# Exeter Oven Cleaning

> Exeter Oven Cleaning is a service line of Hembury Contracting (https://hemburycontracting.co.uk), a sole trader business run by Sam Hembury from Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom. The work is domestic oven cleaning: single and double ovens, range and AGA class cookers, hobs, extractor hoods and filters, and end of tenancy cleans. It is charged by the hour rather than per appliance: £60 an hour including VAT, a minimum of 2 hours at £120, £240 for a half day of 4 hours and £480 for a full day of 8 hours. 50 per cent of the estimated time is taken as a deposit at booking and the balance is due on completion. Coverage is Exeter and roughly twenty miles around it, across Devon. Contact: 07533 567302 or info@hemburycontracting.co.uk. Booking hours Monday to Friday 8am to 6pm, Saturday 9am to 4pm.

Full text of every page on https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/, as markdown, generated from the site's own content at build time.

## Home (https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/)

### You opened the door, had a look, and closed it again

Ovens, range and AGA class cookers, hobs and extractors, cleaned by hand and charged by the hour. Most standard ovens are done inside the two hour minimum.

- £60 an hour including VAT, two hour minimum at £120
- Half the estimated time up front, the rest when you have seen it
- Racks, trays, door glass and seals, not just a wipe round the cabinet
- Back together and usable the same day, nothing taken away

### It is not the scrubbing, it is the four hours

Cleaning an oven properly is not difficult work. It is long work. The racks want soaking before anything will shift, the door has to come apart to reach the film between the panes, and the carbon on the roof of the cabinet only gives up after the degreaser has had time to sit on it. Most people start it on a Sunday morning, get halfway, and put the racks back in dirty.

So it gets left. The glass goes brown, the smell of the last thing that spilled comes back every time the oven goes on, and the extractor filter turns into a solid sheet of grease. None of that is a disaster. It is just a job that never reaches the top of the list.

That is the whole business. Somebody turns up with the degreasers and the patience, takes the cooker apart, does it properly, puts it back together working, and leaves. You get your Sunday back.

### A cooker that works properly, not just a clean one

A proper clean changes how a cooker behaves, which is the part people do not expect until it happens.

- Door glass you can see the food through, including the film between the panes
- Racks, runners and trays back to bare metal rather than sticky
- Even heat again, because carbon on the cabinet walls holds and blocks it
- The burnt smell gone, instead of reappearing every time it heats up
- Hob burners lighting evenly, with the ports clear
- An extractor that actually pulls, with the filters degreased or flagged for replacement
- Anything found broken pointed out plainly, so you can get the right trade in

## What the business can stand behind

- One person, named: Sam Hembury does the work himself. The person who gives you the estimate is the person standing in your kitchen.
- Hembury Contracting: Exeter Oven Cleaning is a service line of Hembury Contracting, Sam's Exeter contracting business. Same trading entity, same invoices, same VAT registration.
- Public liability cover: Insured for work in your home. A copy of the certificate goes over by email if you want to see it before booking.
- By hand, with time: Professional degreasers, removable parts soaked, cabinet and glass done by hand. No shortcuts that leave the door glass looking like a fog.

- Professional degreasers and time: Trade strength degreasers on the cabinet and a proper soak for everything that comes out. Time does the work that force would otherwise do to your enamel.
- Soaking trays and hand tools: Racks, runners, trays, burner parts and filters go into a soaking tray while the cabinet is done by hand. Scrapers only on flat glass and steel, at the angle that lifts rather than scratches.
- Floor and worktop protection: Sheeting down and the surrounding units masked before anything is opened. It is mucky work and leaving a bigger mess than the one we came for is not the deal.
- Before and after photographs: Taken as a matter of course. They matter most on end of tenancy work, where they may be what settles a deposit question months later.

## Single and double oven cleaning (https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/services/single-and-double-oven-cleaning)

The standard job: a built in or freestanding oven stripped, soaked, cleaned by hand and rebuilt, usually inside the two hour minimum.

This is most of the work. A built in single or double oven, a fan oven under a hob, or a freestanding cooker in a rented flat. The cabinet has carbon on the roof and the back, the racks are sticky rather than dirty, and the door glass has gone the colour of weak tea.

The whole thing comes apart as far as the manufacturer intends. Racks, runners, trays and the oven liners where they lift out, all into degreaser. While they soak, the cabinet is done by hand, roof first, because everything that comes off the roof lands on the floor of the oven and gets picked up at the end.

A cooker in this shape almost always fits the 2 hours minimum, which is £120. If yours has a grill compartment and a second oven and has not been touched in a few years, it may run a little past that, and you will be told before it does.

### What is included

- Oven cabinet: roof, floor, back, sides and the fan cover
- Racks, shelf runners and baking trays soaked and brought back to bare metal
- Door glass cleaned on both faces, and between the panes where the door separates
- Door seal cleaned in place and checked, not pulled out
- Grill compartment and grill pan where there is one
- Bulb cover cleaned and the bulb checked
- The frame, hinges and the gap the door closes onto
- Cooker slid back and the floor and units cleaned down

### How it runs

1. Cover the floor: Sheet down, units masked where they will be splashed, and a soaking tray set up out of the way of the traffic through the kitchen.
2. Strip and soak: Racks, runners, trays and liners out and into degreaser. The soak is what does the heavy lifting on those parts, and it starts first for that reason.
3. Cabinet by hand: Degreaser onto the roof and the back, left to sit, then worked off. A scraper only on the flat glass and steel, never across the enamel.
4. Rebuild and run it: Everything dried and refitted, door reassembled, and the oven brought up to temperature so the last of the cleaner smell burns off rather than turning up in your food.

### The bit between the door panes

Almost every complaint about a half done oven clean is about the glass. From the outside a door looks clean; from the front of the kitchen it still looks brown, because the film is on the inside faces of the panes rather than the ones you can reach.

Most domestic oven doors are designed to come apart, either by lifting the door off its hinges and releasing the inner panel or by removing a trim from the top edge. Where a door does separate, it is separated and the inner faces are cleaned. Where a manufacturer has bonded the assembly and it does not come apart at all, you are told that rather than being charged for a result that was never available.

### Self cleaning liners and pyrolytic ovens

Some ovens have catalytic liners on the side walls, a rough matt panel designed to absorb grease and burn it off at temperature. Those liners are not scrubbed and no degreaser goes near them, because both wreck the coating. They are wiped and left, and the rest of the cabinet is cleaned around them.

A pyrolytic oven has its own scorching cycle and does not need a chemical clean inside, but the racks, the runners, the door glass and the door seal still do, and those are the parts the cycle leaves alone. People are often surprised how much of a pyrolytic oven still wants doing by hand.

### What a clean will not fix

Enamel that has been pitted by a spill left to burn stays pitted. Door glass that has gone milky from heat is a chemical change in the glass itself, not a coating on it. A seal that has hardened and shrunk needs replacing.

All three come up looking better once the grease around them is gone, and none of them go away. They will be pointed out with a plain view on whether they matter, and in most cases they do not: an oven with a pitted floor cooks exactly as well as one without.

### Questions

**Does the oven need to be cold?** Yes, stone cold. If you have used it that morning it wants a couple of hours, so it is worth not putting anything in it the night before either.

**Do you move the cooker out?** A freestanding cooker gets pulled forward if it comes out safely and there is somewhere for it to go, which lets the sides and the floor underneath get done. A built in oven stays in its housing.

**Can you do two ovens in one visit?** Yes, and it is usually the cheaper way to do it because the setting up and clearing away only happen once. Two ovens in one kitchen normally lands around the half day.

## Range and AGA class cooker cleaning (https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/services/range-and-aga-cooker-cleaning)

Wide range cookers and cast iron AGA class cookers, cleaned in the same careful way but over a much longer job, priced by the hours it takes.

A range cooker is not a big oven, it is several appliances behind one front: two ovens, a grill, sometimes a warming drawer, and a hob wide enough to have five or seven burners on it. Every one of those is a separate piece of work, which is why a range is a half day where a fitted oven is two hours.

AGA class cast iron cookers are different again. Enamel front, chrome lids, hotplates, and ovens that hold heat rather than blowing it around. They are handsome and they are grime magnets, and there is no version of cleaning one quickly.

The method is identical to a standard oven. There is simply more of it, so it is priced by the hours taken rather than squeezed into a figure that would not cover the work.

### What is included

- Both oven cabinets, and the warming drawer where there is one
- The grill compartment, its runners and the grill pan
- Every rack, runner and tray, soaked in batches because there are too many for one tray
- Hob surface, burner caps, crowns and the cast iron pan supports
- Splash back and the control panel surround
- Enamel front, chrome lids and handle rails on AGA class cookers
- Hotplates cleaned back on cast iron cookers
- The gap either side of the cooker, which is where the worst of it usually is

### How it runs

1. Work out the order: On a big cooker the order matters. Soaking starts first and in batches, because there is more metal than any one tray holds, and the sequence is what keeps a long job moving.
2. Hob and supports: Pan supports and burner parts off and soaking, the hob surface degreased, and the burner ports checked and cleared so the flames come back even.
3. Ovens in turn: Each cabinet done separately, top down, with the degreaser given time to sit rather than being wiped straight off.
4. Fronts and rebuild: Enamel and chrome cleaned and polished on cast iron cookers, everything dried and refitted in the right order, and the cooker run up before the kitchen is handed back.

### Why a range takes about twice as long

It is arithmetic rather than difficulty. A standard double oven has two cavities, six or so racks and one door to take apart. A seven burner range has two cavities plus a grill, ten or twelve racks and runners, seven sets of burner parts, cast iron supports that are heavy and awkward to soak, and two or three doors.

Each of those is a small job. Together they are a half day, and that is with everything going smoothly. A range that has had a roasting tin overflow at some point and has not been properly cleaned since will run beyond it, which is a conversation to have before the day rather than during it.

### Cast iron and enamel need a lighter hand

The vitreous enamel on an AGA class cooker is a glass coating fired onto cast iron, and it is tough but not invulnerable. Nothing abrasive goes on it and nothing harsh sits on it, because a scratch or a dulled patch on that front is permanent and very visible.

Hotplates are the opposite problem: they are meant to be worked back to clean metal, and being timid with them leaves a cooker that still transfers heat unevenly. Knowing which surface takes which treatment is most of the skill on these cookers, and it is why they are not a job to hand to somebody who cleans ovens by pouring on a chemical and waiting.

### Hot or cold, and how long the cooker is off

A cast iron cooker that is normally left on has to be off and cold for the ovens to be done properly, which for most models means shutting it down the night before. That is worth planning around, particularly in winter in a house where the kitchen is warmed by it.

A lighter clean, the fronts, the lids and the hotplates, can be done while a cooker is up to heat. Whether that is enough depends on the state of the ovens, and it is an easy thing to judge from a photograph before anything is booked.

### Questions

**How long does an AGA class cooker take?** It is priced by the hours rather than by a fixed figure, because the range in condition is enormous. A cooker that gets a wipe over regularly is a different job from one that has been running for years untouched. Send a photograph and you will get a straight estimate.

**Do I have to turn the cooker off?** For the ovens, yes, and on most cast iron models that means the night before so it is cold to work in. If only the exterior, lids and hotplates need doing, it can be worked around a cooker that is on.

**Can you do the hob at the same time as the ovens?** On a range that is normally the same job, since the hob is part of the same appliance. It is included in the hours rather than added as an extra.

## Hob, extractor and filter cleaning (https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/services/hob-extractor-and-filter-cleaning)

The greasy half of the kitchen: gas and ceramic hobs, extractor hoods and canopies, and the metal filters that stop pulling once they fill up.

The oven gets the attention and the extractor does the damage. Every time something is fried, a fine film of oil goes up into the hood, through the filter and onto the underside of the canopy. It builds slowly enough that nobody notices, until the fan is running flat out and the kitchen still smells of last night.

Hobs go the same way. Burner ports clog with spillage and the flame goes yellow and uneven on one side. Cast iron supports pick up a sticky coat that transfers onto every pan that touches them. Ceramic tops collect a brown haze that ordinary cleaner will not touch because it is burnt on rather than sitting on top.

This can be a job on its own, and it is often the one that makes the most obvious difference. It is also the natural thing to add to an oven clean, since the setting up has already happened.

