, measures 277 mg/l, so a shower screen used by the trades during the works can already carry a limescale film. The crew tries with the right product but cannot promise limescale will lift. TW13 also takes in West Twickenham ward in Richmond upon Thames, so a few addresses follow Richmond's council rules. Crews here also work in Twickenham to the east and Cranford to the north, and the council's skip, scaffold and parking fees are on the page for Hounslow.