Table of Contents
The short answer
The useful time to inspect a home is the hour before anything is moved into it. Every skirting board, socket, drain and cupboard can be reached, nothing has to be shifted to fix a fault, and the dusty jobs can be finished before the clean and not after it. Six systems are worth that hour: the water, the air conditioning, the drains, the locks, the electrics and any sign of pests.
The method is simple. Walk the home once with a phone, a charger, a torch and a jug. Switch everything on, run every tap, open and lock every door, and photograph whatever is wrong. Then sort the list into what the landlord, the developer or the building has to put right and what you will arrange yourself, and have the work done in the right order: repairs first, then dusty work and painting, then the clean, then the furniture.
This guide covers the maintenance side. The cleaning side has its own article, the move-in and move-out cleaning checklist. What IHR Dream Cleaning repairs and maintains is listed on the maintenance and repairs page, and most of the fixes below can be quoted from the photos you take on this walk-round.
Before you start: who fixes what
Whether a fault is yours to fix depends on documents, not on custom. For a rented home it is the tenancy contract and whatever the landlord or the agent has agreed in writing. For a newly built home it is the developer's handover papers. In a tower or a managed community, the building management looks after the shared systems. Read what you have before the walk-round, so you know which list each fault belongs on.
Whoever is responsible, the evidence is the same. Take a wide photo and a close photo of every fault, keep the original files with their dates, and send the list in writing as close as you can to the day you receive the keys. A scratch, a stain or a dead socket recorded at the start cannot easily be put down to you at the end. If a repair needs the landlord's approval, or is the landlord's to arrange, settle that before you book anyone.
The walk-round: what to bring and the order to do it in
Order matters, because some checks need time. An AC needs a quarter of an hour to show whether it cools, and a water heater needs longer than that to heat. Start them first and inspect everything else while they run. Bring six things.
- A phone with a full battery, for photos, video and its torch.
- The phone's charger or a small lamp, to test every socket.
- A jug or a bucket, for the drains.
- A few sheets of tissue, to find slow drips under the sinks.
- Low-tack tape or sticky notes, to mark each fault so that a technician can find it later.
- Every key, card and remote you were given.
- At the front door, test each key. Then go straight to the distribution board and check that all the breakers are on.
- Switch on every AC unit or thermostat, set to cool, and switch on the water heaters.
- Open the main water valve if it is closed, and run the cold tap in the kitchen.
- Work through the home room by room, doing the sockets and switches, the doors and windows, and the walls and ceilings as you go.
- Do the kitchen and the bathrooms next: taps, drains, toilets and the space under each sink.
- Go back to each AC and to the hot taps. Both have now had long enough.
- Finish outside: the balcony, and in a villa the roof, the tank, the garden, the pool and the boundary.
Water: tank, taps, pressure and hot water
The tank
In a villa the tank is the first thing to ask about, because everything you drink, cook with and wash in passes through it. Ask the landlord or the previous owner when it was last cleaned and whether there is a report. If nobody can say, treat it as overdue. Look at what can be seen safely from outside the tank: the lid should close fully, and the vent and overflow should have whole screens so that insects and dust stay out. Do not climb onto a tank or lean into one.
We recommend cleaning a household tank every 6 to 12 months, and a home that has stood empty is a strong case for doing it before you rely on the water. The tank is drained and inspected, the sediment is removed, the inside is disinfected with products suited to drinking-water systems and rinsed, and the pump is checked before refilling. You are left with an inspection report, which is worth keeping with your tenancy papers. A standard villa tank takes two to four hours with the water off, and that is far easier to live with before you have moved in.
The water tank cleaning page explains the visit, and how often a tank needs cleaning covers the reasoning. In an apartment the tank belongs to the building, so ask the management for the date of the last cleaning.
Taps, pressure and hot water
Run every tap, cold then hot, for a full minute. In a home that has been empty, the first water may be discoloured or carry grit, and that should clear. Water that stays cloudy, smells or keeps bringing sediment is a tank or pipework matter and goes on the list. Compare the flow from tap to tap. One weak tap usually has a scaled-up aerator or cartridge, which is common with Abu Dhabi's hard water. Weak flow everywhere points further back, to the pump, the tank or the supply.