### What is included

- Gas hob: burner caps, crowns and bases soaked, ports cleared, pan supports degreased
- Ceramic and induction hob: burnt on residue lifted with a blade at the correct angle, then polished
- The hob surround and the seal where it meets the worktop
- Extractor canopy, inside and out, including the underside nobody looks at
- Metal mesh and baffle filters soaked and degreased
- Carbon filters checked and flagged for replacement, since they are not washable
- The fan housing and grille as far as they are designed to be opened
- The wall or splash back behind the hob

### How it runs

1. Filters out first: Metal filters come out and go straight into hot degreaser, because they need the longest soak of anything in the kitchen and everything else can happen around them.
2. Hob stripped: Caps, crowns and supports off and soaking. Ports cleared with a fine tool so the flame pattern comes back even across every burner.
3. Canopy and housing: The inside of the hood degreased and worked down, including the underside of the canopy and the visible part of the fan housing.
4. Dry, refit, test: Filters dried before they go back, because a wet filter gathers grease faster. Burners relit and checked, and the extractor run on every speed.

### Why a blocked filter costs you more than smell

An extractor filter that has filled up stops being a filter and starts being a wall. The fan works harder for less air, the motor runs hotter, and the grease that is no longer being caught goes past it into the ducting and onto the fan itself. Cleaning the filters is the cheap end of the problem, and the reason to do it before the fan needs attention.

There is a fire argument too, and it is not scaremongering. Concentrated cooking oil residue in a hood directly above a gas flame is exactly what it sounds like. Commercial kitchens are required to deal with it on a schedule. A domestic kitchen where somebody cooks properly every day is a smaller version of the same thing.

### Mesh, baffle and carbon are three different things

A mesh filter is layers of fine aluminium and is the one most domestic hoods use. It washes and comes back well as long as it goes into something hot enough to melt the grease rather than smear it. A baffle filter is heavier stainless steel with overlapping blades, found on bigger and professional style hoods, and it washes even better.

A carbon filter is neither. It is a charcoal cartridge fitted to hoods that recirculate rather than vent outside, and it absorbs smell rather than grease. Washing one destroys it. If yours is a recirculating hood, the carbon filter is checked and you are told whether it needs replacing and what fits, which is a part to buy rather than a thing to clean.

### Ceramic hobs and the brown haze

The marks left on a ceramic hob are sugars and proteins that have been baked onto the glass at temperature. Spray cleaner does nothing to them because they are not sitting on the surface, they are fused to it. They come off with a hob scraper held at a shallow angle and a cream cleaner, and then the top is polished so the haze goes.

What will not come off is a scorch or a metal mark that has already etched the glass, usually from a pan boiling dry or a foil tray sliding across it. That is damage in the surface rather than on it, and it is worth knowing which of the two you have before paying anyone to try.

### Questions

**Can you clean just the extractor?** Yes, though on its own it is inside the two hour minimum, so most people add the hob or the oven at the same time and get better value from the visit.

**Do you take the extractor apart?** As far as it is designed to come apart: filters out, canopy and visible fan housing cleaned. Ducting and motor removal are not cleaning work and would need the installer.

**My hob has one burner with a yellow flame. Is that a cleaning job?** Often it is exactly that, a blocked port from something boiling over, and clearing it fixes the flame. If it stays yellow with clear ports it is a gas matter and needs a Gas Safe registered engineer, which is not what this is.

## End of tenancy and landlord oven cleaning (https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/services/end-of-tenancy-and-landlord-oven-cleaning)

Oven cleans for landlords, letting agents and tenants moving out, with photographs on file and an invoice that can go on a schedule of works.

The oven is the single most argued about item on a check out report. It is the thing an inventory clerk photographs first, it is expensive to put right at the last minute, and it is where a chunk of a deposit quietly disappears.

This job is the same clean as any other, with the paperwork side taken seriously: photographs before and after, an invoice in the property address, and turnaround that fits between a check out and a check in rather than a fortnight later.

It works the same way whether the landlord, the agent or the outgoing tenant is paying. Whoever books it gets the photographs, and everybody involved gets a straight answer about what condition the cooker was actually in.

### What is included

- Full oven clean to the same standard as any other job, not a lighter version
- Hob and extractor filters, which is where most check out reports mark a property down
- Before and after photographs, timestamped, sent over as files you can forward
- An invoice made out to the landlord, agent or tenant, in the property address
- Notes on anything already damaged, so it does not get charged to the wrong person
- Keys collected from an agent's office or a key safe where that is easier
- Empty property visits, so nobody has to be there
- Slots that fit between a check out and a check in

### How it runs

1. Book against the property: The address, the access arrangement and who is being invoiced, agreed up front. Void properties are normal and nobody needs to be on site.
2. Photograph the state of it: Before anything is touched. It is the record of what was actually there, which protects the tenant as often as it protects the landlord.
3. Clean the whole cooker: Oven, glass, racks, hob, filters. On a check out report the extractor filter is what an inventory clerk notices after the oven glass.
4. Photographs and invoice out: After photographs and the invoice sent the same day, so the check out can be signed off without waiting on paperwork.

### What an inventory clerk is looking at

A check out report is a comparison against the inventory taken at the start, and on a cooker it comes down to a small number of things: the inside of the door glass, the oven floor, the racks, the hob and the extractor filter. Those are the photographs that end up in the report.

It is worth knowing that a clerk is comparing condition, not judging effort. An oven that has been scrubbed for two hours by somebody without the right products still photographs as a brown door, and that is what goes in the report. This is one of the few jobs where paying somebody is straightforwardly cheaper than the alternative, because the deposit deduction for a professional oven clean is usually more than a professional oven clean.

### Landlords and agents, between tenancies

A void period is short and everything wants doing at once. Oven cleaning is easy to schedule inside it because it needs nothing except access, power and water, and it can happen while the property is empty and the decorators are in.

Where a portfolio is involved, several properties in the same area are easier to do together and the diary is arranged that way. Invoicing per property with the address on each one is normal, since that is what has to go on the schedule of works or against the deposit.

### Old damage, and why the photographs matter both ways

Plenty of rental ovens have damage that predates the outgoing tenant: pitted enamel, a cracked inner pane, a hardened seal, a missing shelf runner. Once the grease is off, all of it becomes visible at once, and it can look like new damage when it is nothing of the sort.

The photographs and the notes exist for that reason. What is dirt, what is wear, and what was already broken are three different findings, and separating them stops a tenant being charged for a fault they did not cause and stops a landlord being told a genuine problem is just grime.

### Questions

**Can you go into an empty property?** Yes. Key safe, an agent's office or a key handed over beforehand all work. Photographs of the property as found and as left come as standard on an empty visit.

**Will the invoice satisfy a letting agent?** It is a normal itemised invoice from Hembury Contracting with the property address, the date and what was done, which is what an agent or an adjudicator wants to see alongside the photographs.

**How quickly can it be done?** It depends on the diary, and you will be told the real answer rather than a comfortable one. Check outs cluster at the end of the month, so a few days notice makes a considerable difference.

**Is a tenant allowed to book this themselves?** Yes, and plenty do, because paying for the clean is usually cheaper than the deduction. The photographs go to whoever books it.

## Prices (https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/pricing)

A single oven that gets wiped down every few weeks and a range that has not been touched since the last people lived in the house are not the same job, and no fixed price covers both of them fairly. So the clock is the price list.

### The rate card

Every figure below includes VAT. There is no call out charge on top and no charge for materials.

- Hourly rate: £60. Charged per hour, including VAT, from arrival to the kitchen being put back together.
- Minimum charge: £120. Covers the first two hours. Almost every standard single or double oven fits inside it, so for most kitchens this is the whole price.
- Half day: £240. Four hours. The usual shape of a range cooker, or an oven with the hob and extractor added on the same visit.
- Full day: £480. Eight hours. AGA class cookers, a badly neglected range, or a whole kitchen being handed back at the end of a tenancy.

### Half up front, half when you have looked at it

A booking is held with a deposit of half the estimated time. The balance is due on completion, once the oven is back together and you have seen it working.

If the job runs shorter than the estimate you pay for the hours actually worked, subject to the two hour minimum. If it is going to run longer, you get told while there is still time to decide, not on the invoice afterwards.

### What the hours actually cover

Time on an oven clean is not all scrubbing. This is roughly where it goes, which is also why an appointment cannot be squeezed into forty minutes.

- Protecting the kitchen: Floor covered, units and worktops masked where the work will splash. Ten minutes at the start that saves an argument at the end.
- Stripping the cooker down: Racks, runners, trays, oven liners, burner caps, pan supports, extractor filters. Everything the manufacturer means to come out, comes out.
- Soaking: Removable parts go into degreaser and stay there while the cabinet is done by hand. That soak is unattended, and it is still part of the job's hours because the visit cannot end without it.
- The cabinet, by hand: Roof, floor, sides, back and the fan cover. Carbon comes off with time and a scraper on the flat surfaces, not with force on the enamel.
- Door and glass: The panes come apart on most doors, so the film between them can be cleaned rather than looked at. Seals are cleaned and left in place.
- Rebuild and check: Everything dried and refitted, the oven brought up to temperature to burn off the last of the cleaner smell, and the kitchen cleaned down and handed back.

### Roughly what to expect

None of these are fixed prices. They are the hours the same kind of cooker usually takes, so you can see where your own job is likely to land before you ring.

- Single oven, cleaned in the last year or so: Comfortably inside the two hour minimum.
- Double oven and a grill: Usually the two hour minimum, sometimes a little over if the glass has gone cloudy.
- Oven, hob and extractor together: Normally somewhere between two hours and a half day, depending on the extractor.
- Range cooker, five or seven burners: Half a day is the usual shape. Two ovens, a grill and a wide hob is a lot of surface.
- AGA class cooker: Priced by the hours taken. Enamel, chrome lids, hotplates and ovens are separate pieces of work and it is a long job.
- End of tenancy, nothing touched in years: Half a day upwards. Send a photograph and you will get a straighter answer.

### What is not in the price

Replacement parts. Perished door seals, cracked glass, burnt out bulbs and rusted trays can all be pointed out and priced separately, but they are not cleaning.

Repairs of any kind, and anything behind a gas connection. If a cooker is faulty rather than filthy, the right trade for that is not a cleaner.

## How it works (https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/how-it-works)

Every part of this is designed so nobody is guessing. You know the hours before it starts, you see the work before you pay the rest of it, and the cooker is usable again the same day.

1. Send a photograph: Open the door and take one picture of the inside. That single photograph answers more than a paragraph of description does, and it is what the estimate of hours is built on.
2. Get the hours and the price: Back comes an estimate of the hours, what that costs at £60 an hour including VAT, and the next free slot. Nothing is booked until you say so.
3. Pay half to hold the date: A deposit of 50 per cent of the estimated time holds the booking. Move it or cancel with reasonable notice and it carries over or comes straight back.
4. The kitchen gets covered: On the day, the floor and the units around the cooker are protected before anything is opened. Ten minutes at the start that decides how the end looks.
5. The clean: Cooker stripped, removable parts soaked, cabinet and door glass done by hand, hob and extractor if they are on the job, everything dried and refitted.
6. Look at it, then pay the balance: The oven is run up to temperature, the kitchen is cleaned down, and you look at the work before the balance is settled. Anything found broken is pointed out then, not buried on an invoice.

### What is handed back

There is no report on an oven clean. What you get instead is a cooker in a known condition and a straight account of anything wrong with it.

- A working cooker, rebuilt: Every part that came out goes back in, dry, in the right order, and the oven is brought up to temperature before we leave.
- Before and after photographs: Taken as a matter of course. They matter most on end of tenancy work, where they may be the thing that settles a deposit question months later.
- A list of what is worn or broken: Perished seals, crazed or bloomed glass, dead bulbs, rusted trays, blocked burner ports. What it is, whether it matters, and what usually fixes it.
- What will keep it this way: Two or three specific things for your cooker rather than general advice. Usually it is a liner, a habit, and one product to stop using.

### Same day, back together

Nothing is taken away and nothing has to sit overnight. Whatever the state of it when we start, the cooker is reassembled and usable before the van leaves.

