Garden flats, terraces and apartments by the harbour
Dún Laoghaire's housing is a mix of Victorian and Edwardian terraces off George's Street and towards Monkstown and Glasthule, larger period houses, and modern apartments along the seafront and around the harbour. Many of the big old houses have been divided into flats, including garden-level flats below the street, and those come with their own carpet questions.
The video on this page was filmed on one of our carpet cleaning jobs in Dún Laoghaire. Every carpet gets the same method: a pre-treatment matched to the fibre, a hot rinse, and extraction that pulls the water straight back out with the dirt in it.
Damp, older walls and the carpet
Old houses near the sea can be damp, especially below street level, along north-facing walls and behind furniture pushed against an outside wall. When a carpet smells musty, people naturally blame the carpet. Often, though, the carpet is just where the smell collects, and the cause is in the building.
These are the signs that the problem is the house rather than the carpet:
- A tidemark or flaking paint low on a wall, just above the skirting
- A smell that's strongest near one wall or in one corner
- The carpet feels damp underneath when you lift a corner, even in dry weather
- Black spots on the underside of the carpet or on the underlay
- Rusty gripper rods along the edge of the room
A clean will lift the soil and freshen the carpet, and it's worth doing. But it can't fix rising damp, a leaking gutter or a cold wall with condensation, and if the cause isn't dealt with, the smell comes back. If we see signs of damp when we arrive, we'll tell you, so you can decide what to do first.
spotless.ieShared halls in converted houses
In a Victorian house divided into flats, the front door, hall and stairs are usually shared, and that carpet takes the traffic of every resident and every visitor. It's also nobody's in particular, which is why it tends to be the most neglected carpet in the building.
If you own or manage a converted house, we can clean the shared hall, stairs and landings as a job of its own, priced separately from the flats. If you're a tenant, it's worth asking the landlord to book it, especially between lettings. The hall is cleaned last, so residents can get in and out, and the stairs are done in sections if people need to use them; our stair carpet cleaning page explains how each step is handled.
It helps to let the other residents know the day before, with a note on the door or a message in the group chat. Ask them to keep bikes, buggies and post off the hall floor that morning, and to use the stairs in clean shoes or socks until the carpet is dry. A few hours later, the building has a hall that looks cared for again.
A flat, a whole house or just the shared hall? Send photos of each carpet and tell us about parking. We'll come back with a fixed price, usually the same day.
Drying in a basement or a seafront flat
Below-street flats are the slowest places to dry a carpet. The air doesn't move much, the walls are cool, and the windows are small. Drying typically takes a few hours, but in a garden flat on a damp day, expect longer. Air movers help with the first stretch, and then:
- run a dehumidifier if you have one, with the windows closed
- keep the heating on through the afternoon
- open the doors between the cleaned rooms
- keep furniture off the carpet until it feels dry to the hand
Seafront apartments are different. They're usually well sealed, so keep the ventilation running and the bedroom doors open. Our carpet drying time guide explains what else affects it.
Sand and grit from the seafront
A walk along the pier or the seafront brings fine sand home on shoes and the paws of dogs, and it ends up in the hall carpet. Sand is abrasive, so we vacuum it out thoroughly before any water goes down. Then the hall gets a pre-treatment and the hot rinse. For more on what a professional clean does, see our article on the benefits of professional carpet cleaning in Dún Laoghaire.
Dún Laoghaire and nearby
We cover Dún Laoghaire, Monkstown, Glasthule, Sandycove, Glenageary and Sallynoggin. Nearby, see carpet cleaning in Blackrock and in Dalkey. Sofas and mattresses can be added to any visit; see upholstery cleaning and mattress cleaning. If a flat or house needs emptying first, our Dún Laoghaire house clearance page explains how that works.
Flats, whole houses and shared halls are each priced from photos on what's there and how worn it is, so a landlord can see the cost of the common areas separately. The figure is fixed before booking, and every job is insured. Read about our method on the Dublin carpet cleaning page.