Hot water should arrive and stay hot through a few minutes of running. Look at each heater you can see. Rust streaks, a drip at the base or a stain on the ceiling beneath one are reasons to have a plumber look before you depend on it. Then try the shower in each bathroom, including the diverter between tap and shower head, and the hand spray beside each toilet, whose hoses are a common place for a slow leak.
Under the sinks and around the toilets
Slow leaks do their damage inside cabinets, where nobody looks until the base has swollen. Five minutes per room finds them now.
- Under every sink, wrap a tissue round each joint and each flexible hose while the tap runs. A damp tissue finds a leak the eye misses.
- Fill each basin and sink, pull the plug and watch the trap and the waste pipe while it empties.
- Turn the small valves under the sinks and beside the toilets a quarter turn and back. A valve that will not move is worth knowing about before the day you need it.
- Flush each toilet. It should refill and then go quiet. A cistern that keeps hissing or trickling has a worn valve and wastes water every hour.
- Press on each toilet and basin. Neither should rock.
- At the washing machine point, check for a tap that turns, a drain connection that is open and a socket within reach.
- Look at the silicone around baths, shower trays and worktops. Black, split or lifting sealant lets water in behind it, and it is easiest to redo in a bathroom nobody is using yet.
Air conditioning: cooling, airflow, drips and dust
After fifteen minutes on a cool setting, every room should feel clearly cooler at the vent or the unit than it did. Go round and check four things at each one.
- Cooling: cold air, not merely moving air.
- Airflow: a similar strength in every room. One weak room can be a closed damper, a vent clogged with dust or a fault.
- Water: no drip from the indoor unit, and no stain on the ceiling or wall around it.
- Sound and smell: no rattle or grinding, and no musty smell that lasts beyond the first minute.
Then look at the dust
Slide out the filter of a split unit, or look closely at the grilles of a ducted system. A filter matted with grey felt, or grilles with dark marks around them, say that the system has not been looked after. In a home that has been renovated or has stood empty they are to be expected. Renovation dust settles inside ducts even when the AC was switched off during the work, and a property left empty for months often needs its ducts cleaned before the AC goes back into daily use.
What follows depends on what you found. A unit that cools but is dirty needs a service or a clean: AC servicing is AED 129 per unit and a split-unit clean is AED 99 per unit. Dust and dark marks at the vents of a ducted system point to AC duct cleaning, which starts from AED 350 for a studio or one-bedroom apartment and from AED 750 for a villa, confirmed once the system has been seen. A unit that does not cool, leaks or trips its breaker is a repair: the visit starts from AED 99 for the technician's first hour and the diagnosis, and gas and parts are quoted before anything is fitted. The three kinds of visit are compared in AC cleaning, servicing and duct cleaning.
Have this done before the clean, not after it. Opening grilles and brushing out ducts sheds dust, and there is no sense in dusting a home twice. In many towers the cooling plant, and sometimes the units inside the flat, are maintained by the building or its cooling provider, so ask the management which parts are yours before you book anything.
Drains: flow, smell and the traps
An empty home hides drain problems, because nobody has been running water. Every floor drain, basin, sink and shower has a bend beneath it that holds a little water and seals the pipe against smells and insects from the drainage system. In a home that has stood empty, that water evaporates. So the first check is also the cure: pour a jug of water into every floor drain and run every tap.
- Each floor drain should take a full jug without the water rising, and should not gurgle afterwards.
- Fill and release each sink and basin. A quick, clean empty is what you want. A slow swirl with bubbles is a partial blockage.
- Run each shower for two minutes and see whether water pools around the drain.
- Pour a jug into the balcony drain and into the drain beside the washing machine.
- In a new or renovated home, look into each floor drain with the torch. Grout, cement and paint washed down during building work can leave a drain slow from the first day.