### The things worth knowing before booking

- Access, power and water: Somebody to let us in, mains power, and hot and cold water at the kitchen tap. Parking within carrying distance of the door helps, because the kit comes in and out of a van.
- Nothing gas, nothing electrical: This is cleaning. No gas work is carried out, and nothing behind a cover that needs an electrician comes off. A faulty cooker needs the right trade, and you will be told which one.
- Old damage stays old damage: Pitted enamel, crazed door glass and worn seals are uncovered by a clean rather than caused by it. They do not come out with more hours, so nobody is going to charge you for trying.
- Pets and small children: The products used are strong degreasers and the parts come out hot on a cooker that has been on. It is easier for everyone if the kitchen is a no go area while the work is running.

## About (https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/about)

Exeter Oven Cleaning is part of Hembury Contracting. Same person, same insurance, same invoices. The site exists because oven cleaning is a job people search for on its own, and burying it in a list of twenty other services helps nobody find it.

## Areas covered (https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas)

### Exeter, Devon (EX1-EX6): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/exeter

Oven cleaning across the whole of Exeter, from Georgian terraces in the centre to student houses near the university and new flats on the quay.

#### One city, four completely different kitchens

Exeter is small enough to cross in twenty minutes and varied enough that no two bookings in a week look alike. A Georgian house off Southernhay has a wide kitchen in what used to be a service room, usually with a range cooker sitting in a chimney breast that was built for something else entirely. A terrace in the older central quarters has a galley kitchen in a rear extension with a fitted single oven and a four burner gas hob. A student house near the university has a freestanding cooker that six people have shared for a year. A new apartment on the quay has a fitted double oven at eye level and an extractor that recirculates because there is nowhere to vent it to.

All four are the same method and the same hourly rate. What differs is how long the job runs, and after a while you can call it within half an hour from a photograph. The Georgian range is a half day. The terrace galley is inside the two hour minimum. The student cooker is usually two to three hours and the surprise is always the grill pan. The new flat is quick on the oven and slow on the extractor, because a recirculating hood hides its filter behind a panel that nobody has opened since it was installed.

#### Parking is a real part of the day here

The kit for this work comes in and out of a van, and it is not one small box. Degreaser, soaking trays, hand tools, sheeting and a bag of cloths make several trips from the vehicle to the kitchen and back again. In most of Devon that is nothing. In Exeter it is worth a sentence.

Permit zones cover much of the older central housing, and streets around the university fill up by mid morning in term time. It is worth knowing before the day whether there is a driveway, a resident's bay that can be freed up, or a loading spot that will not attract a ticket in the ninety minutes the van needs to be near the door. It does not change the price. It changes whether a booking that was pencilled in for nine can actually start at nine.

#### Rentals, students and the end of the academic year

Exeter has an unusually large private rental sector for a city of its size, most of it turning over at the same moment. Late June and early July are one long run of check outs, and the oven is the item that decides more deposit disputes than anything else in the property.

For a tenant, paying for the clean is almost always cheaper than the deduction, and the before and after photographs are the part that matters as much as the work. For a landlord or an agent, a void period is short and an oven clean fits inside it easily because it needs nothing but access, power and water. Several properties in the same part of the city are easier to do in one run, and the diary gets arranged that way when it can be.

- Every EX postcode in the city, including the quay and the university quarter
- Period ranges, fitted double ovens, student cookers and recirculating hoods, all common here
- Permit and loading restrictions worth mentioning when booking a central address
- Heavy end of tenancy demand through late June and early July

Cookers commonly met here: Range cookers in Georgian and Victorian chimney recesses; Fitted single and double ovens in rear extension galley kitchens; Freestanding cookers in shared student housing; Eye level double ovens with recirculating hoods in new apartments.

### Heavitree, Devon (EX1): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/heavitree

Oven cleaning in Heavitree, where Victorian terraces off Fore Street mostly mean a compact rear kitchen and a cooker wedged into an old chimney recess.

#### The chimney breast decides the cooker

Heavitree is dense Victorian and Edwardian terracing either side of Fore Street and Well Street, and the kitchens follow a pattern. The original chimney breast at the back of the house is now the place the cooker lives, and the width of that recess has quietly decided what appliance every owner since has been able to buy.

That matters for cleaning more than it sounds. A cooker in a recess has two side gaps of an inch or two, and those gaps collect everything: fat that has run down the side, crumbs, the corner of a tea towel from years ago. Pulling a freestanding cooker forward to get at them is often the single biggest visible difference in the whole job, and it is also the point at which people find out what the floor under it looks like.

Where the cooker is built in under a worktop instead, it stays where it is and the work is all inside the cabinet. Either way, the two hour minimum covers the overwhelming majority of ovens in these houses.

#### Small kitchens, and working around one person's day

A rear extension kitchen in a Heavitree terrace is not large. There is often one run of units, a small table, and a door out to a yard or a narrow garden. Setting up a soaking tray and sheeting the floor takes planning rather than space, and the job is quieter and less disruptive than people expect once it is running.

It helps to know in advance whether the back door opens onto somewhere the racks can go while they soak. On a dry day that solves the space problem completely. Where it does not, everything stays inside and the tray goes wherever it is least in the way, which is usually where the dog was planning to sit.

#### A dense street, a busy road and a lot of rentals

Parking around Fore Street is on street and it is tight, particularly near the shopping parade and around the hospital end towards Wonford. Ten minutes carrying kit is fine; it is worth flagging a really awkward address so the slot allows for it.

There is a considerable amount of rented housing through Heavitree, some of it let to hospital staff and some to students spilling out from the university side, so end of tenancy work here is steady all year rather than concentrated in the summer. Photographs before and after come as standard on those jobs, because on a shared house the question of who left the oven in that state is worth having an answer to.

#### Burner parts that have wandered over the years

A gas hob in a house that has been lived in for forty years accumulates a particular fault. Caps and crowns get taken off for cleaning, put back on the wrong burner, and stay there. They look almost identical and they are not: a small burner crown on a large burner base gives a flame that lifts and roars, and the reverse gives one that will not get a pan hot.

Everything comes off during the clean anyway, so it costs nothing to put the right part back on the right ring while it is happening. People are often more pleased about that than about the oven, because they had assumed for years that one burner was simply broken.

- Victorian and Edwardian terraces with rear extension kitchens
- Cookers set into original chimney recesses, with side gaps that collect years of spill
- On street parking that is tight near Fore Street and the hospital end
- Steady end of tenancy work rather than a single summer rush

Cookers commonly met here: Freestanding 60cm cookers in chimney breast recesses; Built in single ovens under a worktop with a separate gas hob; Older four burner gas hobs with cast iron pan supports; Small recirculating hoods over the cooker in narrow extensions.

### St Thomas, Devon (EX2, EX4): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/st-thomas

Oven cleaning in St Thomas, Exeter, covering the Victorian terraces around Cowick Street, flats above the shops and the rental stock near the station.

#### A lot of flats, and flats change hands often

West of the river, St Thomas has a housing mix that produces more oven cleaning per street than almost anywhere else in the city. Terraces close to Cowick Street, flats above the shops on the main run, and converted upper floors near the station all tend to be let rather than owner occupied, and they turn over on their own schedules rather than the academic calendar.

That means a steady flow of end of tenancy work through the whole year. The pattern is familiar: a small freestanding cooker or an under counter oven, a hob with two burners that get used and two that do not, an extractor filter that has never been out, and a check out inspection booked for the day after tomorrow.

It is worth saying plainly that this is the cheapest possible way to deal with an oven in a rented flat. The deduction for a professional clean, applied at check out, is reliably more than the clean itself.

#### Stairs, and getting kit to an upper floor

A flat above a shop on Cowick Street is up a narrow staircase, sometimes two flights, from a door on a busy pavement. Everything for the job goes up those stairs and comes back down again, which is fine but is worth knowing when a slot is being cut fine.

Water is the other thing. Soaking needs hot water at the tap and somewhere to put a tray. In a compact flat that is usually the bath, which is a perfectly good answer as long as everyone knows in advance that it is the plan. Nobody enjoys discovering it at the point the racks come out.

#### Low ground, older stock and cookers that have seen a few tenants

The older housing here sits on low ground near the river and the ovens in it are often not new. A cooker that has served four or five tenancies has a particular look: the enamel is sound but pitted where something burnt on years ago, the door glass is permanently hazed, one shelf runner is missing and the grill pan handle has gone.

All of that comes up as clean as it is going to get, and none of it disappears. The useful thing on a rental cooker is knowing which marks are dirt and which are damage that predates the current tenant, because those are two different conversations at a check out and only one of them costs somebody their deposit.

#### One window, one extractor, and a flat that smells of dinner

A flat above a shop usually has a kitchen with a single window and an extractor that recirculates rather than venting outside. When the filter fills up, the fan is pushing air through a solid sheet of grease and the smell simply stays in the flat, working its way into the hallway and the soft furnishings.

The filters are the cheap end of that problem and they are quick to deal with. Metal mesh comes out, soaks and goes back like new. Where there is a carbon cartridge behind it, that is a part to replace rather than clean, and you get told which one you have and what fits it.

It is a small piece of work with an effect out of proportion to the time it takes, which is why it is worth adding to an oven clean rather than saving for another day.

- High proportion of flats and rented terraces, turning over all year
- Upper floor access off Cowick Street with narrow stairs to carry kit up
- Older cookers where old damage is easily mistaken for dirt
- Before and after photographs sent as files for check out reports

Cookers commonly met here: Small freestanding electric cookers in let flats; Under counter single ovens with a four burner gas hob; Slot in cookers with wire shelf runners rather than fitted rails; Recirculating extractors with filters that have never been removed.

### Pinhoe, Devon (EX1, EX4): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/pinhoe

Oven cleaning in Pinhoe, where the new estates on the city's eastern edge mean fitted double ovens, induction hobs and recirculating hoods with carbon filters.

#### New estate kitchens are a different job

Pinhoe has grown enormously in twenty years, and most of what has been built is estate housing with a fitted kitchen supplied as part of the plot. That produces a very consistent cooker: a built in double oven at eye level in a tall housing, an induction or ceramic hob in the worktop, and a chimney or canopy hood above it.

These clean up beautifully and they are quicker than an old freestanding cooker, because everything is designed to come apart and nothing is seized. What people are usually surprised by is the door. A modern oven door has three or four panes, and the film that builds between them is what makes an otherwise smart kitchen look tired. Taking the door apart is the difference between a clean oven and one that only looks clean with the light off.

#### The filter nobody has ever touched

The extractor in a new estate house is very often a recirculating one, because there is no external wall behind the hob to vent through. That means two filters, not one: a metal mesh that catches the grease and a carbon cartridge behind it that absorbs the smell.

The mesh washes and comes back to new. The carbon does not, and washing it destroys it. On a house that is five or six years old the carbon filter has usually never been changed, which is why the kitchen still smells of dinner an hour later however hard the fan works. Part of this job is telling you which type you have, what fits it, and roughly what it costs, which is a part to order rather than a thing to clean.

#### First proper clean, and warranties

A lot of bookings in Pinhoe are the first deep clean the appliance has ever had. That is a good job to get: nothing is seized, the enamel is sound, and the difference between before and after is dramatic for the sake of two hours.

Nothing is dismantled beyond what the manufacturer intends to be removed for cleaning, which matters more on an appliance still inside its warranty period. Catalytic side liners in particular are left alone and wiped rather than treated, because degreaser and scrubbing both ruin the coating they are there to provide, and that is exactly the sort of damage a warranty will not cover.

#### The top cavity that everybody ignores

A built in double oven has a large main cavity underneath and a smaller one above it. In most households the small one is used as a grill a few times a year and forgotten, which means it gets the fat spatter and never gets the heat that would burn it off.

By the time the main oven is booked in for a clean, the top cavity is usually in a worse state than the one that does the cooking, and its glass is the one visible at eye level as you walk into the room. Both cavities are done as one job. It is not an add on and it does not change the hours much, but it is the part people notice most when they walk back in.

- Estate housing built out over the last two decades, with fitted appliances throughout
- Multi pane oven doors where the film sits between the glass
- Recirculating hoods with a carbon filter that usually needs replacing, not washing
- Appliances often still in warranty, so nothing is taken further apart than intended

Cookers commonly met here: Built in eye level double ovens in tall housings; Induction and ceramic hobs set into the worktop; Chimney and canopy hoods running on recirculation; Catalytic lined ovens that must not be scrubbed or degreased.

### Alphington, Devon (EX2): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/alphington

Oven cleaning in Alphington, from the older village core along Church Road to the family estates spreading out towards Marsh Barton and the A379.

