How to Get Rid of Fleas in a Greenwich Property

Two Jobs, and Neither Replaces the Other

The vet treats the animal. We treat the property. Both are needed and doing one without the other wastes the money spent on it.

If the pet is still carrying adults, the property gets re-seeded within days of our visit. If the property is untreated, the animal gets reinfested from the carpet as fast as the vet's treatment clears it. People often do one, see it fail, and conclude that the thing they paid for did not work - when the problem was that only half the job was done.

Before the Visit

1. Vacuum thoroughly - including the edges of every room, under the furniture, and beneath anything that has not moved in a while. This does two things: it removes debris the larvae feed on, and the vibration encourages pupae to emerge, which puts them where the treatment can reach them.
2. Empty the vacuum into an outside bin straight away.
3. Wash the pet's bedding on the hottest wash the fabric allows.
4. Clear the floor so the perimeter and the space under furniture can actually be reached.
5. Arrange the animal's own treatment with the vet.

What Happens on the Visit

Treatment is applied to the floor areas, the perimeter of each affected room, beneath the furniture where larvae shelter, and the areas the pet uses most.

The emphasis on edges and under-furniture is deliberate and it is the part people find surprising. The middle of an open floor is where a vacuum cleaner goes regularly and where light reaches; the larvae are at the margins, in the pile, and in the gaps between boards. Treating the visible carpet and not the perimeter is treating the part of the room the fleas are least interested in.

The Aftercare, Which Is the Opposite of the Instinct

These three instructions do more for the outcome than anything else in this article, and every one of them feels wrong.

Keep walking on the treated floors

Flea pupae sit protected inside a cocoon and are far less affected by treatment than any other stage. What brings them out is warmth, carbon dioxide and vibration - the footfall of something passing. Hatching is what puts them into contact with the treatment.

A room that is shut up and avoided is a room where pupae sit and wait. Normal foot traffic is doing the work.

Do not clean the treated floors for two weeks

No mopping, no wet cleaning, no vacuuming. Cleaning removes the treatment before it has dealt with the pupae that are still to hatch. Two weeks of leaving it alone is the single most common instruction people break, and breaking it is the single most common reason a treatment underperforms.

Expect to see fleas afterwards

That is pupae hatching into a treated floor, which is the process working rather than failing. What matters is whether the numbers are falling.

The Empty Property Problem

This catches out landlords and agents constantly and it is entirely avoidable.

A property is treated between tenancies and then stands empty for weeks. Nothing walks on the floors, so nothing triggers the remaining pupae. They wait. The new tenant moves in, walks about, and is bitten within days - and you have a complaint, a second treatment and a tenant who does not trust the property.

The fix costs nothing: make sure the floors are walked on during the fortnight after treatment. A viewing, an inventory clerk, a contractor, anybody. And do not have the property cleaned during that fortnight, because a pre-tenancy clean two days after a flea treatment removes the treatment.

What Does Not Work

• Treating the pet alone. Most of the infestation is in the property.
• Flea bombs and foggers. They deposit on horizontal open surfaces and do not reach under furniture, into the carpet perimeter or between floorboards - which is where the larvae are.
• Vacuuming as a strategy. Valuable as preparation, and it does not clear a population on its own.
• Waiting them out. The pupal stage means an untreated property can stay viable considerably longer than people assume.

Do Not Forget the Car and the Shed

If the animal travels in the car or sleeps in a garage, shed or utility room, those are part of the property as far as fleas are concerned. A treated house and an untreated dog bed in the garage is a common reason a problem reappears a month later.

Tell us at the survey where the animal actually goes, rather than where it is supposed to go.

How Long It Takes

The treatment is a single visit in most cases. What takes time is the pupal hatch working through, which is why the two-week aftercare window exists and why some continued activity during it is normal.

If numbers are not falling after that period, contact us. That is a different conversation - usually an untreated animal, an untreated area such as the car or the shed, or floors that were cleaned too soon.

Multi-Pet Households

Two additional things matter when there is more than one animal, and both are easy to miss.

Every animal needs treating, at the same time. One treated dog and one untreated cat is an untreated household as far as the carpet is concerned - the untreated animal re-seeds the floor continuously and the property treatment cannot outrun it.

The room count is usually larger. More animals means more places they sleep, and the honest count is where they actually go rather than where they are supposed to. A cat that sleeps on a bed upstairs and a dog that sleeps in the kitchen are two separate areas to treat, plus the routes between them.

Tell us at the survey how many animals there are, what each of them is, and where each one sleeps. It sounds like a lot of detail for a flea treatment and it is what determines whether the job holds.