- Come back to the bathrooms an hour later. A smell that returns after the traps were filled has another cause.
What a slow drain is telling you
One slow drain is usually a local blockage. Several slow drains at once usually point to the main line, which in a tower is a question for the building as well. Drain clearing is quoted by the kind of blockage and the access, and it is far better done before the first load of washing than after the first flood. Do not pour chemical cleaner into a drain you are about to hand to a technician. A smell that persists has its own guide, bad smell from a bathroom floor drain.
Locks, doors and windows
You cannot know how many copies of your front-door key exist. Previous tenants, agents and contractors may all have held one, which is why changing the lock is worth doing every time you move into a rented home. In most cases the whole lock does not need to go. Changing the cylinder, the part the key turns, gives you new keys and leaves the handle and the lock body in place. Which of the two you need is explained in change the locks or just the cylinder.
If you rent, ask the landlord before you change anything on the door, and agree who holds a spare. Our locksmith service changes cylinders and whole locks and fits smart locks on compatible doors. It is quoted by the type of lock and the task, so send a photo of both sides of the door and of its edge. Every lock and every new key is tested with you from both sides of the door before the locksmith leaves.
The front door is one lock among many. Go round the rest while you are there.
- Count what you were handed: door keys, the mailbox key, access cards, parking tags, garage remotes. Test each one, and ask how a lost card is cancelled.
- Every internal door should close flush, latch without a push and stay where you leave it.
- Lock and unlock each bedroom and bathroom door from the inside, and check that a bathroom lock can be released from outside in an emergency.
- Balcony and patio doors should slide freely, lock and seal. A sliding door that drags or drops in its track has worn rollers.
- Open, close and lock every window, and look over the mesh screens for tears.
- Try the intercom, the doorbell and the closer on the front door.
- With small children in the family, note the height of window handles and balcony locks before you decide where furniture will stand.
Sockets, switches and the distribution board
None of these checks involves opening anything. They are done with a phone charger and your eyes.
- Find the distribution board and read its labels. Each breaker should say what it feeds. If labels are missing or wrong, ask for them to be corrected, because in a fault you need to know which switch to reach for.
- Plug the charger into every socket in the home, including the ones behind where furniture will stand. Mark the dead ones with tape.
- Look at every faceplate. A crack, a scorch mark, a brown stain or a socket that moves in the wall when a plug goes in is a fault, not a blemish.
- Work every light switch. Note lamps that are out, lights that flicker and switches that crackle or feel warm.
- Try the cooker switch, the water heater switches, the kitchen hood and the extractor fan in each bathroom. A bathroom without a working fan stays damp, and damp bathrooms grow mould quickly in this climate.
- Check that there are sockets where you plan to put the TV, the desk and the beds. Adding one is far tidier before the room is painted and furnished.
What to do with what you find
A dead socket can be as small a matter as a tripped breaker or a loose connection. A warm faceplate, a burning smell or a breaker that will not stay on is different: switch that circuit off and have it seen before you use it. Wiring checks and socket and switch inspections are commonly booked ahead of a move, and anything beyond a straightforward socket or fitting repair is confirmed with a site visit first. What the warning signs mean is explained in tripping breakers, flickering lights and warm sockets.
Pests: the signs an empty home shows
An empty home is the easiest one to read for pests, because nothing is covering the evidence.
- Kitchen cupboards and drawers: droppings like ground pepper in the corners, brown capsule-shaped egg cases, a stale, oily smell.
- Under the sinks: gaps around the pipes where they pass through the wall or the back of the cabinet. A gap you can push a pencil into should be sealed.
- Window sills and light fittings: dead insects, and in a villa small piles of shed wings.
- Store rooms, the backs of built-in wardrobes and the spaces for the fridge and cooker: droppings, gnawed edges, shredded paper.
- In a furnished home, the mattress seams, the joints of the bed frame and the back of the headboard: dark dots and pale shed skins.
- In a villa: mud tubes about the width of a pencil on walls and door frames, and wood that sounds hollow when tapped.