#### Family kitchens that get used properly

Alphington is mostly family housing: post-war and later estates around an older village core, with the trading estate on one side and open ground towards the Exe on the other. The kitchens are ordinary in the best sense, and they are used every day by households cooking for four or five people.

That use shows in a specific way. Roasting is what dirties an oven fastest, and a household that does a roast most Sundays and a tray bake twice a week builds carbon on the cabinet roof far quicker than one that mostly reheats. It is not neglect, it is cooking, and it is why the sensible interval here is closer to once a year than once every three.

Most of these are fitted single or double ovens under or beside a worktop, and they sit comfortably inside the two hour minimum unless the hob and extractor are being added at the same time.

#### Extension kitchens and the island hood

A good number of houses here have had the back opened up, and a rear extension usually means the hob has moved to an island. An island extractor is a different piece of work from one on a wall: it hangs in the middle of the room, it is visible from every angle, and it collects grease on the outside of the canopy as well as the inside.

It is also the one people most often ask to have done after seeing the oven come up. The filters slide out of the underside, they soak like any other, and the outside of the canopy takes a polish that changes the look of the whole room. Adding it to an oven clean on the same visit is efficient, because the sheeting and the soaking tray are already set up.

#### Low ground, and what comes with a flood

The older part of Alphington sits low near the Alphin Brook, and the parish has a history of water getting where it should not. After any flood event the kitchen is one of the first rooms dealt with, and a cooker that has been standing in water needs an electrician rather than a cleaner before it goes back into service.

Cleaning has a place afterwards, once an appliance has been checked and signed off, and that ordering matters. Nothing here is electrical work, and a cooker that has been wet is not something to plug in and test to see what happens.

#### Gas in the old core, electric on the estates

There is a fairly clean split here. The older houses around Church Road tend to have gas hobs with cast iron supports, and the later estate housing towards the ring road is mostly electric, either ceramic or induction, with a fitted oven under the worktop.

They dirty differently and they clean differently. A gas hob is a strip down: caps, crowns, supports, all off and soaking, ports cleared. A ceramic top is a surface job, where the marks are baked into the glass rather than sitting on it and come off with a blade held flat and a cream cleaner. Neither takes longer than the other in a way that shows on an invoice, but knowing which one is behind the door decides what goes in the van.

- Family housing where regular roasting is the main driver of carbon build up
- Rear extensions with hobs and island extractors added
- Older core near the Alphin Brook with a known flood history
- Straightforward parking on most of the estate streets

Cookers commonly met here: Built in single and double ovens beside a worktop; Gas hobs with cast iron supports in the older houses; Island extractor hoods over extension kitchens; Freestanding cookers in the pre-war village core.

### Ide, Devon (EX2): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/ide

Oven cleaning in Ide, the conservation village on Exeter's western edge, where thatched cottages mean low ceilings, tight kitchens and no parking on the street.

#### Cottage kitchens have their own rules

Ide is a small conservation village in a valley below the Alphington and Exwick ridges, and its older cottages are cob and stone under thatch and slate. The kitchens in them were not designed around modern appliances; the appliances have been fitted into rooms that already existed.

In practice that means low ceilings, doorways narrower than a modern van's kit likes, uneven flagged or quarry tiled floors, and a cooker that has been shoehorned into an alcove. None of it is a problem and all of it is worth knowing in advance, because setting up in a low beamed kitchen with a stone floor is a different ten minutes from setting up in an estate house.

Sheeting matters more here too. An uneven old floor does not wipe the way a vinyl one does, so protection goes down properly before anything comes out of the oven.

#### Solid fuel, oil and the cookers you find in old houses

Village cottages of this age often have something other than a plain electric cooker. Oil fired range cookers are common in this part of Devon, and so are cast iron cookers that have been in the same kitchen for decades. Both are handsome and both are long jobs, priced by the hours they take rather than by any fixed figure.

A cast iron cooker has to be off and cold before the ovens can be done properly, which usually means shutting it down the night before. In a cottage where the kitchen is the warm room, that is worth planning for rather than discovering on the morning. If only the enamel, the lids and the hotplates need attention, that can be worked around a cooker that is running.

#### Parking, and why it is mentioned first

The village street is narrow, it is a conservation area, and there is nowhere obvious to leave a van for two hours without being in somebody's way. Most cottages have somewhere off the road, and where they do not there is usually a spot a short walk away that works.

It helps to say which of those applies when booking. A job that starts on time because the van had somewhere to go is a job that finishes on time, and in a village this size the difference between the two is a conversation the day before rather than a problem on the day.

#### Hot water is not a given in an old cottage

Soaking is what does most of the work on racks, trays and burner parts, and a soak needs properly hot water. In a modern house that is a tap. In an older village cottage on an oil boiler or an immersion, a big draw of hot water in the middle of the morning is not always there waiting.

It is easily solved by knowing about it. Water gets heated before the visit, or the tray is filled in stages, or the kettle earns its keep. What does not work is finding out at the point the racks come out, because a lukewarm soak means longer on the job and a worse result for the same hours.

- Conservation village of thatched and slate roofed cob cottages
- Low ceilings, narrow doorways and uneven old floors that need proper protection
- Oil fired and cast iron range cookers common, priced by the hours taken
- Narrow village street with limited parking, worth arranging before the day

Cookers commonly met here: Cast iron cookers that have been in the same kitchen for decades; Oil fired range cookers in cottage kitchens; Freestanding cookers fitted into an old alcove or chimney opening; Small ovens in later infill housing on the village edge.

### Topsham, Devon (EX3): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/topsham

Oven cleaning in Topsham, where merchant houses off The Strand mean period kitchens, range cookers and a van that has to be parked with some care.

#### Period kitchens in houses that were never built round them

Topsham's historic core is Dutch gabled merchant housing and cottages, a great deal of it listed, laid out along The Strand and the lanes running down to the quay. The kitchens sit in rooms that had other jobs two hundred years ago, and modern appliances have been fitted around beams, uneven floors and openings that cannot be widened.

A range cooker in a wide old fireplace opening is the classic Topsham job. It looks magnificent and it is a half day of work, because a range is several appliances behind one front: two cavities, a grill, and a hob wide enough for five or seven burners with cast iron supports heavy enough to need soaking in batches.

Where a listed building is involved, nothing is fixed, drilled or altered. This is cleaning, it leaves no trace, and the only thing that changes about a protected interior is that it is no longer greasy.

#### A town that cooks

Topsham has more good food per head than a town its size has any right to, and the houses reflect it. Kitchens here get used properly: roasting, frying, baking, all the things that put carbon on an oven roof rather than the reheating that does not.

That changes the sensible interval more than the cooker does. A range in a household that cooks daily wants doing once a year, and left to eighteen months or two it stops being a half day and starts being a full one. The cheapest way to own a range cooker is to clean it before it needs it.

#### The Strand, and where the van goes

Parking is the practical constraint in Topsham and it is worth settling before a date is agreed. The streets in the old core are narrow, several are effectively single track with parked cars on one side, and a van sitting outside a house on The Strand for two hours is in everyone's way.

Most properties have an arrangement that works, whether that is a courtyard, a permit bay or a spot at the top of the hill with a short walk down. Say which one applies and the slot is planned around it. It is the single most useful sentence in a booking message here.

It is also a town where neighbours notice, in the good sense. More than one booking here has started with somebody watching a van unload next door and asking what was being done, which is a further reason not to leave one blocking a lane for two hours.

#### Estuary damp and the things it does to a kitchen

Salt-laden air comes up the estuary year round and it reaches everything on the west bank. On a kitchen it shows on the stainless: extractor canopies, splash backs and cooker fronts pick up a dull bloom that ordinary cleaner smears rather than removes, and it sits under the grease rather than on top of it.

Degreasing first and polishing afterwards is the order that works, and it is why a stainless canopy in Topsham comes up looking better than the owner expected. The bloom was never the problem on its own; it was the film of cooking oil holding it in place.

- Listed merchant houses and cottages with kitchens fitted into much older rooms
- Range cookers in old fireplace openings, typically a half day of work
- Narrow streets round The Strand where parking needs arranging in advance
- Estuary salt that dulls stainless canopies and fronts under the grease

Cookers commonly met here: Wide range cookers in original fireplace openings; Cast iron cookers in the larger period houses; Fitted double ovens in modern infill towards the Exeter road; Stainless chimney hoods that pick up estuary bloom.

### Exmouth, Devon (EX8): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/exmouth

Oven cleaning in Exmouth, covering seafront apartments, holiday flats on changeover day, and the family housing at Withycombe Raleigh and Littleham.

#### Changeover day is the whole job

Exmouth has a lot of holiday lets, and a holiday let has one immovable fact about it: the guests go out at ten and the next ones arrive at four. Everything that happens to that flat happens in between, and the oven is the item most likely to fail an incoming guest's first impression.

A let kitchen has a specific pattern of dirt. Very heavy use for a week, then nothing, then heavy use again, with nobody who lives there taking responsibility for the grill pan. Fat gets spattered and baked hard in short bursts rather than accumulating gently, which is why a two year old cooker in a let can be in worse condition than a ten year old one in a family house.

These are booked as fixed slots between lets rather than as morning or afternoon windows, and the cooker is left running and ready rather than cooling down as the next party arrives.

#### Salt gets everywhere, including inside the kitchen

This is one of the most exposed towns on the estuary, with two miles of open seafront and south westerlies coming in off the water unbroken. Salt reaches further inland than people expect and it settles on everything, including the stainless steel in a kitchen with the window open in summer.

On appliances it shows as pitting and dulling on cooker fronts, hood canopies and hob trims, particularly in the front ranks of housing along the seafront. Cleaning removes the grease that holds it and polishing brings the finish back, but salt pitting that has already bitten into the steel is damage rather than dirt and it stays.

#### Hillside villas and flat conversions

Behind the front, the ground climbs steeply towards Orcombe Point and the older housing is Regency and Victorian villas, many of them long since converted into flats. A converted upper floor tends to have a small kitchen fitted into what was a bedroom, with an under counter oven, a two or four burner hob and a recirculating hood.

Access is the thing worth mentioning. Two or three flights of stairs, no lift, and a narrow landing at the top is a normal Exmouth booking and it is entirely fine, but it does add to the time at each end of the job. The suburbs at Withycombe Raleigh and Littleham are the opposite: driveways, level access and ordinary family cookers that are quick to turn round.

#### Marina flats and the extractor problem

The newer waterside development around the docks and marina is well built and tightly planned, and in most of those apartments the hob has nowhere to vent to. That means a recirculating hood with a carbon cartridge behind the metal filter, and in a flat with limited natural ventilation, a spent cartridge is very noticeable.

The metal mesh soaks and comes back like new. The carbon does not wash and there is no point pretending otherwise, so the useful outcome of the visit is knowing which model is fitted and what replacement it takes.

- Holiday lets cleaned to a fixed slot between a check out and a check in
- Seafront salt that dulls and pits stainless cooker fronts and hood canopies
- Converted villa flats up two or three flights, with no lift
- Marina apartments running recirculating hoods with carbon cartridges

Cookers commonly met here: Compact under counter ovens in converted villa flats; Freestanding cookers in holiday lets, used hard in short bursts; Family sized double ovens at Withycombe Raleigh and Littleham; Recirculating hoods in the waterside apartments.

### Budleigh Salterton, Devon (EX9): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/budleigh-salterton

Oven cleaning in Budleigh Salterton, where substantial villas and long held family houses often hide a cooker that has not had a proper clean in years.

#### Houses that have been lived in for a long time

Budleigh has a lot of substantial detached housing in generous plots, much of it owned by the same household for decades and lightly altered in that time. The kitchens are often original to a refit done in the nineties or before, and the cooker in them has been cleaned regularly on the outside and hardly at all on the inside.

That combination produces a particular booking. The kitchen is immaculate, the hob is wiped daily, and the oven has twenty years of carbon on the roof of the cabinet that nobody has ever been able to reach. It is a satisfying job, and it usually takes longer than the owner expects because there is more in there than the door suggests.

It is worth being clear about that up front rather than discovering it on the day. A photograph of the inside settles the estimate before anybody commits to a slot.

#### Cast iron cookers that have never been off

There are a good number of cast iron and oil fired range cookers in the town and the valley behind it, and many of them have run continuously for years. They are the warm heart of the kitchen and turning one off feels like a bigger decision than it is.

