After builders cleaning in Heston, TW5

Heston began as a hamlet in the parish of Isleworth. Heston Village conservation area, designated on 25 November 1974, is centred on the green and St Leonard's Church, listed Grade II*, with early eighteenth-century buildings close by and, unusually, the complete 1960s modernist Wheatlands Estate inside its boundary. The M4 cut through Heston in the late 1960s, and the appraisal says the area is now dominated for noise by the motorway to the north and Heathrow to the west. North of the village is the 1970s Heston Farm estate, with cross-shaped slab blocks, towers and terraces, and Osterley Park lines the eastern edge.

In the estates the jobs are flats, where the crew needs to know the floor, whether the lift works and where the van can stop. In the village and the inter-war streets they are houses, where the dust has two or three floors to travel through.

A 4-bed semi after a loft conversion usually takes 3 cleaners for 4 hours: £392 all in. A 3-bed semi after decorating only is nearer 2 cleaners for 4 hours at £272, and a 2-bed flat after a refurbishment 2 cleaners for 4 hours at £272. Each extra bathroom adds roughly an hour and a half of cleaner time. All of these are £30 per cleaner-hour plus £32 for equipment and detergents; our prices list every size.

If the house has a drive, keep it clear for the crew's van on the day. Where it does not and the street is controlled, a visitor permit is far simpler than suspending a bay, which in Hounslow costs £25 per bay per day plus a £40 admin fee and needs ten working days' notice. The same crews work in Cranford to the west, in Southall across the M4 and in Isleworth beyond Osterley Park, and skip and waste rules for the borough are on the page for the rest of Hounslow.