The brief
Apartment glass in the Algarve is mostly sliding patio doors, and sliding patio doors are the glass you actually look through — from the sofa, from the kitchen, every day.
This one is a ground-floor apartment in Vilamoura, with a terrace at the front onto landscaped grounds and a second run of glass round the back. Sea air, dust off the calçada and the sprinklers on the grounds had put the usual film on it: not filthy, just permanently slightly hazy, the way glass gets when nobody has done the outside properly in a while.
The ask was simple and it is the one we get most: every pane, both sides, front and back, without making a day of it.
Outside: front and back
Traditional method throughout — applicator and solution to wash the glass down, squeegee to take it off, microfibre to detail the edges and frames. An extension pole handled the tops of the sliding doors, so nothing needed a ladder on a pebble border.
Front terrace first
The sliding patio doors and the tall fixed panes onto the terrace, worked top down so nothing dirty runs back over finished glass.
Round the back
The rear windows and door glass. On an apartment this is the half that gets forgotten, and it is usually the dirtiest, because it faces the service side.
Frames, tracks and edges
Sliding door tracks collect grit and standing water. They get done too, along with the frames, so the glass is not sitting in a dirty channel the moment it is clean.
Inside: the half you look through
Every pane got done on both faces. On a villa the outside does most of the visual work; on an apartment it is the opposite, because you are sitting three metres from a sliding door for most of the day. Clean one side and you are still looking at the other one.
Inside means working around furniture, blinds and flooring, so it is microfibre and a dry finish rather than anything wet running down onto a wooden floor.
An hour and twenty minutes, done once, properly
Start to finish this took Ben an hour and twenty minutes. That is not a slow job — it is what an apartment actually takes when every pane gets done on both faces, front and back, and the frames and sliding door tracks get done with them. The twenty-minute version of this job exists, and it is the one where somebody wipes the outside of the patio doors and leaves.
The point of doing it properly once is that it never has to be done that thoroughly again. Left for six months the glass needs the full treatment every time and the tracks need digging out. Kept on a four to eight week round, the return visits are a fraction of the time.
The result
“The Algarve Cleaning Crew did a phenomenal job cleaning my apartment in Vilamoura. Highly professional, great to deal with, and they speak English. I ’ll definitely be having them back soon.”
Common questions
How long does it take to clean the windows on an apartment in Vilamoura?
This one took 1 hour 20 minutes. One cleaner, every pane inside and out, front and back, including the sliding patio doors, the frames and the sliding door tracks. That is what a proper apartment clean takes when nothing is skipped.
Do you clean apartment windows inside as well as outside?
Yes, both faces of every pane as standard. On an apartment it matters more than on a villa, because most of the glass is sliding patio doors you look through all day, and cleaning only the outside leaves you looking at the half we did not touch.
Do you cover Quarteira and Loulé as well as Vilamoura?
Yes. Vilamoura sits inside the parish of Quarteira, which sits inside the municipality of Loulé, so all three are the same round for us. We cover Vilamoura Marina, the Vilamoura resort, Quarteira seafront and the wider Loulé area.
How often should apartment windows be cleaned in the Algarve?
We recommend every four to eight weeks for a coastal apartment. Sea air, dust off the calçada and the sprinklers on landscaped grounds put a film on the glass quickly, and glass that is kept on a round takes minutes rather than needing a heavy clean twice a year.
Do I need to be home while you clean the windows?
Only for the inside. If we can get to the terrace and the rear of the apartment we can do all the outside glass without anyone there, and come back or work around you for the inside. Plenty of our apartment work is for owners who are not in the country.