The ovens cannot be cleaned properly while a cooker is at temperature, so on most models that means shutting it down the night before to work in it cold. If the ovens are not the problem and it is the enamel front, the chrome lids and the hotplates that have dulled, that can be done while the cooker is running and is a considerably shorter visit. Which of the two you need is an easy thing to judge from a photograph.

#### Working around the household rather than through it

A quiet house with one or two people in it is a different working environment from a family kitchen at half term, and the job is run accordingly. Kit comes in once, the floor is covered before anything is opened, and the noise is limited to the extractor running at the end.

Nobody needs to stay in the room. Somebody has to let us in and be there at the end to look at the work, and the hours in between are better spent elsewhere in the house. Where mobility makes it easier, the cooker is left completely rebuilt and tested rather than with anything to reassemble afterwards, which should go without saying but is worth saying anyway.

#### Salt off the beach, and a valley that takes the edge off it

The front ranks of housing get spray in winter storms and the stainless in those kitchens shows it, but the valley sides shelter most of the town and the effect drops off quickly a few streets back from the beach.

Where it does bite, the answer is the same as anywhere on this coast: the grease goes first, because it is what holds the salt against the steel, and the polish afterwards is what brings the finish back. Anything that has already pitted stays pitted, and saying so beforehand is better than implying a clean will fix it.

- Long held houses where the kitchen is immaculate and the oven cabinet is not
- Cast iron and oil fired ranges that need shutting down the night before
- Quiet, low disruption visits with the cooker rebuilt and tested before leaving
- Seafront salt on stainless in the front ranks, much less a few streets back

Cookers commonly met here: Cast iron cookers running year round in older kitchens; Oil fired range cookers in the houses behind the high street; Built in double ovens from nineties and two thousands refits; Freestanding cookers in the bungalows on the higher ground.

### Sidmouth, Devon (EX10): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/sidmouth

Oven cleaning in Sidmouth, from Regency villas and converted apartments in the town to the holiday lets and second homes up the Sid valley.

#### Regency houses, later kitchens

Sidmouth has an unusually complete Regency and early Victorian core, and most of those buildings have been divided at some point into flats and apartments. The kitchen in a converted Regency house is rarely where a kitchen was originally: it is a former bedroom or dressing room with services run into it, often on the first or second floor.

That produces tall ceilings, big windows, and a modern fitted kitchen sitting inside a room with cornice and shutters. The appliances themselves are ordinary and the work on them is ordinary. What is not ordinary is getting to them, since everything for the job goes up a staircase built for a household with servants rather than for a man carrying a soaking tray.

#### Second homes and the visit before the visit

A good part of the housing here is used seasonally, and a second home has a distinctive cleaning pattern: intense use over a fortnight in August, a week at Christmas, then months of nothing. Grease that has been left to sit for six months behaves differently from grease that is being added to weekly, and it takes longer to shift.

The sensible timing is before the season rather than after it, so the cooker is right for the run of use rather than being dealt with once everyone has gone home. Empty property visits are straightforward: a key safe or a neighbour with a key is all it takes, and photographs of the kitchen as found and as left come as standard.

The other thing a long empty spell does is dry everything out. Grease that has sat for six months goes hard and slightly brittle rather than staying tacky, and it wants a longer soak and more time on the cabinet before it will move. It is the same work, it simply cannot be hurried, and that is why a second home is estimated on when it was last used as much as on what cooker is in it.

#### The valley, the hills and getting a van near the door

The town sits in a steep sided valley with Peak Hill on one side and Salcombe Hill on the other, and the residential streets climbing those slopes are steep, narrow and heavily parked. Down on the esplanade the constraint is different: loading is possible, staying is not.

None of that changes what the job costs. It changes how a morning is planned, which is why an address on a hill with no off street parking is worth flagging when the booking is made rather than discovered at half past eight.

#### Big old kitchens and the extractor that is not really one

In a lot of these conversions the extractor is a decorative canopy over the hob with a fan that vents into the room and a filter that has not been out since it was fitted. In a tall room the smell disperses and nobody notices, which is exactly why the filter ends up solid.

Taking it out and soaking it is quick and it is usually the point at which somebody realises the fan was never broken. Where a carbon cartridge is fitted behind the mesh, it gets checked and you get told what it takes, because that is a part to buy rather than something a clean can rescue.

- Regency and Victorian conversions with kitchens on upper floors
- Second homes and holiday lets, best cleaned before the season rather than after
- Steep, narrow and heavily parked streets on both valley sides
- Decorative canopy extractors with filters that have never been removed

Cookers commonly met here: Fitted single ovens in converted apartment kitchens; Range cookers in the larger villas up the valley; Freestanding cookers in holiday lets and annexes; Canopy hoods recirculating into tall rooms.

### Dawlish, Devon (EX7): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/dawlish

Oven cleaning in Dawlish, covering the cliff top bungalow estates, seafront flats and holiday accommodation around The Lawn and Dawlish Warren.

#### Bungalow kitchens and single household cooking

The cliff top estates above Dawlish are largely post-war bungalows, a great many of them occupied by one or two people. That produces a kitchen pattern you can almost predict: a compact freestanding cooker or an under counter oven, a four burner hob where two burners do all the work, and a grill that gets used more than the oven does.

A cooker used that way is not heavily soiled in the way a family oven is, but it is soiled for far longer, because a small amount of use over fifteen years still builds a hard layer nobody has ever taken off. These jobs sit inside the two hour minimum almost without exception, and the difference at the end is dramatic for the money.

Level access, a driveway and somewhere to put a soaking tray outside make them quick and easy visits, which is one reason the diary can usually fit them in at short notice.

The grill is worth a separate mention in these houses, because in a one or two person kitchen it does most of the cooking. A grill pan and its rack collect fat faster than anything else in the appliance and they are almost never the thing somebody thinks to ask about, so they come as part of the job rather than as an extra.

#### Holiday flats between the railway and The Lawn

Down in the town the housing is Regency and Victorian terraces around The Lawn and seafront blocks along the front, and a large share of it is holiday accommodation. The work there is changeover work: a fixed window between one party leaving and the next arriving, and a cooker that has to be back together and usable at the end of it.

Let kitchens get used hard in short bursts by people who are not coming back, and the grill pan is invariably the worst item in the property. It is not a criticism of anybody; it is simply what happens in a kitchen with no permanent occupant.

#### Storm exposure, and what it does indoors

Dawlish is among the most storm exposed places on this coast. Sea water comes over the wall in a south easterly and salt gets driven inland far beyond the front, which is why stainless steel in kitchens here dulls faster than it does a few miles up the estuary.

The practical effect on a cooker is the same as anywhere on the coast and the order of work is the same: the grease comes off first, because it is what holds the salt against the metal, then the finish is polished back. What has already pitted does not come back, and that gets said rather than hinted at.

#### Warren caravans and small kitchen appliances

There is a substantial amount of holiday accommodation at Dawlish Warren with small kitchens: compact ovens, two burner hobs and combination microwaves rather than full size appliances. They still get greasy and they still clean, and several small units in the same place on the same visit is efficient work.

Whether it is worth doing depends on the number rather than the size, and a straight answer on that comes back before anything is booked. One tiny oven is not worth either party's minimum charge; six of them on a changeover morning very much is.

- Cliff top bungalows with lightly used cookers carrying years of build up
- Holiday flats worked to a fixed changeover window
- Heavy salt exposure that dulls stainless faster than inland
- Multiple small units in one place at Dawlish Warren done in a single visit

Cookers commonly met here: Compact freestanding cookers in post-war bungalows; Under counter single ovens with a separate four burner hob; Small holiday unit ovens and combination microwaves; Seafront flat kitchens with stainless that dulls quickly.

### Teignmouth, Devon (TQ14): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/teignmouth

Oven cleaning in Teignmouth, covering the Georgian terraces on the front, Victorian villas on the slopes and the holiday flats behind the sea wall.

#### Front terraces and flats above the shops

Teignmouth's older housing is Georgian and Regency terraces along the front with Victorian villas climbing the slopes behind, and a great deal of it is now flats. A kitchen in one of those is typically a converted room on an upper floor with a compact fitted run, an under counter oven and a hob with a recirculating hood above it.

The pattern that matters for this work is the stairs. There is no lift in a Georgian terrace, the staircase is often the original, and the kit for the job goes up and down it twice. That is normal and it is fine, but it is time at each end and it is worth flagging with the address so a morning slot is planned properly.

#### Easterly weather, which is unusual for Devon

This stretch of coast takes gales driving up the Channel from the east, which catches out anything built or fitted with only south westerly weather in mind. Salt reaches the whole front, the sea wall overtops regularly, and windows on the seaward side spend the winter closed for good reason.

Inside a kitchen the visible result is on the steel. Cooker fronts, hood canopies and hob trims dull and, near the front, pit. Cleaning takes off the grease that holds the salt in place and polishing restores the finish, but the pitting itself is in the metal and no amount of hours changes that.

#### A working town with a holiday season on top

Unlike some of the coast, Teignmouth is a real town with a working port, and the housing reflects that: ordinary family kitchens on the higher ground at Broadmeadow and out towards Bishopsteignton, alongside the holiday flats nearer the front.

Those two produce different jobs. A family cooker used daily is a straightforward clean at a sensible interval, usually inside the two hour minimum. A let is changeover work with a hard deadline and a grill pan nobody has looked at. The rate is the same for both; the planning around them is not.

There is a third category here as well: flats let to people who live in them all year but do not own them, which is a large part of the town's housing. Those come up as end of tenancy work at all times of year rather than in a summer rush, and the useful part of the visit is often the photographs rather than the clean, because a check out report turns on what the oven looked like before anybody touched it.

#### Getting to an address in the old lanes

The lanes behind the front are narrow, several are one way, and parking in the season is very difficult. Most bookings have an answer, whether that is a resident's space, a nearby car park with a short walk, or a quiet half hour early in the morning to get kit in.

It is one line in a booking message and it makes the difference between a job starting on time and a job starting late. Nothing about it changes what the work costs.

Water and power are the other two things worth a thought in an older converted flat. Soaking needs properly hot water at the tap, and a kitchen with one socket behind the cooker is worth knowing about in advance rather than at the point the kettle is wanted.

- Georgian and Victorian conversions with kitchens up original staircases
- Easterly gales and sea wall overtopping, so salt reaches the whole front
- A mix of year round family kitchens and holiday let changeovers
- Narrow one way lanes where parking needs a plan in the season

Cookers commonly met here: Under counter ovens in converted terrace flats; Family double ovens on the higher ground at Broadmeadow; Freestanding cookers in seafront holiday flats; Stainless hoods and fronts that dull quickly in salt air.

### Kenton, Devon (EX6): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/kenton

Oven cleaning in Kenton, the estuary village by Powderham, where thatched cottages and estate housing often mean an oil fired range rather than a plain oven.

#### Estate cottages and thatched village housing

Kenton sits above the tidal flats on the western shore of the Exe with Powderham deer park on one side, and its housing is unusual: thatched and slate roofed cob cottages along the main street, red sandstone estate housing tied to the castle, and later detached houses on the lanes running down to the water.

The estate cottages in particular have kitchens that were fitted into rooms with thick walls, small windows and low ceilings. Nothing about the cleaning changes, but everything about the setting up does. Floors are often flagged or quarry tiled and uneven, and protection goes down properly before a single rack comes out.

#### Oil fired ranges are normal here

This is proper range cooker country. Plenty of houses in and around the village run an oil fired range as the main cooker and the main source of kitchen heat, and a fair few have had the same one for twenty years or more.

A range is a half day of work at least, because it is two ovens, a grill and a wide hob rather than one cavity. On a cast iron model the ovens want the cooker cold, which means shutting it down the night before, and that is a real decision in a cottage where the kitchen is the warm room. Where only the enamel, lids and hotplates need attention, that can be done with the cooker running and it is a much shorter visit.

#### Rural lanes and where the van fits

The lanes off the main street are narrow with high banks and few passing places, and several properties sit at the end of a track. Most have somewhere to pull in and the ones that do not usually have a field gate or a yard nearby that works.

None of it is a problem when it is known in advance. It becomes one when a van arrives at a single track lane with nowhere to stop and a customer who assumed it would be obvious. One sentence in the booking prevents it entirely.

