Table of Contents
The short answer
A home in Abu Dhabi does not wear the way a home in a mild climate does. The air conditioning runs for most of the year, the tap water is hard, fine dust gets into everything, and the summer is hot and humid enough to age sealant, rubber and outdoor equipment quickly. So the maintenance year is built around the summer: prepare before it, watch a few things during it, and repair what it wore out once it has passed.
The calendar in one paragraph. Before the heat arrives, have the AC serviced, check the garden irrigation and the pool equipment, and look at the water tank. Through the summer, watch for water dripping from indoor AC units, mould on bathroom sealant and anything that goes wrong in a home left closed for travel. After the summer, service the AC a second time if it has worked hard, deal with pests and clear the drains. In the cooler months, do the work that needs open windows or comfortable outdoor conditions: painting, sealing, exterior washing, garden resets and anything on the roof.
Some things belong to no season. A leak, a breaker that keeps tripping, a socket that feels warm, a drain that backs up and an AC that stops cooling in midsummer are dealt with on the day they appear.
IHR Dream Cleaning carries out this kind of work under its maintenance and repairs services: AC, plumbing, electrical, carpentry, painting, pest control, water tanks, pools and gardens. AC servicing, duct cleaning and pest control have published prices, and a plumber's, an electrician's or an AC technician's repair visit has a starting price; all are given further down. Everything else is quoted from photos or a free inspection before any work starts.
What wears a home out here
Six things do most of the damage, and each one explains a line in the calendar.
- Air conditioning that rarely rests: a unit that runs most of the year pulls a great deal of air through its filter and coil, and makes condensation the whole time it cools. Filters clog, coils coat with dust, and the drain line that carries the condensation away grows slime and blocks.
- Hard water: the tap water leaves limescale wherever it is heated or left to dry. That means inside water heaters, in shower heads and tap aerators, on mixer cartridges and on the float valves of toilets and tanks. Scale is why a heater gets slower, a shower loses pressure and a tap starts to drip.
- Fine dust and sand: dust settles in AC filters and outdoor units, in the tracks of sliding doors and windows, on roof and balcony drains, and in water tanks whose lids or vent screens do not close properly. One windy spell brings in more of it than a calm month.
- Summer heat and humidity: heat hardens rubber seals, cracks exterior sealant and paint, and is hard on electrical equipment that sits outdoors, such as AC outdoor units and pool pumps. Humid air meets cold surfaces indoors and condenses, which shows as mould on bathroom silicone, damp around AC vents and sweating on cold pipes.
- Homes left closed: many households travel for weeks in summer. Water stands still in the tank, the heater and the pipes, the water seal in the floor drains evaporates, and nobody is there to notice a slow leak or an AC that has tripped.
- Rain that comes rarely and all at once: roof outlets and balcony drains sit dry and dusty for months, and the first heavy shower finds every blocked outlet and every cracked joint in one afternoon.
Apartment or villa: whose list is it
Apartments and villas share the first two causes and differ on the rest. In a tower, the roof, the building's water tank, the common drains and often the central cooling plant belong to the building, and your list is what sits inside the front door. In a villa nearly everything on the plot is yours or your landlord's to look after.
Where a line in this guide is the building's job, the useful thing you can do is ask. Three questions are worth putting to the management once a year: when the water tank was last cleaned, how often the common areas and bin rooms are treated for pests, and whether the AC equipment serving your flat is maintained by them or by you.
The calendar at a glance
Abu Dhabi's seasons do not have fixed dates, so this calendar follows the weather and not the months. Treat the hot season as the long stretch when the AC runs all day, and the cooler months as the stretch when you can leave a window open.
| When | What to check | Who to call |
|---|---|---|
| Before the heat | AC service, irrigation, pool pump and filter, water tank, door and window seals | AC technician, gardener, pool technician, tank team |
| Through the summer | AC drips, filters, bathroom mould, breakers, a home closed for travel | AC technician, plumber, electrician |
| After the summer | Second AC service, ducts, pests, drains, sealant, appliances | AC technician, pest control, plumber |
| Cooler months | Painting, sealant, roof and balcony outlets, exterior washing, garden reset | Painter, handyman, gardener |
| After wind and dust | AC filters, door tracks, drains, pool | Mostly yourself |
| Any day | Leaks, tripping breakers, warm sockets, no cooling, lockouts | The trade concerned, the same day |
How often each job comes round
These are the intervals given on our own service pages. They are starting points. A ground-floor villa beside open sand and a flat on the twentieth floor do not need the same year, and a technician who has seen your home should adjust them.
