Short-Let Damage Reports: What a Photo Inspection Should Cover After Every Guest
Written by Iva, founder of Iva Cleaning Services London. Damage in a short let is rarely dramatic. It is a…
Most ovens in London are deep cleaned once: the week before the tenant moves out. In between, they get a wipe of the door and a spray that promises to dissolve everything and takes off a layer of brown. That pattern is why the oven is the item most often photographed on a check-out report, and why the average oven we open on a kitchen deep cleaning in London visit has two or three years of carbon on the glass.
This guide gives a straight answer on frequency by how the oven is used, explains what burnt-on residue does to the oven and the food, and sets out what a professional clean includes and how it differs from an afternoon with a bottle of caustic foam.
| How you use the oven | Deep clean | Between deep cleans |
|---|---|---|
| Light: ready meals, the odd roast, under four uses a week | Every 6 months | Wipe the door glass and the floor of the oven after any spill, once it has cooled |
| Normal family cooking, most evenings | Every 3 to 4 months | Monthly: shelves in hot soapy water, floor and door wiped, hob and extractor filter degreased |
| Heavy: roasting, grilling, fatty food, baking several times a week | Every 6 to 8 weeks | Fortnightly: shelves, floor, glass; empty and wash the grill pan after each use |
| Rental property between tenancies | Every changeover | Included free in our end of tenancy clean |
| Airbnb or short let | Every 4 to 6 weeks | Door glass and floor checked at every changeover; guests notice an oven before they notice a skirting board |
Two signs that an oven is overdue regardless of the calendar: smoke when you turn it on, and a smell of old fat before the food has gone in. Both mean the carbon on the floor and walls has built to the point where it is burning off every time the oven heats.
Fat and sugar that land on a hot oven surface do not just sit there. They polymerise into a hard, dark layer that bonds to the enamel. Each use bakes it harder. After a few months you have a surface that a sponge will not touch and that does four things you can taste or pay for.
Carbon also shortens the life of the door seal, which hardens and cracks when it is coated, and it is the main reason fan ovens develop a rattle: fat on the fan blades throws them out of balance.
A professional clean takes the oven apart as far as it will go and treats every piece separately. On a kitchen reset visit our cleaner will:
It takes between one and two hours for a single oven. A range cooker or a double oven takes longer and is priced separately. Our kitchen reset is £269 plus VAT and includes one oven; an additional oven is £49 plus VAT, and an intensive extractor degrease, which is usually needed at the same time, is £39 plus VAT. The rest of that visit, surface by surface, is in our kitchen deep cleaning checklist.
Dedicated oven-cleaning vans carry a heated dip tank: the door glass, shelves and trays go into a bath of hot caustic solution in the van while the cavity is cleaned in the kitchen. It is quick and thorough on the removable parts, and it is what you are paying for with an oven-only specialist.
Cleaning in situ, which is what a kitchen deep clean does, soaks the parts in a bath or bag of professional solution at the sink instead. The result on the parts is the same with the right products and enough contact time; the difference is that the oven is cleaned as part of the whole kitchen rather than as a separate job. For a rental changeover or a kitchen that has not been deep cleaned in a year, one visit that does the oven, the extractor, the cupboards and the floor is cheaper and simpler than two specialists.
The shelves and the grill pan are the easy win. Soak them in a bath or a large bin bag with hot water and a dishwasher tablet or biological washing powder overnight; the enzymes lift most of the carbon and a scourer does the rest. The floor of the oven takes a paste of bicarbonate of soda and water, spread on, left overnight and wiped off, then a vinegar spray to clear the residue. Our older post on uses for baking soda around the house has the method.
Caustic foam sprays work but need care: gloves, an open window, nothing on the element, and never on aluminium or on the door seal. They will not shift years of carbon in one go, and the residue they leave smells for the next two uses. If a spray has not worked twice, the oven is beyond a spray.
Two things not to do: run a self-clean (pyrolytic) cycle on an oven that has not been cleaned in a long time, because the smoke is intense and the heat can crack glass that is already stressed; and scrape door glass with a metal blade, which leaves scratches that collect grease permanently.
If you cook most days, book a professional oven clean every three to four months and keep the shelves and glass up in between. If you let the property, clean it at every changeover and it never gets bad enough to be a problem. An oven that is cleaned regularly takes an hour; one that has been left for three years takes a morning and sometimes a new door seal.
Kitchen overdue a reset? Book online, choose a date, and we confirm within one working hour.