#### Estuary air and long gaps between cleans

The village is open to the estuary and takes salt-laden south westerlies straight up the water, so stainless in these kitchens picks up the same dull bloom found in Topsham and Exmouth. Behind the village, the inland side is sheltered and warms early.

What is more noticeable here than the salt is the interval. Rural properties tend to go longer between cleans simply because there is nobody local doing this work regularly, and a cooker that has run for three or four years untouched is a longer job than one done annually. That is priced by the hours it takes and estimated from a photograph before anything is agreed, with no optimistic rounding down.

Longer intervals also change what the visit is for. On a range that has been running untouched for years, the first clean is as much about finding out what state the cooker is actually in as it is about the finish: worn door ropes, a burner that has stopped lighting evenly, a hotplate that has never been worked back. Those get pointed out with a plain view on whether they matter.

- Thatched cottages and Powderham estate housing with thick walls and small kitchens
- Oil fired and cast iron ranges as the main cooker in many properties
- Narrow banked lanes and tracks where van access is worth agreeing beforehand
- Longer intervals between cleans than in town, so jobs often run past the minimum

Cookers commonly met here: Oil fired range cookers running as the main kitchen heat; Cast iron cookers in older estate cottages; Freestanding cookers in the later houses on the lanes; Wide hobs with heavy cast iron pan supports.

### Cranbrook, Devon (EX5): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/cranbrook

Oven cleaning in Cranbrook, Devon's newest town, where nearly every kitchen is a modern fitted one and most cookers have never had a proper deep clean.

#### A town where every kitchen is the same age

Cranbrook was begun in 2011 and is still building out, so the housing is entirely twenty first century and the kitchens came with the plots. A new build estate kitchen of this generation has a very consistent fit out: a built in oven, often an eye level double in a tall housing, a ceramic or induction hob set into the worktop, and a canopy or chimney hood above it.

That makes the work predictable in a way it never is in an older town. Nothing is seized, every part comes out as the manufacturer intended, and the enamel underneath is sound rather than pitted. The difference between before and after on a first clean here is about as dramatic as this job gets.

Most of these sit comfortably inside the two hour minimum, and where the hob and extractor are added on the same visit it is still usually short of a half day.

#### First deep clean, and appliances still in warranty

A large share of the bookings here are the first proper clean the cooker has ever had, on a house that is five to ten years old. That is a good job and it comes with one constraint worth stating: nothing is taken further apart than the manufacturer intends for cleaning, which matters more while an appliance is still inside its warranty.

The specific thing to watch for is a catalytic liner, the rough matt panel on the side walls of some ovens that is designed to absorb grease and burn it off at temperature. Degreaser and scrubbing both ruin the coating. Those panels get wiped and left alone, and everything around them is cleaned properly.

#### The hood that has never been opened

Extractors in new estate houses very often recirculate rather than vent outside, which means two filters: a metal mesh that catches the grease and a carbon cartridge behind it that takes the smell out. The mesh washes and comes back like new. The carbon does not wash and is destroyed by trying.

On a house of this age the carbon cartridge has usually never been changed, which is why a kitchen still smells of dinner an hour after the fan has been running. Part of the visit is finding out which hood is fitted, whether there is a carbon filter behind the mesh, and what replacement it takes. That is a part to order rather than something a clean can rescue.

#### Rentals, relocations and a town that turns over

Cranbrook has a young population and a lot of movement: relocations for work, families moving up within the town, and a substantial rented sector alongside the owner occupied housing. That produces steady end of tenancy work with a modern twist, since the cooker is usually only a few years old and the argument is about condition rather than age.

Timestamped before and after photographs go out as files on those jobs. On an appliance this new there is rarely any pre-existing damage to separate out, which makes the check out conversation short and the photographs conclusive.

The town is also still being built out, which means construction dust travels further here than it would on an enclosed site. It settles on the top of a hood and inside a kitchen extract, and mixed with cooking grease it makes a gritty film that is worse than either on its own. It is one more reason a first clean here is more satisfying than it sounds.

- Entirely twenty first century housing, so the kitchens are consistent street to street
- Very often the first proper deep clean an appliance has had
- Recirculating hoods with a carbon cartridge that needs replacing rather than washing
- Steady end of tenancy work on modern appliances, settled by photographs

Cookers commonly met here: Built in eye level double ovens in tall housings; Induction and ceramic hobs set into the worktop; Chimney and canopy hoods running on recirculation; Catalytic lined ovens that are wiped rather than treated.

### Broadclyst, Devon (EX5): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/broadclyst

Oven cleaning in Broadclyst, where Killerton estate cottages, cob and thatch around the church and working farms mean a lot of range cookers.

#### Estate cottages and a very particular housing stock

Broadclyst is a large parish rather than a single village, and its housing is unlike anywhere else on this list. Cob and thatch cottages around the church and the old street, a long run of National Trust estate cottages in the distinctive Killerton red, working farms and smallholdings through the parish, and later housing on the edges.

The estate cottages in particular have kitchens fitted into rooms with thick walls, small windows and low ceilings, and a good number have an oil fired range as the cooker. That is a half day of work rather than a two hour one, and it gets estimated from a photograph before anybody commits to a date.

Where a property is tenanted from the estate, it is worth checking who is arranging and paying before booking, since that is not always the occupier and the invoice needs the right name on it.

#### Farms, and kitchens that never stop

There are working farms through the parish and a farm kitchen is a different environment from a domestic one. The oven is on for long stretches, the hob is in use early, boots and dogs come through, and the room is doing four jobs at once.

Carbon in a cooker used like that is laid down in thin hard layers over years rather than as soft grease, and it responds to soak time rather than to effort. It also means the surfaces around the cooker want doing at the same time, because cleaning the appliance and leaving the wall behind it looks worse than leaving both.

Farm kitchens also tend to have a second cooker somewhere: an old freestanding oven in a back kitchen or utility that gets used at lambing or harvest and is forgotten the rest of the year. They are quick to do while the range is soaking and they are worth mentioning when booking, because two appliances in one visit costs far less than two visits.

#### Wet ground, and a parish that stays damp

The Clyst runs slowly through flat, often wet meadow here and the whole parish holds damp late into spring. In an old cottage with thick walls that produces kitchens which stay cool and humid, and grease in a humid room stays soft and travels.

Practically, that widens the job. The wall behind the cooker, the underside of a shelf above it and the sides of the units either side are all carrying a film, and they are included rather than treated as extras. It is the difference between a clean cooker in a greasy corner and a kitchen that actually looks done.

#### Lanes, gates and getting to the door

The parish spreads a long way and many properties are down lanes off lanes, with gates, tracks and yards rather than addresses that satellite navigation handles well. A what3words reference or a plain sentence about which entrance to use saves more time than it sounds like it should.

Once you are there, parking is rarely the problem it is in town, and on a dry day a soaking tray can go outside in a yard, which makes a long job on a range considerably easier to run.

Killerton draws a lot of visitors through the parish and the lanes near the estate get busy at weekends and in school holidays. A weekday slot is easier for everyone and it is usually what gets offered first.

- Killerton estate cottages, cob and thatch, and working farms across a large parish
- Oil fired ranges common, so half day jobs rather than two hour ones
- Damp low ground that keeps grease soft and spreads it beyond the cooker
- Lanes and gates where a what3words reference beats a postcode

Cookers commonly met here: Oil fired range cookers in estate cottages and farmhouses; Cast iron cookers in the older properties around the church; Freestanding cookers in the later housing on the parish edges; Wide hobs with heavy cast iron supports in farm kitchens.

### Ottery St Mary, Devon (EX11): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/ottery-st-mary

Oven cleaning in Ottery St Mary, where cob and thatch cottages in the lanes sit alongside modern estates, and the cookers in each are nothing alike.

#### Cob cottages and the kitchens inside them

The lanes around Ottery hold a lot of cob and thatch, and a cob cottage kitchen has characteristics that matter on the day. Walls are thick and soft, doorways are low and narrow, windows are small so the light is poor, and floors are often flagged, quarry tiled or uneven boards.

None of that changes the cleaning. It changes the preparation. Protection goes down properly because an old floor does not wipe like vinyl, and a work light comes in because you cannot judge whether a cabinet roof is clean in a room with one small window and a range in the corner.

The cookers in these houses are frequently ranges rather than fitted ovens, which makes them half day jobs rather than two hour ones. That gets estimated from a photograph before anything is booked, so nobody is surprised by the invoice.

#### The estates north and west of the town

Post-war and modern estate housing has spread out from the historic centre, and the kitchens there are the familiar fitted arrangement: a built in single or double oven, a ceramic or gas hob, a canopy hood above it. Straightforward, level access, a driveway, and a job that finishes comfortably inside the minimum.

The oldest of that estate housing is now getting to the age where the original appliances are failing and being replaced one at a time, which produces a common local situation: a twenty year old oven next to a two year old hob. They are different jobs in the same kitchen and they are both included in the hours.

Where a hob has been replaced and the oven has not, the two are usually different technologies as well as different ages: an induction top over a fan oven from the previous decade. They are cleaned in completely different ways, one a surface job on glass and the other a strip down, and both are inside the same hours.

#### A town where the kitchen is the social room

Ottery has a strong community life and a calendar of events that most of the town turns out for, and the practical consequence in a kitchen is batch cooking. Big trays, large quantities and the oven on for hours at a stretch put considerably more onto the cabinet roof than everyday cooking does.

It is worth timing a clean for after a heavy stretch rather than before one, which sounds obvious and is very often done the other way round. A cooker done in November and then run hard through December is a cooker that wanted doing in January.

#### Damp valley floor and the film on everything

The Otter valley holds mist and damp, and houses here stay closed through the colder months. Inside a kitchen that produces a soft film on the wall behind the hob and the underside of the extractor, which is grease that has never had a chance to dry.

It comes off easily enough once it is treated as grease rather than as marks, and the splash back and the wall around the hob are part of the job rather than an extra. What is not part of it is anything the grease has been hiding, such as paint that has already lifted, and that gets pointed out rather than papered over.

- Cob and thatch cottages with low doorways, poor light and uneven floors
- Range cookers in the older lanes, fitted ovens on the estates
- Batch cooking around the town's event calendar, which loads the cabinet roof
- Damp valley air that leaves a soft film behind the hob and under the hood

Cookers commonly met here: Range cookers in cob and thatch cottages; Built in single and double ovens on the post-war estates; Mixed age kitchens where the oven and hob are twenty years apart; Canopy hoods over gas and ceramic hobs.

### Honiton, Devon (EX14): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/honiton

Oven cleaning in Honiton, covering the Georgian high street and the flats above it, the modern estates behind, and the range cookers up in the Blackdowns.

#### A high street with flats above the shops

Honiton's high street is famously uniform Georgian, rebuilt after the eighteenth century fires, and a great deal of the accommodation in the town centre is above a shop or a business. That means a kitchen up a narrow staircase from a door on a busy street, usually compact, usually with an under counter oven and a recirculating hood.

Those are straightforward jobs and they sit inside the two hour minimum. The part that takes planning is loading: the street is busy, stopping outside for long is not an option, and everything for the work goes up the stairs and back down again.

Where a property is above a trading business, the timing usually needs to suit the shop below rather than the flat above, which is easy enough to arrange when it is known in advance.

#### Range cookers up in the hills

Behind the town the Blackdowns rise steeply, and the housing up there is a different proposition: farmhouses, cottages and converted barns with kitchens built around a range cooker. Some are oil fired, some are cast iron, and a fair number have been in the same house longer than the current owners.

A range is a half day and an AGA class cast iron cooker is priced by the hours it takes, because enamel, chrome lids, hotplates and ovens are four separate pieces of work rather than one. The ovens need the cooker cold, which on most models means shutting it down the night before, and in a hill farmhouse in winter that is worth planning around.

#### Holiday cottages and the season

There is a good deal of holiday letting in the parishes around Honiton, and a let kitchen is its own kind of job: heavy use in short bursts by people who are not coming back, then a gap, then the same again. Fat gets baked hard rather than accumulating gently, and the grill pan is invariably the worst thing in the property.

The work is booked to a changeover window, between one party leaving and the next arriving, with the cooker back together and usable before the day ends. Several cottages on the same estate on the same morning is efficient and gets arranged that way where it is possible.

#### Fog in the valley, and why the extractor matters

The Otter valley sits under fog for long spells in winter, and houses stay closed up for months at a time. In a kitchen where the window is not opened between October and March, the extractor is doing all the work and a blocked filter shows up as a smell that never leaves the house.

