A villa in Quinta do Lago, Vale do Lobo or Almancil typically has between ten and twenty-five indoor units. Bedrooms, suites, living rooms, a study, a gym, sometimes the kitchen and the laundry. It is a larger equipment fleet than that of many small offices.
And, contrary to appearances, it is not treated as fifteen apartments. The planning changes, the type of equipment changes, the access changes and who decides changes.
What is different in a villa
The mix of equipment. It is rarely all the same. There are wall-mounted units in the bedrooms, ducted units built into the false ceiling in the living rooms and corridors, sometimes floor consoles in rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows. Each type opens differently and takes different times.
The access. Ducted units require the removal of grilles and diffusers and, often, a stepladder and two people. High ceilings in double-height rooms add time. A villa that is well planned from the aesthetic point of view is almost always badly planned from the maintenance point of view.
The calendar. The house is occupied in July and August, closed from November to March, and used at weekends in between. The useful window for work is short and has to be agreed in advance.
Who decides. In most cases the owner is not in Portugal. Whoever hires, oversees and signs off the work is the property management company. That is who you plan with, and who receives the record of what was done.
The specific problem of the closed house
A villa closed from October to May spends seven months with still air and high relative humidity. The inside of each unit stays damp for all that time, at ambient temperature, with no air circulation.
These are better conditions for fungal growth than during use — when the unit runs, there is at least airflow and the drying functions do something. Idle, there is nothing to counter it.
Whoever arrives in May, opens the house and switches on the air conditioning receives, in the first few minutes, everything that grew inside over the winter. It is the reason so many owners associate the smell with reopening the house, and not with the equipment.
The right time to clean is not August, with the house full. It is April or May, before the first use of the season.
Price, by tier of units
In a villa the cost is not worked out unit by unit in isolation: the travel, the setting up of the washing equipment and the preparation of the space are done once.
| Number of units | Deep clean, per unit |
|---|---|
| 1 to 3 | from €60 + VAT |
| 4 or more | from €50 + VAT |
| More than 20 | dedicated quote |
Ducted and ceiling units have their own price, from €40 per unit + VAT. On a villa with a mix of types, the quote itemises both.
How we plan a villa
A survey before booking. How many units, of what type, of what makes and in what condition. With that we know how many days we need and what it costs, with no surprises at the end.
Work by zone, not by loose unit. We go wing by wing or floor by floor, so the house is never entirely under work at once and the space becomes usable again as we go.
Protection before anything else. Floor, wall and furniture protected before opening each unit. In houses with expensive finishes this is not a detail — it is the part of the work that decides whether we are called again.
A record per unit. Which unit, in which room, what was done and what was flagged. For the management company it is the document that justifies the expense to the owner.
For villa owners and property managers
Most of the homes we work in belong to owners who are not in Portugal for most of the year. Everything above applies, and we work entirely in English.
Air conditioning servicing for villas is different from servicing an apartment, for the reasons set out above: mixed equipment types, ducted units in false ceilings, high ceilings, and a narrow window between the end of the season and the next arrival.
If your property is closed from October to May, book the service for April or May rather than mid-summer. Seven months of still, humid air inside a closed unit is the single worst condition for mould growth, and the smell that appears on the first switch-on is the result.
For property management companies we provide a quote per property, a record of what was done on each unit, and one point of contact for the whole portfolio. Pricing is per unit with quantity discounts, and there is a 15-day guarantee on every job.
We work in Quinta do Lago, Vale do Lobo, Almancil, Vilamoura, Quarteira, Loulé, Albufeira and Faro.