| Job | Usual interval | A good time for it |
|---|---|---|
| AC servicing | Every 6 to 12 months | Before the heat, and again after it |
| AC duct cleaning | About yearly, after an inspection | After summer, or after any renovation |
| Water tank cleaning | Every 6 to 12 months | Before summer |
| Preventive pest control | Every 3 to 6 months | After summer and before guests |
| Pool service | Weekly in summer, fortnightly when cool | All year |
| Garden visits | Weekly or fortnightly while growing | Irrigation check before summer |
| Bathroom silicone | Every 1 to 2 years in humid homes | Cooler months |
| Kitchen drain clearing | About yearly where a lot is cooked | Before a season of hosting |
| Facade and driveway washing | Once or twice a year | Cooler months |
| Small repairs | One batched visit every few months | When the list reaches five or six jobs |
Before the heat arrives
This is the part of the calendar that matters most, because every job on it is easier or safer to do before the summer than during it. An AC that fails in spring is an inconvenience. The same failure in August is an emergency, at the time of year when AC technicians across the city are dealing with breakdowns all day.
Air conditioning: service it while you can still do without it
A service is not the same as a wash. In general terms, a technician cleans the filters and the indoor coil, flushes the condensate drain, checks the gas pressure and the electrical connections, looks at the outdoor unit, then runs the system to see how well it cools. Our own technicians check gas pressure, filter condition, the drain line, thermostat calibration and the electrical connections, and run a cooling test before they leave. How a split-unit clean, a full service and duct cleaning differ is set out in AC cleaning, servicing and duct cleaning compared.
We recommend servicing every 6 to 12 months, and for most split units that means once before the summer peak and once after it. The AC repair and servicing page lists what the visit covers, and the price per unit is in the section on cost below, with the starting price of a repair visit. Gas and parts are quoted after the technician has found the fault.
Between services, the one job that is yours is the filter. Slide the filters out of each indoor unit every few weeks in the hot season, rinse them under the tap, let them dry in the shade and put them back. A clogged filter is one of the commonest reasons a healthy AC cools badly. Before the technician comes, note anything you have seen or heard, such as a room that never gets as cool as the others, a musty smell at start-up or a new noise. Clear stored items and plants away from the outdoor unit as well, because it cools by moving air.
Water: tank, heater and outdoor taps
A villa's water tank sits on the roof or in the ground, and in summer the water inside it gets warm. Warm water standing in a tank is where biofilm grows fastest, and weeks of low use while the family travels make it worse, so a tank is better cleaned before the hot months than after them. We recommend cleaning every 6 to 12 months, and the water is off while the tank is drained, cleaned, disinfected and refilled.
The water tank cleaning page has the process, and how often a tank needs cleaning and what happens on the day goes into the detail. In an apartment the tank belongs to the building, so the question to ask the management is when it was last cleaned.
While you are thinking about water, look at the heater. Rust streaks on the casing, a drip from the base, hot water that runs out sooner than it used to, and a rumbling or popping sound while it heats are all signs of scale and age. A plumber can tell you whether it needs descaling, a part or replacing, and the reasoning is in water heater not heating or leaking: repair or replace. Outdoors, turn each garden tap fully on and off and look for drips where the pipe meets the wall.
Outdoors: irrigation, pool and seals
Plants suffer fastest in the first hot weeks, and a common cause is not too little water but uneven water: a blocked dripper, a broken sprinkler head, a timer still set for the cool months. Run each irrigation zone once while you watch it. Our gardeners check the irrigation and the health of the plants as part of a garden visit, and what changes between the seasons is covered in garden care in summer and winter.
A pool uses more chlorine in strong sun and warm water and collects more dust, so the pump and filter have to be in good order before the season, not repaired in the middle of it. Private pools here usually need weekly service in summer and fortnightly in the cooler months. If the pump is noisy, the flow from the return jets is weak or the water was slow to clear last year, say so at the next pool service visit. The weekly routine is in villa pool care in an Abu Dhabi summer.
Last, the seals. Close each window and each outside door on a strip of paper. If the paper slides out freely, the rubber has flattened or perished, and hot, dusty air will leak in all summer while the AC works to remove it. Replacing door sweeps and window rubbers is a small handyman job, and one of the few whose effect you feel the same day.
Through the summer
Little maintenance is scheduled for the hottest months, and for good reason. Rooftop and outdoor work is slow and hard on the people doing it, paint dries too fast outside, and joints that never fully dry are poor ground for new sealant. Summer is for watching, for keeping filters clean and for acting quickly on the faults that heat brings out.
