Post-renovation and construction cleaning

Renovation dust behaves unlike household dust. Drywall dust is fine, alkaline and electrostatic, so it clings to vertical surfaces, drifts back out of a vacuum with a domestic filter, and reappears three days after everybody agreed the house was clean. Getting it out of a home is a staged process rather than a single visit, and a crew that treats it as an ordinary deep clean will simply relocate it.

Stage one: the rough clean. After the trades finish but before finishes are installed. Bulk debris out, offcuts and packaging removed, floors swept and vacuumed, and the worst of the surface dust taken off. This stage protects the finishes that are about to go in and is usually done by the contractor rather than a cleaning company.

Stage two: the dust clean. This is the one that matters and the one people skip. Every horizontal and vertical surface vacuumed with a machine fitted with a HEPA filter, working strictly from the ceiling down. Walls vacuumed rather than wiped, because a damp cloth on drywall dust makes paste. Light fixtures, window frames, sills and tracks. Every vent and cold air return, and this is also the moment to ask whether the duct system itself needs attention, because renovation dust pulled into a running furnace will be redistributed for months. Filters in the furnace and any HRV replaced at the end of the job, not before it.

Stage three: the final detail clean. Now wet work is safe. Windows inside, including the paint specks and adhesive residue on the glass. Labels and stickers off new appliances, fixtures and glazing. Grout haze removed from new tile with a product suited to the tile, since an acid used on natural stone will etch it. Cabinet interiors, drawers and hardware. Fixtures polished. Floors damp cleaned with a neutral product, several passes, changing water often. Then a walk-through in daylight with a torch held at a low angle, which is the only way to see what is still there.

Why it comes back. Three usual causes. The vacuum had no HEPA filter, so it exhausted fine dust back into the room. The work went bottom up, so ceilings and the tops of doors seeded everything below them afterwards. Or the heating and ventilation system was run during construction and is still holding dust in the ducts and on the coil. All three are avoidable and all three are worth asking about before booking.

Timing. A single-room renovation is four to eight cleaner-hours for the dust and final stages. A kitchen is eight to sixteen. A whole-house renovation or a new build is commonly twenty-four to sixty cleaner-hours split across two or three visits, with a gap of a day or two between them so settled dust can be caught rather than chased. Expect to need a second visit a week later, and budget for it rather than treating it as a failure.

What it costs in Ottawa in 2026. Indicative ranges. A single room is often $200 to $450. A kitchen renovation clean is $400 to $900. A whole-house post-renovation clean commonly runs $800 to $2,500, and a large new build more. Hourly rates are usually a little above general house cleaning, often $50 to $80 per cleaner-hour, because of the equipment and the physical nature of the work. Window interiors with paint and adhesive removal are frequently separate. What moves the number: how much dust escaped containment, whether the trades cleaned up as they went, floor area, the number of windows, and whether the ventilation system ran during the work.

What is specific to Ottawa. The renovation season and the heating season overlap badly here. Work carried out between November and March happens in a sealed house with the furnace running, and that is the worst possible combination for dust distribution: there is no way to open windows and cross-ventilate, and the air handler moves fine dust into every room on the return side. If your project runs through an Ottawa winter, insist on plastic containment at the work zone, taped-off returns, a filter change at the end, and a dust clean before the final one. Century-home renovations in the Glebe, Old Ottawa South, Hintonburg and Sandy Hill add two more issues: plaster dust rather than drywall dust, which is heavier and more abrasive, and the real possibility of lead paint or vermiculite in older assemblies. Testing and abatement of those is specialist regulated work and is emphatically not a cleaning company's job.

Licences and credentials. Cleaning itself needs no licence in Ontario and is not a compulsory trade (Skilled Trades Ontario). What should be in place is liability insurance, because new finishes are easy to damage and expensive to replace, and a WSIB clearance number valid for up to 90 days (WSIB). WHMIS duties apply to the contractor as an employer: labelled products, safety data sheets available and workers trained (Ontario). Anything involving suspected asbestos, lead or mould is regulated work under separate rules and belongs with a licensed abatement contractor, not a cleaner.

What to ask before you book. Do you use HEPA filtration, and on what equipment. Will you vacuum the walls or wipe them. Are the vents and returns included. Who is changing the furnace and HRV filters. Is this one visit or two, and is the second included. Will you remove grout haze, and what product on my tile. Are window interiors with paint specks included. Do you carry insurance, and what is the limit. Ask about HEPA and about vents specifically, because those two answers predict whether the dust stays gone.