How many cleaner hours does your Pakenham house need?
Measure the internal floor area and multiply. A regular clean needs roughly 0.85 to 1.15 minutes per square metre, a one off deep clean about twice that, and a full end of lease vacate clean about three times it. In practice a 140 square metre three bedroom Pakenham house is 2 to 3 cleaner hours a fortnight, and 6 to 10 cleaner hours as a vacate clean. The estimator below sizes the job first, then prices it.
Size the job, then see the price
Move the slider to your internal floor area and pick the job. The top box tells you how big the job is in cleaner hours and how many people it needs. The bottom box turns that into a 2026 dollar range for Pakenham and the Cardinia Shire.
What the estimator assumes
- Rates are $50 to $65 per cleaner per hour, the 2026 range across Pakenham, Officer, Beaconsfield and Berwick, with a minimum of about two cleaner hours on any booking.
- Floor area is internal living area. For a vacate clean, add the garage floor, because almost every lease includes it.
- A vacate clean assumes the property is empty and that power and water are still connected.
- Carpet steam cleaning is charged from $35 a room with a minimum around $120, and it adds drying time rather than crew time.
- It does not price rubbish removal, external high pressure work, mould remediation or anything needing a ladder above single storey height, because we do not do those.
- This is a guide. A fixed price needs a look at the oven, the carpet and the shower screens. Full rates are on the pricing page.
How to measure the house properly, with a tape and a phone
You need one number: internal floor area. There are three ways to get it, in order of speed.
1. The builder brochure or the contract of sale. In the Pakenham and Officer estates almost every house was built to a named floor plan and the size is quoted in squares. One square is 9.29 square metres, so a 24 square home is about 223 square metres. That figure is total under roof, which includes the double garage, the porch and the alfresco. Subtract those, usually 45 to 55 square metres in an estate home, and you have roughly 170 square metres of internal area. This is the single biggest measuring trap in this area: people quote the sticker number and then wonder why the estimate feels high.
2. Room by room with a tape. Measure length by width in each room, in metres, and add them up. Ignore the wall thickness, ignore the wardrobe recesses, and include hallways and the laundry because they take real time. A 3.6 by 3.2 bedroom is 11.5 square metres. Four of those plus a 7 by 5 open plan living and dining, two bathrooms and a hall is your number in about ten minutes.
3. Pace it out. An average adult stride is close enough to 0.75 metres for this purpose. Walk the length and width of each room counting steps, multiply, and you will be within about 10 per cent, which is well inside the accuracy of any estimate. Photograph each room as you go: when you call for a quote, photos of the oven, the shower screens, the carpet and the garage are worth more than any measurement.
Rules of thumb: minutes per room
If you would rather add it up by room than by area, these are the times we actually work to. All figures are one cleaner working steadily.
| Room or task | Regular clean | Vacate clean | What drives the difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kitchen, including oven and range hood | 30 to 45 min | 100 to 180 min | The oven, the filter and every cupboard inside and out |
| Bathroom or ensuite | 25 to 40 min | 55 to 90 min | Shower screen, grout, exhaust fan cover, mould |
| Separate toilet or powder room | 8 to 12 min | 18 to 25 min | Behind the pan and the skirting |
| Bedroom | 10 to 15 min | 22 to 35 min | Wardrobe shelving, tracks, skirtings, marks on walls |
| Living and dining | 20 to 30 min | 55 to 80 min | Skirtings, vents, light fittings, sliding door tracks |
| Laundry | 10 to 15 min | 22 to 35 min | Trough, behind the machines, lint and the drain |
| Stairs and hallways | 10 to 20 min | 30 to 45 min | Balustrade, treads, scuffed walls at handrail height |
| Each window opening, glass plus track plus flyscreen | Not included | 4 to 6 min | Grit in the tracks is a standard inspection item |
| Garage or carport | Not included | 20 to 30 min | Sweep, cobwebs, roller door track |
| Carpet steam cleaning, per room | Not included | 12 to 20 min | Plus 4 to 8 hours of drying afterwards |
Sized it and want it confirmed?
Read us your numbers on the phone and we will tell you in two minutes whether they are right.
The allowance to add, and the sizing mistake that costs the most
Every trade builds in a wastage allowance. In cleaning the equivalent is a time buffer, and the rule is simple: add 15 to 20 per cent to whatever you calculate. On a 10 hour vacate clean that is another 90 to 120 minutes, and it is the difference between finishing calmly and finishing badly.
Four things each add their own time on top of the buffer, and all four are predictable.