- Water dripping from an indoor AC unit. In humid weather a unit takes far more water out of the air than it does in spring, and a drain line that coped then overflows now. Switch the unit off, put a towel down and book a visit. The repair is usually clearing the drain line and checking its slope.
- An AC that runs but does not cool. Check the filter, the thermostat setting and whether the outdoor unit is running before you call. The safe checks are listed in AC not cooling: what to check before calling a technician.
- Black lines on bathroom silicone and grout. Run the extractor fan during and after every shower and wipe the screen down. Mould that has grown into the silicone will not scrub out, and when to clean and when to redo is explained in grout and silicone: clean or replace.
- A breaker that trips when the ACs, the oven and the water heater all run together. Summer is when a home draws the most power. A breaker that trips once has done its job. One that trips repeatedly needs an electrician the same day, and the reasons are in tripping breakers, flickering lights and warm sockets.
- A damp patch or a stain that grows. Condensation on a cold AC duct or pipe above a ceiling can look just like a plumbing leak. How the two are told apart is covered in the guide to hidden water leaks.
If the home will be closed for travel
A home that stands empty for weeks has its own short checklist, and it takes about half an hour on the day you leave.
On your return, run every tap for a few minutes before you drink from any of them. If the water from a villa tank smells or carries sediment, book the tank clean before anything else. The cleaning side of coming home is in reopening a home after summer travel.
- Close the small valves behind the washing machine and the dishwasher, and the main water valve as well if nobody will use the home. A flexible hose that bursts in an empty flat runs until somebody notices.
- Switch the water heaters off at their wall switches.
- Pour a jug of water into every floor drain and unused basin so the traps start full, then cover the floor drains.
- Decide what to do with the AC, and ask your landlord or building management if you are unsure. Many households leave it running at a high temperature setting and not switched off, because a closed, humid home with no air movement is where mould starts on walls, in wardrobes and on soft furnishings.
- If the fridge is being switched off, empty it and prop the door open. A closed fridge without power grows mould within days.
- Ask someone to walk through once a week if you can: run the taps for a minute, look at the ceilings and under the sinks, and check that the AC is still running.
After the summer
By the time the humidity drops, the home has been through its hardest months. This is the moment to find out what they cost, before the season of guests begins.
The AC again, and the ducts
Units that have run day and night for months have full filters, dusty coils and drain lines lined with slime. A second service now is what the six-monthly recommendation is for, and it is the service that prevents next summer's first breakdown. If a unit needed gas this year, ask why. Refrigerant is sealed inside the system and is not used up, so a unit that is low has a leak, and topping it up each year without finding the leak means paying for the same fault again and again.
Ducts are a separate question. We do not give a fixed interval for duct cleaning, because it depends on the dust around the home, on any renovation and on how hard the system runs. The technician looks at the vents and the return air path and then advises, and sometimes the advice is that it can wait. Dust or dark marks around the grilles, a stale smell at start-up and weaker airflow in one room are the signs, and the end of the long cooling season is when the question usually comes up. They are explained in how often AC ducts need cleaning.
Pests
Insects and rodents spend the hot months looking for water and shade, and a home has both. Floor-drain traps that dried out over a closed summer are the usual way large cockroaches arrive, and gaps around pipes and under doors let in the rest. Many homes book a preventive treatment every three to six months, with ground-floor homes, villas with gardens and buildings with shared bin rooms at the shorter end.
Our pest control service starts with an inspection of the affected areas and the likely entry points, and the guide to household pests in Abu Dhabi explains which pests you can manage yourself and which to hand over early.
Drains and appliances
Pour a bucket of water into every floor drain, sink and shower and watch how long it takes to clear. One slow drain is a local blockage. Several slow drains at once usually point to the main line and not to one sink. Kitchen drains in homes that cook a lot tend to need clearing about once a year, and it is better done before a season of hosting than in the middle of one. Whether a bottle of drain cleaner is worth trying first is answered in blocked drain or slow sink.
Then give the appliances ten minutes. Clean the washing machine's pump filter and wipe its door seal, pull the fridge forward with its plug out and vacuum the dust from the grille or coils behind it, and wash the cooker hood filters. Cleaning washing-machine filters and fridge coils every few months prevents many appliance call-outs.
The cooler months
From the end of the humid season until the heat returns, Abu Dhabi has weather that suits almost every job a home needs. Windows can stay open while paint and sealant cure, people can work on a roof or a facade in comfort, and the garden is growing. Put the large jobs and the outdoor jobs here.
