Common Elements Cleaning in Ontario

Three categories, and only one is the contract

Every scope conversation in a condominium runs through the same three terms. A board that can name them confidently will get better bids, because it can tell a bidder what to price.

That third row is where the disputes live. An owner assumes the corporation cleans their balcony; the corporation assumes the owner does; the contractor was never told either way. The declaration settles it, and it settles it differently in different buildings. Any bidder should be handed the relevant sections before they price the work.

Write the specification before you ask for prices

The most common procurement mistake a board makes is asking three companies to "quote for cleaning" and then comparing the numbers. Those three quotes will describe three different jobs, and the cheapest will usually be the one that scoped the least. A written specification fixes that at a stroke, and it does not need to be long. It needs to name:

• Each area, individually, including the ones people forget — mail and parcel room, stairwells, garage lift lobbies, the management office, exterior entrances.
• A frequency for each, with the corridor rotation described explicitly.
• The chute room and chute as separate items, with the deep-clean cycle named.
• Periodic work with intervals — floor maintenance, carpet, high-level dust, garage wash.
• Exclusions in writing — units, exclusive-use areas not assigned to the corporation, pool water, snow and ice, mechanical servicing.
• What is left behind after each visit — a signed log, and what it records.

Boards that do this consistently report the same thing: the price spread narrows dramatically, because everyone is finally quoting the same job.

Corridor rotation: the most useful thing you can record

In a mid-rise or a tower, corridors are cleaned on a rotation — a set of floors each visit so that every floor is covered within the week. This is correct practice. It is also completely invisible to a resident, who sees their own floor cleaned once a week and concludes that the building is being neglected.

"Our floor never gets done" is the most common complaint a condo board hears about cleaning, and it is usually wrong. The fix is not more cleaning; it is a record. A log that captures which floors were covered on which date lets a manager answer the complaint in ten seconds with a document instead of a reassurance. It also surfaces the case where the complaint is right — where a rotation quietly stopped reaching the top three floors because the crew ran out of time.

The chute room decides the complaint volume

Ask a property manager which space generates the most resident complaints and it will not be the lobby. Residue in a garbage chute is an odour source, a pest attractant and a fire-load consideration, and the chute is almost always under-specified — folded into a "garbage room" line and cleaned as though it were a floor.

Three separate items belong in the specification:

1. The garbage room itself, daily — floors, bin surrounds, the tri-sorter housing, spillage.
2. The chute intake on each floor, on a set frequency — the door, the handle and the immediate surround, which is a high-touch surface most cleaning specifications never mention.
3. The chute deep clean and deodorising cycle, scheduled and named, typically once or twice a year depending on building size and how the tri-sorter is used.

Priced separately, a board can see the cost and decide the frequency. Bundled, it is the first thing quietly dropped when a contractor's margin tightens.

What belongs to other trades

A condominium has an unusual number of adjacent specialists operating on one property, and a cleaning contract should be explicit about which of them it is not:

• Pool and whirlpool water. Chemistry, testing, dosing and the operating record are the operator's duty under Ontario's public pool and public spa regulations, inspected by the local public health unit. Cleaning covers deck, surrounds, furniture and change rooms.
• Snow, ice, plowing and salting. A separate winter trade. The cleaner owns the interior consequence — matting, winter floor routine, tracked-in slush.
• Power sweeping the garage. Pressure washing and ride-on sweeping are different services with different equipment; a contractor offering both in the same breath is usually subcontracting one without saying so.
• Elevators, HVAC and mechanical plant. Cleaned around, never serviced.
• Pest treatment. Licensed work. A cleaner should remove harbourage and report what they see, not bait or spray.

Buying it: board, manager and the budget year

The corporation contracts; in practice the property manager runs the tender and the board approves it. Two consequences follow that are easy to miss.

First, timing. Cleaning is an operating expense rather than a reserve-fund item, so a change generally wants to align with the budget year. Starting the process a few months ahead of the budget gives room to write a specification, receive comparable bids and present properly, rather than asking a board to approve something in a hurry.

Second, evidence. A board is accountable to owners who all believe their own floor is the neglected one, and who see the cleaning line in the budget every year. A year of completed cleaning records changes that conversation entirely: at tender time it shows what was actually delivered rather than what was specified, and at an AGM it replaces an argument with a document.