- A first clean: about 1.5 times a maintenance visit, because it is catching up rather than keeping up.
- Pets: 30 to 60 minutes for hair in skirtings, carpet edges and under furniture.
- Smokers: 45 to 90 minutes, because residue sits on ceilings and inside light fittings and has to be washed rather than wiped.
- An oven left for years: 30 to 60 minutes on its own, and it is the item that most often fails an inspection.
The costly sizing mistake in this area is booking a fixed number of hours instead of a fixed price for a vacate clean. Someone works out that a four bedroom house is “about four hours”, books four hours, and the crew leaves with the windows and the garage undone because the clock ran out. The property manager does not give partial credit. The whole inspection is flagged, the agent arranges a cleaner at their rate and claims it against the bond, and the four hours you saved cost several hundred dollars. Our page on why bond cleans fail inspection lists the exact items that decide it.
Two smaller mistakes worth naming. People forget the garage, the alfresco, the letterbox and the tops of the wardrobes, which together are 40 to 60 minutes. And people size a double storey as if it were a single storey with more rooms, when in fact it usually has an extra bathroom, a staircase and a second living zone, which is where the extra 2 hours goes.
Worked example: a 24 square double storey in Cardinia Lakes
Four bedrooms, two bathrooms plus a powder room, upstairs retreat, double garage, moving out at the end of a three year lease. The brochure says 24 squares, which is about 223 square metres under roof. Take off the double garage at about 36 square metres and the porch and alfresco at about 14, and the internal area is roughly 173 square metres. Here is the job added up as a vacate clean.
- Kitchen, oven and range hood: 140 min
- Butler pantry: 15 min
- Two bathrooms at 65 minutes each: 130 min
- Powder room: 18 min
- Laundry: 25 min
- Four bedrooms at 25 minutes each: 100 min
- Walk in robe: 12 min
- Living and dining: 70 min
- Upstairs retreat: 35 min
- Stairs and hallways: 35 min
- Fifteen window openings at 4 minutes, glass, tracks and flyscreens: 60 min
- Garage sweep and cobwebs: 25 min
- Whole house detail, skirtings, door frames, switches, vents, light fittings: 50 min
- Final vacuum and mop through: 40 min
- Total: 755 minutes, or 12 hours 35 minutes of cleaner time
Round that to 12.5 cleaner hours. With a crew of two that is about 6 hours 15 minutes on site, which is a full working day once setup and the final walkthrough are counted. Add carpet steam cleaning in four bedrooms and on the stairs, at about 15 minutes each, and you are at roughly 13.8 cleaner hours plus 4 to 8 hours of drying. At $50 to $65 per cleaner hour the labour alone lands around $630 to $810, and with carpet included the fixed price for a house this size sits in the upper part of the range on our end of lease cost page. That is why we quote a fixed price rather than an hourly rate on vacate work.
The same house as an ongoing fortnightly clean is a completely different number: 173 square metres at about one minute per square metre is around 3 cleaner hours, or two people for 90 minutes. Over a year that is the arrangement most families here settle into, and the budget guide compares the tiers with real prices.
When the estimate says do not bother
If your number comes out under about two cleaner hours, do not book a cleaner, including us. Every visit carries a minimum of roughly two cleaner hours, or about $120, to cover travel and setup, so a 90 minute job costs the same as a two hour one and you would be paying for our drive down the Princes Highway. One bathroom, one oven or one set of windows is almost always a job for a Saturday morning and the right product, and the product and equipment guide says which one to buy.
The estimator is also only as good as the number you put in it. It cannot see an oven that has not been touched since the tenancy started, a shower screen that is etched rather than dirty, or carpet with a pet stain that has soaked through to the underlay. Those change the answer, and the only way to price them properly is a photo or a look. Send us three photos with your figures and the fixed price will hold. To see how the day itself runs, read what happens on bond clean day, and for what is covered afterwards, the guarantee page spells it out. Full service detail is on the house cleaning page.
Frequently asked questions
How many cleaner hours does a bond clean need in Pakenham?
How do I work out the floor area of my house?
How long does a regular fortnightly clean take?
What buffer should I add to a cleaning time estimate?
Is it cheaper to book two cleaners or one?
Does the garage count in a bond clean?
Send us your numbers and we will confirm the hours
Give us the area or the room count and you will have a fixed price and the crew size we would send, within one business day.
Right sized crew, right number of hours, fixed price
Free quotes across Pakenham, Officer, Beaconsfield, Berwick, Pakenham Upper and Nar Nar Goon.