- Painting. Paint cures properly with the windows open, and the smell clears in days. Fill the cracks and repair any water-stained ceiling first, and only once the leak that caused the stain has been fixed.
- Sealant and grout. If the silicone around a shower, a bath or the kitchen sink has gone black, lifted at an edge or split in a corner, water is getting behind it, and in a humid home it usually needs redoing every one to two years. New silicone needs a dry joint and several hours without water, which is far easier to arrange when the bathroom dries out on its own.
- Roof outlets, gutters and balcony drains. Clear the leaves, sand and bird nesting from every outlet you can reach from a safe, flat surface, and pour water down each one to confirm that it runs. Do it before the first rain, not after it. If reaching an outlet means an unguarded roof edge or anything taller than a step ladder, leave it to a tradesperson.
- Exterior washing. Facades, boundary walls, driveways and courtyards are usually washed once or twice a year. Our facade and pressure-washing work covers what can be reached safely from the ground or a low height, and the order for the outdoor jobs is in the villa outdoor season checklist.
- Garden resets. Cutting back, replanting and lawn repairs take hold in mild weather, with the irrigation timers turned down to match.
- The small-jobs visit. Sticking doors, loose handles, a shelf to fit, a curtain rail that has pulled out of the wall. Save them on a list and book them together, which is how most handyman customers do it. Which jobs are a handyman's and which need a licensed electrician or plumber is explained in what a handyman does.
After rain, wind and dust
Two kinds of weather arrive without much warning. After a dusty, windy spell, rinse the AC filters, brush the sand out of the sliding-door tracks before the rollers grind it in, clear the balcony and roof drain covers, sweep around the outdoor AC units and skim the pool before the dust sinks and stains. Leave washing the outdoor units' coils to the technician.
After heavy rain, walk the home with a torch the same evening. Look at the ceilings below the roof and below balconies, the tops of the window frames, the wall around the AC pipe entries and the threshold of any ground-floor door. Photograph every stain with the date. A stain that appears only after rain is a roof, facade or sealant matter and not a plumbing one, and that tells whoever repairs it where to look. If water has come through near a light fitting or a socket, switch that circuit off at the breaker and leave it off until an electrician has seen it.
The faults that do not wait for the calendar
A calendar is for wear. Faults are different, and these get worse by the hour.
| What you see | First thing to do | Who to call |
|---|---|---|
| Water from a pipe, fitting or ceiling | Close the nearest valve, or the main valve | Plumber |
| A breaker that trips again after one reset | Leave it off and unplug what is on that circuit | Electrician |
| A warm socket, scorch mark or burning smell | Switch that breaker off and stop using it | Electrician |
| No cooling in hot weather | Check filter and thermostat; switch off if it is noisy | AC technician |
| Water backing up from a floor drain | Stop using water in the home | Drain technician; in a tower, the management too |
| Locked out | Have proof that you live there ready | Locksmith |
| A smell of gas | Close the gas valve, open windows, touch no switches | Your gas supplier or building management |
Two things to find before anything goes wrong
Find your main water valve and your distribution board today, while nothing is wrong, and show everyone in the household where they are. The minutes spent looking for a valve are the minutes in which a leak does its damage. What to do next is set out step by step in leak or burst pipe: the first ten minutes.
For an urgent fault, phone us on +971 52 723 5299 instead of sending a message, because a call reaches a dispatcher straight away. Leaks, blocked drains, lockouts and cooling failures are given priority wherever the day's schedule allows. An urgent visit carries no emergency surcharge and no call-out fee. Our office hours are 8 AM – 8 PM, every day, and the locksmith also attends lockouts at night, arranged by phone.
A ten-minute monthly walk-round, and where to stop
Much of what a technician finds at a yearly visit could have been spotted months earlier by someone walking round with a torch. Once a month is enough, and none of it needs a tool.
- Under every sink: dry joints, no green or white crust on the fittings, no swelling in the cabinet base, no bulge or rust on the flexible hoses.
- Around every toilet: no water at the base, and no sound of the cistern refilling when nobody has flushed.
- Ceilings and the tops of walls: no new stain, bubble or crack since last month.
- Each AC unit: a clean filter, no drip, no new noise.
- The distribution board: closed, dry, nothing stored against it, and no breaker in the off position that you did not switch off yourself. If the board has an earth-leakage breaker with a test button, its label usually says to press the button from time to time. It should switch off at once and reset. If it does not, call an electrician.
- Doors, windows and locks: each one closes, latches and locks without force.
