How to Get Rid of Bed Bugs in a Greenwich Property

The Two Decisions That Cost the Most Money

Both are made in the first week, before anybody is called, and both feel completely reasonable at the time.

Moving to another bed

The instinct is to escape the bites. The effect is to take the problem with you. Bed bugs follow the sleeper, so a fortnight on the sofa turns one room of work into two - and the sofa is considerably harder to treat than a bed.

Keep sleeping in the same bed unless we have told you otherwise. It is the single most counter-intuitive instruction in this trade and it is the one that saves the most money.

Throwing the mattress out

A mattress on the landing does not remove an infestation that has already spread into the frame, the base and the bedside table. It removes the thing that told you where the bugs were, risks distributing them through the property on the way out, and leaves you paying for a mattress and a treatment.

If a mattress genuinely needs replacing, do it after the treatment, not before.

The Third Mistake: Spraying It Yourself

Retail insecticide around a bed kills the insects it touches and disperses the rest into the room. One harbourage becomes several, in places that are harder to reach, and the professional treatment that follows is a bigger job than it needed to be.

If you have already sprayed, say so. It does not change what we will do, but it changes where we look.

What to Do Before the Visit

1. Strip the bedding and wash it on the hottest wash the fabric allows, then tumble dry it. Bag it on the way to the machine rather than carrying it loose through the house.
2. Clear the floor around the bed and remove items from underneath, so the perimeter and the base can actually be reached.
3. Do not move mattresses, bedding or furniture into another room. Keep everything in the affected room. This is the single most important preparation instruction.
4. Do not apply any retail insecticide in the days before the visit.
5. Keep sleeping in the same bed unless told otherwise.

What Happens on the Day

The visit starts with an inspection rather than a treatment, and that inspection is what establishes the room count the price is based on.

Beds are dismantled to the extent needed to see the joints. Mattresses and bases are turned and the seams, folds and labels checked. Headboards come off the wall. Bedside furniture is pulled out and drawers removed. Curtain hems, skirting joints and the carpet perimeter are checked, and in an established infestation so are sockets, switch plates and picture frames.

Treatment is then applied to the harbourages that were found, rather than broadcast across the room. That distinction is the whole job: targeted application to where the insects actually are, not a general spray of a bedroom.

Why There Is a Second Visit

Eggs are considerably more resistant than the insects that laid them. A treatment that dealt with every live insect in the property on the day still leaves whatever is in the eggs, and they hatch afterwards.

So a follow-up is a normal part of a bed bug programme, timed for what hatches after the first treatment. It is not a sign that something went wrong, and a quote that covers a single visit is not comparable with one that includes it.

What to Expect Afterwards

• Some continued activity is normal. Bites may continue for a period after the first treatment. What matters is the trend.
• Do not start moving furniture between rooms. The treatment is where it was put; redistributing your belongings undoes it.
• Do not deep clean the treated areas until we tell you it is fine to.
• Keep sleeping in the same bed. Still.
• Tell us if anything changes - a new room affected, activity somewhere unexpected. That is information, not a complaint.

In a Block or a Converted House

Bed bugs can move between flats through service voids and shared walls, and a treatment that stops at one front door can be undone from next door.

The signal is activity returning in a treated room with no travel and no second-hand furniture to explain it. Where that happens we will say so, because the right answer at that point involves the freeholder or the managing agent rather than a third treatment of the same flat.

How Long the Whole Thing Takes

Longer than people hope and shorter than they fear. The shape of it is: inspection and first treatment, a period during which activity should fall, a follow-up timed for the eggs, and then a period to confirm it has held.

What extends it is almost always one of three things - somebody moved rooms, retail insecticide dispersed the harbourage, or the source is a neighbouring flat. The first two are avoidable for nothing.

If You Are a Tenant

Bed bugs in rented property get reported late, and the reason is almost never the bed bugs.

Report it in writing, early, with photographs of what you found. Bed bugs are not evidence of how a home is kept - they travel on luggage and second-hand furniture and turn up in spotless properties routinely - and waiting because you are worried about being blamed is what turns one room into three.

Two things worth knowing:

• Do not start treating it yourself with retail products. Beyond making the eventual job harder, it can complicate the position over who deals with what.
• If you live in a block and a neighbour has the same problem, say so in writing too. That is the point at which it becomes a building matter rather than a flat one, and it needs the freeholder or managing agent.

For landlords and agents, room-based pricing produces a defensible figure rather than an estimate that moves, and the room count is confirmed at the inspection.