Treating before you move in
A precautionary inspection before moving in is a common request, and an empty home is the easiest one to treat properly, since every skirting board and cupboard can be reached. Pest control starts from AED 149 for a studio, AED 199 for a two-bedroom home and from AED 299 for a villa, and the price is confirmed with the pest before the visit. Mud tubes or hollow wood suggest termites, which need a specialist treatment: photograph them, leave them undisturbed and describe what you found when you book, so that the scope can be confirmed first. What each sign means is covered in household pests in Abu Dhabi.
Ask about timing when you book. As a general rule, a treatment for an active problem comes before the clean, and a preventive treatment goes on afterwards so that it is not mopped away. The technician will say which applies to your home and how long to keep the treated rooms empty.
Walls, ceilings, woodwork and the small-jobs list
The last pass is for everything that is not a system. Look up first. A brown ring or a bubbled patch on a ceiling is the mark of a leak, past or present, and the question to put in writing is whether its cause was repaired. Painting over a stain without that answer hides the evidence and solves nothing. The order of repairs is set out in water stain on the ceiling or peeling paint: what to fix first.
Then open and close every cupboard door, wardrobe door and drawer in the home. Kitchen and wardrobe hinges loosen with daily use, and a door that hangs low or a drawer that jumps its runner usually needs an adjustment, not a replacement. Pull down gently on each curtain rail, and try the handles, towel rails and shelves for the same looseness.
Write all of these on one list with a photo of each. A batch of small fixes done in a single visit is one of the commonest requests from new tenants, and it is far less trouble than reporting them one at a time over the first two months. The same visit can hang mirrors, fit curtain rails and mount the TV. Our handyman service is quoted from that list, and flat-pack furniture is assembled under the carpentry and assembly service. What each photo should show is in how to get an accurate repair quote.
In a villa: roof, garden, pool and boundary
A villa adds an outdoor round. Pool and garden resets for new occupants are a regular request, and both are quoted by size and condition. The yearly routine that follows is in our home maintenance calendar.
- Roof and balcony outlets: clear of sand and leaves, so that the first rain drains away. Check only the ones you can reach from a safe, flat surface.
- Outdoor AC units: upright, clear of stored items, with nothing nesting in them.
- Garden taps and the irrigation controller: run each zone once and look for broken heads and dry corners.
- The water pump: it should start when a tap opens and stop soon after the tap closes. A pump that keeps starting with every tap shut suggests a leak somewhere on the system.
- The pool: clear water to the bottom, a pump that runs quietly and a clean waterline. A pool that has stood unused needs a reset before anyone swims in it.
- The boundary: gaps under gates, cracks at the foot of walls and openings around pipes are where rodents and insects come in.
The order to do the work in
Once the list is sorted, the sequence saves both money and a second clean. Work that makes dust or needs the water off goes first. Work that needs clean, finished surfaces goes last.
- Send the list. Everything that is the landlord's, the developer's or the building's goes to them in writing, with photos, before you arrange anything yourself.
- Water tank cleaning, where it is yours to arrange, and any plumbing that needs the supply shut off.
- Electrical faults and any new sockets or light points, while the walls can still be patched and painted.
- AC servicing and duct cleaning.
- Ceiling and wall repairs, then painting.
- Silicone and grout, which need dry joints and several hours without water.
- Flat-pack assembly and wall fixings, where the furniture can be delivered ahead of you, because drilling and packaging make dust.
- The move-in clean.
- Pest treatment, at the point the technician advises.
- The lock change, after the last tradesperson has left.
Where the clean fits
The clean comes after the trades because every one of them leaves dust behind. A move-in clean has the same minimum as a deep clean, at least 2 cleaners for 3 hours each, which is AED 180 without materials or AED 210 with ours. As a yardstick, our hours guide for a deep clean of a two-bedroom apartment is 2 cleaners for 4 hours each, AED 280 with materials. In a furnished home, sofa, carpet, mattress and curtain cleaning booked with it is 10% cheaper.