- In a villa: the tank lid closed and its vent screen whole, the pump not switching on and off when no tap is open, no wet patch in the garden where nothing is being watered, and the pool water clear to the bottom.
Where doing it yourself stops
Looking, rinsing filters, clearing a drain cover and tightening a loose handle are yours. The line is drawn where a mistake can hurt someone or flood a home. Do not open sockets, switches, light fittings or the inside of the distribution board. Do not add refrigerant or open an AC's casing beyond its filters. Do not dismantle pipework beyond the hand-unscrewed trap under a sink. Do not go onto a roof without a parapet or climb higher than a step ladder. Do not enter a water tank. And do not mix cleaning or pool chemicals, least of all bleach with an acid cleaner or with ammonia.
Anything past that line goes to a trade. If you rent, tell your landlord or the building management before you book work that alters the property, since some repairs need their agreement and some are theirs to arrange.
What it costs, and how to keep the yearly bill down
Four maintenance lines carry a figure on our price list: AC servicing at AED 129 a unit, a split-unit clean at AED 99 a unit, AC duct cleaning from AED 350 for a studio or one-bedroom apartment and from AED 750 for a villa, and pest control from AED 149 for a studio. Larger homes have starting prices on the pest control page, up to AED 229 for three bedrooms and from AED 299 for a villa. A repair visit has a starting price too: from AED 99 for a plumber, AED 99 for an electrician and AED 99 for an AC technician, which covers one specialist's first hour on site, with parts, gas and longer work quoted before the repair. Every other job in this guide is quoted by the task after a description and photos, because the cost depends on the fault, the parts and the access. The quote is free, an on-site inspection is free where the job has to be seen, every price includes VAT, and nothing is added for a Friday, a public holiday or a same-day visit.
Quoted work is paid online by card, from My bookings on this website once the price is confirmed. Jobs of AED 1,000 or more take a 30% advance by that link, and the balance is settled the same way when the work is done.
Three habits keep the yearly total down. Batch the small jobs into one visit instead of five. Send good photos, so the quote is right the first time and the technician arrives with the parts: how to get an accurate repair quote lists what to send for each trade. And keep to the intervals. A tank, a pool or an AC that is looked after on schedule takes less work each time than one that has been left.
If you would rather hand the whole year to one provider, read annual maintenance contract or pay per visit first. It shows how to work out whether a contract pays for a home like yours.
Common questions
Who pays, the landlord or the tenant?
That is set by your tenancy contract, and contracts differ. Read the maintenance clause, and ask the landlord or the agent in writing where it is unclear. What can be said in general is practical: report a fault as soon as you see it, with dated photos. A small leak reported in the first week is a very different conversation from a ruined cabinet reported six months later. Mention that the home is rented when you book, so that any approval is sorted out before the visit.
We have just moved in. Where do we start?
Start with the checks that are easiest while the rooms are still empty: the tank, the AC, the drains, the locks, the sockets and signs of pests. They are set out in the new-home maintenance checklist. Then join this calendar at whatever season you are in.
How long do these visits take?
As a guide from our service pages: a filter clean and gas check on one split unit takes 45 to 60 minutes, and servicing every unit in a villa is usually done in half a day. A standard villa tank takes two to four hours to drain, clean, disinfect and refill. A pest treatment in an apartment takes 30 to 60 minutes. A routine pool visit takes 45 to 90 minutes, a routine garden visit one to two hours, and a single small handyman task well under an hour. The technician confirms the time once the job has been seen.
Can maintenance be done on the same day as a cleaning visit?
Often, and it saves arranging access twice. Handyman visits are regularly coordinated with a cleaning visit when the scope and timing are confirmed in advance. The order matters: anything that makes dust or needs water switched off goes first, and the clean goes last. Re-siliconing a bathroom before a deep clean, clearing ducts before a post-renovation clean, and painting before a move-in clean are the usual pairings.
What records should I keep?
One note on your phone with the date of each service and what was found, plus the invoices and the tank inspection report. It answers the question every technician asks first, which is when the job was last done. It also helps at the end of a tenancy, when you may be asked to show that the home was looked after, and when a manufacturer's warranty asks for proof of servicing.
Booking a maintenance visit
Book on the website or in the IHR Dream app. Choose the service, describe the job and send photos. For anything that has to be seen first, ask for the free inspection. We confirm the scope, the parts and the price before the visit, and the technician checks the finished work with you before leaving.
You can move or cancel a visit free of charge up to 6 hours before it starts. The full list of what we repair and maintain is on the maintenance and repairs page. When your list is ready, book a visit.
Services in this article
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