Metal mesh filters soak and come back like new. A carbon cartridge behind them does not wash, and on a hood that recirculates it is usually the actual cause of the smell rather than the mesh. Finding out which one is fitted is part of the visit.

It is also why an extractor is worth doing on the same visit as the oven rather than saving for later. The setting up has already happened, the soaking tray is out, and filters go in alongside the racks with no extra time spent on preparation.

- Georgian high street flats above shops, up narrow stairs with no loading time
- Farmhouse and barn range cookers in the Blackdowns above the town
- Holiday cottage changeovers with a fixed window between lets
- Long closed up winters where a blocked extractor filter is the smell in the house

Cookers commonly met here: Under counter ovens in high street flats; Oil fired and cast iron ranges in the Blackdown farmhouses; Freestanding cookers in holiday cottages; Recirculating hoods with carbon cartridges behind the mesh.

### Cullompton, Devon (EX15): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/cullompton

Oven cleaning in Cullompton, from the medieval core along Fore Street to the large modern estates that have grown around junction 28 of the motorway.

#### A commuter town, and what that does to an oven

Cullompton is a motorway town now as much as a market one. A large share of the housing is late twentieth century estates and newer development, and a lot of households here leave early and get back late because the working day is in Exeter or Taunton rather than in the town.

That produces a distinct cooking pattern: quick weeknight food, a lot of oven trays, and proper cooking concentrated at the weekend. Tray bakes and oven chips are the specific culprit, because fat spits off a shallow tray onto the roof of the cabinet where nothing wipes it away and it bakes on hard over months.

It is not a heavy soiling in the way a farmhouse range is, but it is persistent, and it is the reason a five year old estate oven can look considerably worse than its age suggests.

#### Two housing stocks, two jobs

The old core along Fore Street has cob and thatch in the lanes behind it and Georgian frontages on the street, and the kitchens in those are small, awkwardly shaped and often on a floor other than the ground one. The estates are the opposite: level access, a driveway, a fitted double oven and somewhere sensible to put a soaking tray.

Both are the same hourly rate and both usually sit inside the two hour minimum for a standard oven. What changes is the setting up, and an older property with a narrow staircase or a low doorway is worth mentioning when booking so the morning is planned properly.

#### New build appliances and the things that must be left alone

Newer estate kitchens come with appliances that are still inside their warranty period, and that puts a limit on how far anything is taken apart. Nothing goes further than the manufacturer intends to be removed for cleaning, which is the right approach in any case and matters more when a claim might follow.

Catalytic liners are the specific thing to watch for. They are the rough matt panels on the side walls of some ovens, designed to absorb grease and burn it off, and both degreaser and scrubbing destroy the coating. They get wiped and left, and the rest of the cabinet is cleaned around them.

#### Damp valley air, and a kitchen that never quite dries

The town sits on the valley floor and holds damp and frost longer than the higher ground either side. In a kitchen that shows up in a small but real way: an extractor filter that stays tacky rather than drying between uses, and a hood that grows a film faster than the same one would a few miles up the hill.

Filters get dried properly before they go back for exactly that reason. A wet mesh filter gathers grease considerably faster than a dry one, and putting one back damp undoes a share of the work that was just done to it.

The same damp is why a hob here is often cloudy rather than greasy by the time it is booked in. Condensation carries a fine film of cooking oil onto the cold glass, it dries, and the next day it happens again, which builds a haze that a spray cleaner smears rather than lifts.

- Large modern estates alongside a medieval and Georgian core
- Weeknight tray cooking that bakes spatter onto the cabinet roof
- Appliances often still in warranty, so nothing is dismantled beyond intent
- Damp valley air, so extractor filters are dried fully before refitting

Cookers commonly met here: Fitted double ovens in estate housing around the town edge; Freestanding cookers in the older Fore Street properties; Ceramic and induction hobs on the newer estates; Catalytic lined ovens that are wiped rather than treated.

### Tiverton, Devon (EX16): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/tiverton

Oven cleaning in Tiverton, where Victorian mill terraces, steep residential streets and a large rental market keep the same few cooker types coming up.

#### Mill terraces and cookers that are older than they look

Tiverton has a large stock of Victorian terracing built for mill workers, and those houses share a kitchen shape: narrow, at the back, often with a lean to beyond it and a cooker against an external wall. Many of them have been rented for a long time, and rented cookers get replaced when they fail rather than when they age.

So a good share of the work here is on appliances of fifteen or twenty years old. They clean well, and it is worth knowing what to expect from them: enamel that is sound but marked, door glass with a permanent haze, shelf runners that have lost their chrome, and a grill pan handle that has been replaced with something improvised.

None of that stops the oven working and none of it comes out with more hours. Separating what is dirt from what is age is a large part of the value of the visit, particularly where a deposit is going to be argued about later.

#### Steep streets and getting kit to the door

The town centre is low and the residential streets climb sharply north and west, several of them steep enough that parking is nose in and the walk from the car to the door is uphill with a load. That is fine on a dry morning and less fine in February.

It is worth a line in the booking. Where a property has off street parking or a nearby level spot, the job starts on time. Where it does not, the slot allows for two trips instead of one, which is planning rather than a problem.

#### Student and school term rentals

There is a steady rental market here, some of it tied to the school and college terms and some simply to the town's working population. The result is end of tenancy work spread through the year rather than bunched into one month, with the same pattern each time: a cooker used hard by people who were not going to be there long, and a check out inspection with a date on it.

The photographs matter as much as the clean on those jobs. A timestamped before and after set, sent as files that can be forwarded to an agent, is what settles the question of whether the oven was left in an acceptable state, and it protects the outgoing tenant as often as it protects the landlord.

#### Hard water, and what it does to the finish

Water in this part of Mid Devon leaves a scale mark, and on a kitchen that shows on the parts that get wet and then dry: hob surrounds, the underside of an extractor canopy, and the stainless around a sink next to the cooker.

It is not grease and it does not respond to degreaser, so a job that only degreases leaves a hob looking cloudy and everyone wondering why. The order that works is grease off first, then scale, then polish, and it is the reason a hob here comes up looking better than the owner expected rather than merely clean.

- Victorian mill terraces with narrow rear kitchens and long lived cookers
- Appliances often fifteen or twenty years old, where age and dirt look alike
- Steep residential streets that add carrying time at each end of a job
- Hard water scale on hobs and canopies, which needs a different step from degreasing

Cookers commonly met here: Freestanding cookers of fifteen years and older in rented terraces; Under counter ovens with separate gas hobs; Fitted double ovens in the modern development on the eastern edge; Extractor canopies carrying scale as well as grease.

### Crediton, Devon (EX17): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/crediton

Oven cleaning in Crediton and the Creedy valley, where farmhouse kitchens and barn conversions usually mean an oil fired range rather than a fitted oven.

#### Farmhouse kitchens are the local pattern

Crediton sits in a valley of some of the most productive farmland in Devon, and the housing outside the town reflects it: farmhouses, barn conversions and cottages down long lanes, most with a kitchen that is the main room of the house rather than a place food is prepared.

The cooker in that room is very often an oil fired range. It runs most of the year, it does the cooking and a good share of the heating, and it has usually been in place a long time. That is a half day of work at minimum, because a range is two cavities, a grill and a wide hob with heavy cast iron supports that have to be soaked in batches rather than all at once.

In the town itself the Georgian and Victorian high street housing has more conventional kitchens, and a fitted oven there is an ordinary two hour job. The two are priced the same way, by the hours the cooker actually takes.

#### A working kitchen gets dirty differently

There is a real difference between a kitchen that cooks and a kitchen that heats things. On a farm the oven is on for hours at a time, things go in and out of it all day, and the hob is in use before it is properly light. Fat is laid down in thin layers over a long period and it goes hard rather than staying greasy.

Hard, layered carbon takes soak time rather than force. That is exactly why these jobs run past a fixed price and are charged by the hour instead: pretending a range in a working farmhouse takes the same time as an oven in a town flat would either short change the customer or short change the work.

#### Cold cookers, and planning around the season

An oil fired range has to be off and cold before the ovens can be done, and in a house where that cooker is the heating as well, shutting it down is a genuine decision. Late spring and early autumn are the sensible windows, when the kitchen is warm enough without it.

Where the ovens are fine and it is the enamel and the hotplates that have dulled, that can be done with the cooker running and it is a shorter visit. Which one you need is usually obvious from a photograph, and there is no point booking a full day for a job that wants three hours.

#### Lanes, gates and finding the place

Properties out in the Creedy valley are down single track lanes with high banks, and satellite navigation is optimistic about several of them. A what3words reference or a simple sentence about which gate to take saves more time than it sounds like it should.

Parking is rarely a problem once you arrive, which is the one thing rural work has over town work. There is almost always a yard, and a soaking tray outside on a dry day makes the whole job easier.

Dogs are the other rural constant. Kitchen doors get left open, degreaser is on the floor in a tray, and hot metal comes out of an oven onto a sheet. It is easier for everybody if the dogs are somewhere else for the couple of hours, and it gets asked rather than assumed.

- Farmhouses and barn conversions across the Creedy valley with range cookers as standard
- Hard layered carbon from long daily use, which wants soak time rather than force
- Oil fired ranges best done in late spring or early autumn when the heat is not needed
- Single track lanes where a what3words reference saves real time

Cookers commonly met here: Oil fired range cookers as the main cooker and kitchen heat; Cast iron cookers in older farmhouses; Fitted single ovens in the high street housing; Wide hobs with heavy cast iron supports needing batch soaking.

### Okehampton, Devon (EX20): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/okehampton

Oven cleaning in Okehampton and the moorland parishes around it, where solid fuel and oil fired ranges outnumber ordinary fitted ovens.

#### Moor edge houses run their cookers hard

Okehampton sits at the northern foot of Dartmoor with the high moor rising immediately behind it, and the parishes around the town are scattered farms, longhouses and cottages. In a house up there the cooker is not just a cooker: it is heat, hot water and the reason the kitchen is the room everybody sits in.

That means an oil fired or solid fuel range running most of the year, and running hard. Nine or ten months of continuous use lays down carbon that is dense and layered rather than greasy, and it comes off with soak time and patience instead of force. These are half day and full day jobs, priced by the hours they take rather than by any fixed figure.

Fitted ovens in the town centre and the post-war estates are ordinary two hour jobs, and the two sit side by side in the same week.

#### Turning off a cooker that is the heating

Cleaning the ovens on a cast iron range needs the cooker cold, and on most models that means shutting it down the night before. In a moorland house that is a real decision, because the kitchen goes cold with it and the hot water may go too.

So the timing matters more here than anywhere else on the list. Late spring through to early autumn is the sensible window, and a clean booked for July is a considerably easier day for everyone than the same job in January. Where only the enamel, the lids and the hotplates need doing, the cooker can stay lit and it is a much shorter visit.

#### Weather, tracks and getting there

This is one of the wettest and windiest places in the area, and access to the outlying properties is by single track lanes and unsurfaced tracks. In winter some of them are hard going and in a hard spell a booking is better moved than attempted.

That is said plainly rather than discovered. If a track is impassable, the sensible answer is another date, not a van in a ditch and a job that never started. A gate reference or a what3words location saves time on lanes that satellite navigation is confident and wrong about.

#### What a first clean in years actually finds

Rural properties tend to go a long time between proper cleans, because there is not much of this work done out here. The first visit to a range that has run untouched for several years is partly a clean and partly an inspection: door ropes that have gone hard, a hotplate that has never been worked back, a burner running rich, a flue plate that has not been lifted in a decade.

None of that is repaired, because this is cleaning and not engineering. It is pointed out with a straight view on whether it matters and who normally deals with it, which is more useful than a spotless cooker with a fault nobody mentioned.

It is also worth knowing that a range that has run for years without a proper clean cooks noticeably better afterwards. Carbon on the cabinet walls insulates, and taking it off changes how evenly the ovens hold heat, which is the part people mention weeks later rather than the finish.

- Solid fuel and oil fired ranges as the main cooker in the moorland parishes
- Dense layered carbon from continuous running, which needs soak time not force
- Best booked late spring to early autumn when the cooker can be shut down
- Single track lanes and tracks where winter access is worth checking first

Cookers commonly met here: Cast iron ranges running as heating and hot water; Oil fired range cookers in farmhouses and longhouses; Freestanding cookers in the granite and slate town centre; Fitted ovens on the post-war estates around the town.