A home that has just been built or renovated needs a post-construction clean instead, which is always done with our materials. Which of the three you need is explained in move-in clean, deep clean or post-construction clean, and what the visit covers is on the move-in and move-out cleaning page.
How the maintenance work is priced
AC servicing, split-unit cleaning, duct cleaning and pest control have the published prices given above. A plumber's visit starts from AED 99 and an electrician's from AED 99, which is the first hour on site, with parts and longer jobs quoted from your photos before work starts. The tank, lock, carpentry and painting work is quoted from your photos, and where a job has to be seen, the inspection is free in every area we serve. That suits a move well: one visit to see the whole list, one quote. Every price includes VAT. Quoted work is paid online by card from My bookings on this website once the price is confirmed, and a quoted job of AED 1,000 or more takes a 30% advance by that link.
Common questions
The home is brand new. Does it still need checking?
More than an older one, in some ways. Nothing in a new home has been tested by use. The drains may hold builders' debris, the AC may never have run for a full day, the ducts hold construction dust, and a socket or two may never have been connected. Do the same walk-round, send the list to the developer in the form the handover papers ask for, and keep a copy. The clean a new home needs is the post-construction kind.
Can I change the lock in a rented home?
Ask the landlord first, in writing. It is a reasonable request, since it protects the property as well as you. Agree whether the landlord wants a spare key and whether the original cylinder should go back when you leave, and keep the old cylinder somewhere safe in case it should. Smart locks need the same conversation, plus a check that the door suits one.
How long before move day should I do this?
As soon as you hold the keys, because the sequence takes longer than any one job in it. As a guide from our service pages, a villa tank takes two to four hours, an AC service 45 to 60 minutes a unit, a single room of painting half a day to a day, and a full repaint one to several days. The clean follows all of them. If you have only one day, put the lock, the water, the AC and the clean first, and book the rest for your first fortnight.
We have already moved in. Is it too late?
No. Do the same walk-round this week. It takes longer with furniture in the way, and that is the only difference. Deal with anything that touches safety first: a warm socket, a leak, a breaker that trips. Then send the written list, change the lock cylinder, ask about the tank and have the AC looked at. The small jobs can wait for one batched visit.
I am moving into an apartment. Is the tank my concern?
The tank is the building's to maintain, but the water is yours to drink. Ask the management when the tank was last cleaned. Inside the flat, run every tap for a few minutes on the first day and unscrew and rinse the tap aerators and shower heads if the flow is weak, since that is where grit and scale collect. If the water is still discoloured after that, report it to the management with a photo.
The home comes with appliances or furniture. What else should I check?
Run each appliance once while you are there. Put the washing machine through a short cycle and watch the back and the drain hose for leaks. Check that the fridge is cold and that its door seals grip a sheet of paper. Light every hob ring, heat the oven, and run the hood. Photograph each model plate, because a repair quote starts with it. On furniture, look closely at the mattress seams and the sofa before you sit down, for the pest signs listed above.
Can everything be done in one visit?
The looking can. A free inspection covers the whole list in one go. The work is done by different trades in the order above, though several of them can share a day when the timing is confirmed in advance. Handyman work is often scheduled alongside a cleaning visit, for example.
Booking the work before you move
Book on the website or in the IHR Dream app. Choose the service, describe what you found and send the photos from your walk-round. For a long list, ask for the free inspection and we will see everything at once. Scope, parts and price are confirmed before any visit, and each technician checks the finished job with you before leaving.
A confirmed visit can be moved or cancelled free of charge up to 6 hours before it starts, which helps when a handover date slips. The trades we cover are on the maintenance and repairs page. When your list is ready, book the first visit.
Services in this article
Read more
- Plumbing and waterWater Tank Cleaning: How Often, What the Process Is and What Residents Should Do on the Day
- Repairs and tradesMoving Into a New Home: Change the Locks or Just the Cylinder?
- Repairs and tradesAC Service Contract or Pay Per Visit? Annual Maintenance for AC, Pest Control and Pools Compared
