How Much Does Flea Treatment Cost in Greenwich?

The Published Price

Why the Additional Room Is So Much Cheaper

The first room carries the assessment and the set-up. After that, each extra room is £60 - the lowest additional-room figure on this site, and considerably below the bed bug rate of £120.

The reason is that flea work is broadly the same job in every room. Treatment goes to the floor perimeters, beneath the furniture and the areas the animal uses most, and those areas are found in the same way in a hallway as in a bedroom. There is no room-by-room search of the kind bed bug work requires, so the marginal cost of the next room is genuinely small and the price reflects it.

Which is worth knowing before you book, because it removes a temptation. People sometimes try to keep the cost down by treating one room and hoping. With fleas that rarely works - the animal moves through the property and so does the infestation - and the saving is small enough that it is usually not worth the risk of doing it twice.

What You Are Actually Buying

Not "flea spray for the carpet". What the price covers is treatment applied where the immature stages actually are, which is not where most people would guess.

Adult fleas feed on the pet, but the eggs do not stay there. They fall off wherever the animal goes - the carpet, the sofa, the bed, the car - and hatch into larvae that move away from light, down into the pile, into the gaps between floorboards, along the edges of the room and underneath the furniture. The larvae then spin cocoons, and inside the cocoon the pupa waits.

So the edges and the under-furniture areas matter more than the middle of the floor, and a treatment that concentrates on the open carpet is treating the part of the room the fleas are least interested in.

The Part That Costs Nothing and Decides Everything

Flea pupae are physically protected inside their cocoons and are far less affected by treatment than adults or larvae. They emerge in response to warmth, carbon dioxide and - above all - the vibration of something walking past.

That single fact produces the aftercare instructions, and they are the opposite of what most people expect:

1. Vacuum thoroughly before the visit, including the edges and under the furniture, then empty the vacuum into an outside bin straight away.
2. Keep walking on the treated floors afterwards. Normal foot traffic is what triggers the remaining pupae to hatch, and hatching is what brings them into contact with the treatment.
3. Do not clean the treated floors for two weeks. No mopping, no wet cleaning, no vacuuming. Cleaning removes the treatment before it has done the job it was put down to do.
4. Expect to see some fleas after the treatment. That is pupae hatching into a treated floor. It is the process working, not failing.

The Cost You Cannot Avoid: the Animal

Veterinary treatment for the pet is a separate cost and neither substitutes for the other. If the animal is still carrying adults, the property will simply be re-seeded after our visit, and you will have paid for a treatment that was undone by Wednesday.

Wash the pet's bedding on the hottest wash the fabric allows as part of the same exercise. That is free and it removes a reservoir the treatment would otherwise have to deal with.

Fleas With No Pet in the Property

It happens regularly and it is the same price. The usual explanation is a previous occupant's animal, with pupae sitting dormant since the property emptied. The other is animal access to a subfloor, a garage, a shed or the space beneath a decked area.

If you have taken on a property and started being bitten within days, say so at the enquiry. It tells us which rooms to prioritise and it is usually a smaller job than people fear.

How Many Rooms Will I Be Charged For?

The rooms that need treating, confirmed on site. In practice that is usually the rooms the animal has had the run of. Tell us at the enquiry how many rooms the pet uses, whether the floors are carpeted, and whether anyone is being bitten in a room the animal does not go into - that last answer occasionally changes the count.

The Arithmetic for a Landlord Between Tenancies

Fleas between tenancies are one of the most predictable problems in rented property and one of the easiest to get wrong, so the numbers are worth setting out.

The failure mode is this: a property is treated after the outgoing tenant leaves and then stands empty for several weeks. Nothing walks on the floors, so nothing triggers the remaining pupae. They wait. The incoming tenant moves in, walks about, and is bitten within days - and you now have a complaint, a second treatment and a tenant who does not trust the property.

The version that works costs the same:

1. Vacuum thoroughly before the visit, edges and under furniture included.
2. Treat the rooms that need it.
3. Make sure the floors are walked on during the following fortnight - a viewing, an inventory clerk, a contractor, anybody. Footfall is what brings the pupae out into the treatment.
4. Do not have the property cleaned during that fortnight. A pre-tenancy clean two days after a flea treatment removes the treatment.

Same price, entirely different outcome, and the difference is scheduling rather than money.