### Newton Abbot, Devon (TQ12): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/newton-abbot

Oven cleaning in Newton Abbot, where streets of railway era terraces and a large rental market mean a steady run of end of tenancy oven work.

#### Railway terraces, in very large numbers

Newton Abbot was built out on the back of the Great Western works, and the result is street after street of Victorian railway era terracing, more of it than anywhere else nearby. The kitchens are at the back, they are narrow, and the cooker is usually freestanding against the party wall or fitted under a run of worktop in a later refit.

A high proportion of those houses are rented. That produces the single most consistent job type on this site: a cooker used by successive households, none of whom cleaned it properly, coming up for a check out with a date already fixed.

The two hour minimum covers most of them. Where a cooker has never once been done, it runs past that, and you get told before the day rather than at the end of it.

#### Agents, deposits and photographs

There are a lot of letting agents in this town and their check out reports all turn on the same items: the inside of the oven door glass, the oven floor, the racks, the hob and the extractor filter. Those are the photographs that end up in the report and they are the ones that cost people money.

Before and after photographs are taken as a matter of course and sent as files that can be forwarded. An invoice in the property address, from Hembury Contracting, is what an agent or an adjudicator wants to see alongside them. For a tenant, paying for the clean is reliably cheaper than the deduction that follows not doing it.

#### Post-war estates and the 1930s semis

Away from the terraces there are substantial post-war estates and streets of inter-war semis, and the kitchens in those are larger and easier to work in. Owner occupied rather than let, for the most part, and cleaned at a sensible interval rather than in an emergency.

The modern development at Houghton Barton and Wolborough is different again: fitted eye level double ovens, induction hobs and recirculating hoods with carbon cartridges. Those clean quickly and the surprise is nearly always the filter, which in a house of a few years old has usually never been out of the hood.

The inter-war semis have one quirk worth naming: a good number still have the original larder or a fitted cupboard immediately beside the cooker, and the inside face of that cupboard door has spent decades a foot away from a hob. It is not part of the appliance and it comes up with the same degreaser while everything else is soaking.

#### Low ground, mist and a kitchen that holds damp

The town sits low on the floodplain where the Teign becomes tidal and it holds mist off the estuary. Kitchens here stay damp, and a damp kitchen changes how grease behaves: it stays soft and spreads rather than drying, so it ends up on surfaces well away from the hob.

In practice that means the wall behind the cooker, the sides of the units either side and the underside of any shelf above are all part of the job rather than optional extras. Cleaning only the appliance in a room like that leaves an obvious clean patch in a greasy corner, which is not the point of the exercise.

- Streets of railway era terraces with a very high proportion of rented housing
- Agent check outs turning on oven glass, racks, hob and extractor filter
- Modern development at Houghton Barton with filters that have never been removed
- Damp estuary air that spreads grease well beyond the cooker itself

Cookers commonly met here: Freestanding cookers in rented Victorian terraces; Under counter ovens fitted into later kitchen refits; Eye level double ovens and induction hobs on the new development; Recirculating hoods with unchanged carbon cartridges.

### Bovey Tracey, Devon (TQ13): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/bovey-tracey

Oven cleaning in Bovey Tracey, on the eastern edge of Dartmoor, where granite cottages, smallholdings and moorland lanes bring ranges as often as fitted ovens.

#### Where the moor drops into the clay

Bovey sits right on the line where Dartmoor falls away into the ball clay basin, and the housing changes with the ground. Granite and rendered cottages on the older streets, Victorian villas up the hill, mid century and modern estates spreading east, and smallholdings with paddocks on the lanes running up onto the moor.

The cookers follow the same split. In the estates it is a fitted oven and a ceramic hob, a comfortable two hour job. Up the lanes it is far more often a range, oil fired or cast iron, in a kitchen that also has a wood burner in it, and that is a half day at least.

Both are the same rate. What decides the invoice is the amount of cooker rather than the postcode, and that gets estimated from a photograph before a slot is agreed.

#### Wood burners and what they add to the room

A great many kitchens here have a wood burner or a solid fuel stove in the same room as the cooker, and that changes what is actually on the surfaces. Alongside cooking grease there is a fine soot deposit that settles on everything horizontal, and the two mix into a film that behaves differently from grease alone.

It matters because degreaser on its own smears soot rather than lifting it. The order that works is to take the grease off first and then deal with what is underneath, and it is the reason a hob or a canopy in a wood burner kitchen comes up better with two passes than with one long one.

#### A wet corner of Devon, and long intervals

This is one of the wettest spots in the area, sitting below the moor where the rain comes in off the south west. Houses stay closed up and damp for long stretches, which keeps grease soft and spreads it further from the hob than it would travel in a dry kitchen.

Rural properties here also tend to go a long time between proper cleans, because there is not much of this work done on the lanes. A first clean on a range that has run for several years is a longer job than an annual one and it is priced accordingly, with the hours estimated on what the cooker looks like rather than on what would sound better.

#### Access up the lanes

The lanes running onto the moor are single track with high banks and few passing places, and several properties are at the end of a track rather than on a road. There is nearly always somewhere to park once you arrive, which is the compensation for a slow last mile.

Winter is the thing to watch. In a hard spell some of those tracks are hard going, and moving a booking is a better answer than attempting one. A gate reference or a what3words location for the actual entrance saves real time on lanes that satellite navigation misreads.

Craft and studio workshops run through the town as well, and a handful of bookings each year are for small commercial kitchens attached to them rather than for houses. Those are quoted the same way, by the hours, and the difference is usually that the extractor is the whole job and the oven is an afterthought.

- Moor edge lanes with ranges and smallholding kitchens, estates with fitted ovens
- Wood burners in the same room, adding soot that has to come off after the grease
- Very wet corner where damp keeps grease soft and spreads it further
- Single track access where a gate reference beats satellite navigation

Cookers commonly met here: Oil fired and cast iron ranges in cottages and smallholdings; Fitted single ovens and ceramic hobs on the eastern estates; Freestanding cookers in the older granite and rendered houses; Canopy hoods carrying soot as well as cooking grease.

### Chudleigh, Devon (TQ13): https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/areas/chudleigh

Oven cleaning in Chudleigh, under the Haldon ridge, where a Georgian core, cottages on the lanes and larger houses on the slopes each bring a different cooker.

#### A town rebuilt, and kitchens of three different ages

Chudleigh was largely rebuilt after the fire of 1807, which gives the centre a consistent Georgian and Victorian character with cob and thatch survivors on the lanes around it. Behind and above that sit post-war estates on the higher ground and larger houses with long gardens on the slopes.

Three ages of housing produce three kinds of booking. A cottage kitchen with a range and a low ceiling is a half day. A Georgian town house with a fitted double oven in a converted service room is a comfortable two hours. An estate house is the same again with easier access and a driveway to park on.

Nothing about the method changes between them. The hours do, and they are estimated from a photograph rather than guessed at on the doorstep.

#### Big kitchens in the houses on the slopes

The larger properties above the town tend to have kitchens that were extended or reordered at some point, which usually means a range cooker, a wide hob and an island with an extractor hanging over it. That combination is the most common half day job in this part of the Teign valley.

An island hood is worth its own mention. It is visible from every side, so the outside of the canopy matters as much as the filters inside it, and it is nearly always the thing people ask to have added once they have seen the cooker come up. Doing both on one visit is cheaper than two visits, because the setting up only happens once.

#### Shaded combes and a kitchen that stays damp

The steep wooded combes around the town hold damp all year and the houses in them sit in shade for much of the winter. Inside, that shows as a soft film on the wall behind the hob and on the underside of any shelf or hood above it, which is grease that has never had the chance to dry out.

It comes off readily once it is treated as grease rather than as staining, and the wall and splash back around the cooker are part of the job. What the film has been hiding, such as paint that has already lifted or a grout line that has gone, is pointed out rather than quietly cleaned around.

#### On the old road, and easy to reach

The town sits on the old road out of Exeter with the A38 close by, which makes it one of the more straightforward places on this list to get to and to fit into a day alongside another job nearby.

In practice that means short notice slots are more often available here than out on the moor lanes. Parking is generally simple away from the narrowest part of the centre, and where a property is on one of the tighter lanes it is worth a line in the booking so the van has somewhere sensible to go.

Being on the A38 also makes this a sensible place to pair two bookings on the same morning, which is worth knowing if a neighbour or a relative in the town has been meaning to get theirs done. Two kitchens in one trip is less driving and it usually means a slot comes up sooner.

- Georgian core, cottages on the lanes and estates on the higher ground
- Extended kitchens on the slopes with range cookers and island extractors
- Shaded damp combes that leave a soft grease film on walls and hoods
- Easy access from the A38, so short notice slots come up more often here

Cookers commonly met here: Range cookers in extended kitchens on the slopes; Fitted double ovens in the Georgian town centre houses; Freestanding and oil fired cookers in the cob and thatch cottages; Island extractor hoods that are visible from every side.

## Questions and answers

**How long does an oven clean take?** A standard single or double oven usually fits inside the two hour minimum. A range cooker, an AGA class cooker, or an oven with the hob and extractor added on the same visit runs longer and is charged for the hours it takes. Tell us what you have and roughly how long since it was last done and you will get a straight estimate before anything is booked.

**Can I use the oven the same day?** Yes. Everything is rebuilt before we leave and the oven is brought up to temperature so the last of the cleaner smell burns off rather than turning up in your dinner. Nothing needs to sit overnight.

**Do I need to be there the whole time?** No. Somebody needs to let us in and be there at the end to look at the work and settle the balance, but the middle of the job does not need an audience. Plenty of people go out and come back to a clean kitchen.

**Will it damage the enamel or the door seals?** Not the way this is done. Degreaser and time do most of the work, with a scraper only on flat glass and steel where it is safe. Door seals are cleaned and left in place rather than pulled out, because a perished seal is a part to replace and not something a clean can fix.

**What if the oven turns out to be broken rather than dirty?** You get told and it is left alone. A blown bulb, a perished seal, a cracked inner pane or a failed fan can all hide under baked-on grease, and cleaning is not a repair. Nothing here is gas work, so anything on the gas side goes to a Gas Safe registered engineer.

**Do you cover my area?** Exeter and roughly twenty miles around it, which takes in the estuary towns, the East and Mid Devon market towns, the Teign valley and the edge of Dartmoor. There is a page for each town covered saying what the work usually looks like there.

**Who actually turns up?** Sam Hembury. Exeter Oven Cleaning is a service line of Hembury Contracting, a one man Exeter business with public liability insurance, so the person who quotes the job is the person who does it.

**Why is it charged by the hour and not per oven?** Because two ovens of the same model can be an hour apart in the state they are in. An hourly rate means a cooker that has been looked after costs less than one that has not, instead of both paying the same average.

**What is the least I could pay?** £120, which is the 2 hours minimum. Most standard single and double ovens are done inside it.

**Is VAT included?** Yes. £60 an hour, £120 minimum, £240 for a half day and £480 for a full day are all the figures you pay, with nothing added afterwards. There is no call out charge and materials are included.

**How does the deposit work?** 50 per cent of the estimated time is taken to hold the booking, and the balance is due on completion once you have looked at the work. Move or cancel with reasonable notice and it carries over or comes back.

**What happens if the job takes longer than estimated?** You are told while it is happening, not on the invoice. If a cooker turns out to be worse than it looked in the photographs you decide whether to run on, stop at the estimate, or book the rest for another day.

**Do you charge extra for parking or mileage inside the area?** No. Anywhere on the areas list is covered by the hourly rate. If a job is beyond that, ask and you will get told plainly whether it is worth either of us doing.

## Contact (https://exeterovencleaning.co.uk/contact)

Nobody is judging the oven. The worse it is, the more useful a photograph is, because the hours are what set the price and the photograph is what sets the hours.

What to send: The make and type of cooker, whether the hob and extractor want doing at the same time, roughly how long since it was last cleaned properly, and a photograph of the inside with the door open. A postcode helps with the slot.

- Telephone: 07533 567302
- Email: info@hemburycontracting.co.uk
- Booking hours: Monday to Friday 8am to 6pm, Saturday 9am to 4pm
- Based: Exeter, Devon, EX2 area.
- Trading identity: Hembury Contracting, https://hemburycontracting.co.uk