A short due-diligence list

Before a board signs, six things are worth confirming in writing:

1. The contractor has read the relevant sections of the declaration and scoped to them.
2. Units are excluded, unconditionally.
3. Exclusive-use areas are either named as in scope or named as out — never left silent.
4. Pool water, snow and mechanical servicing are named as out of scope.
5. The corridor rotation is described, and the log records which floors were done.
6. Insurance, WSIB and screening certificates are current and filed.

None of that is exotic. It is simply the difference between a contract the board can manage and one it will be arguing about at every meeting for a year.

Frequently asked questions

What exactly are the common elements?

Everything in the property that is not a unit. In a typical GTA condominium that means the lobby and vestibule, corridors, elevator cabs and door tracks, stairwells and fire exits, the garbage room, chute and tri-sorter, amenity rooms such as the party room, gym, theatre and guest suite, the pool and change-room area, the underground garage, mail and parcel room, management office and the exterior entrances. It is the scope of most condo cleaning contracts, and it is the word the declaration uses.

Who is responsible for cleaning balconies and parking spaces?

That depends entirely on the declaration, and this is the question most cleaning quotes get wrong. Balconies, patios, parking spaces and lockers are usually exclusive-use common elements — common elements that only one unit may use. Whether the corporation or the owner is responsible for cleaning and maintaining them is set by the corporation's declaration, by-laws and rules, and it genuinely differs between buildings. The practical instruction to any bidder should be: read the declaration and scope to what it says, not to what the last contractor assumed.

Should a cleaning contractor ever go inside a unit?

No. A unit belongs to its owner and has nothing to do with the corporation's cleaning contract. The one legitimate exception is cleaning the common-element side of a problem that started in a unit — a corridor after a flood, a lift lobby after a move — on the corporation's instruction. That should be recorded separately from the routine work, because the board may be able to charge it back depending on the declaration.

How often should corridors be cleaned in a tower?

On a rotation rather than all at once. A workable pattern is a set of floors each visit so that every floor is covered within the week, with high-traffic floors — those near amenities, the garage lobby or the chute room on a busy level — done more often. The rotation is correct practice and it is completely invisible to a resident on floor 14, which is why recording which floors were covered on which date matters more than the frequency itself.

Why does the garbage chute need its own line in the contract?

Because it generates more resident complaints than anything else in the building and it is almost always under-specified. Residue in a chute is an odour source, a pest attractant and a fire-load question, and it needs a scheduled deep clean and deodorising cycle that is different work from wiping down the garbage room. Quoting it as a named item rather than folding it into 'garbage room' lets a board see what it is buying and compare two bids honestly.

Who is responsible for the pool water?

The operator, not the cleaner. Chemistry, testing, dosing and the operating records for a pool or whirlpool are the operator's duty under Ontario's public pool and public spa regulations, and the local public health unit inspects against them. A cleaning contract should cover the deck, surrounds, furniture and change rooms. A company offering to fold water testing into a janitorial contract is not one to hand a pool to.

Should the cleaning contract include snow clearing?

It usually should not, and boards should be careful here because it is the item most often assumed rather than agreed. Snow removal, plowing, salting and ice management are a separate winter trade with their own equipment, call-out obligations and liability profile. What a cleaning contractor should own is the interior consequence — a proper multi-stage entrance matting system, a tightened winter floor routine, and prompt attention to tracked-in slush and salt, which is where most winter slips inside a building actually happen.

When should a board go out to tender?

Cleaning is an operating expense rather than a reserve-fund item, so a change generally wants to align with the budget year rather than land mid-cycle. Practically that means starting the process a few months before the budget is set, writing the specification first, and putting every bidder on the same document. Two quotes twenty per cent apart are almost never for the same work, and the only reliable way to find that out is to have written the scope yourself.

Note: This guide is for informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Your corporation's declaration, by-laws and rules govern what the common elements are and who is responsible for them, and they take precedence over anything described here. The Condominium Act, 1998 and guidance from the Condominium Authority of Ontario are the primary sources; consult the corporation's own advisors before acting on any scope question.