Bedbug Control Sidcup

How They Get Into a Room Nobody Sleeps In

A spare room is rarely empty. It holds the suitcases after a holiday, the bags of clothes waiting for the charity shop, the furniture someone gave you, and whoever stayed over last. Each of those can bring bedbugs in, and after a guest leaves nobody is in the bed to notice the bites.

If it was a visitor, our guide on when a visitor brings bedbugs covers raising it with them. If it was luggage, see unpacking after a holiday.

Why Leaving It Empty Does Not Fix It

Bedbugs can go a long time between feeds, so closing the door on the room and waiting is not a plan. What does happen is that they start looking for a host. In a house, that means the room next door, the landing, or the sofa where someone naps in the afternoon.

So an unused room is not only a problem in itself. It is a store that keeps feeding the rest of the house, a few at a time, for as long as it is left alone.

Checking the Spare Room Properly

Because nobody has been bitten in there, you are looking for what they leave rather than what they do:

• Dark spotting along the mattress piping and under the label
• Pale shed skins in the corners of a divan base or along the slats
• Spotting on the screw heads and joints of the bed frame
• Anything similar along the seams of stored bags or folded bedding
• The same signs on the skirting nearest the bed

If you find something you cannot identify, keep it in a sealed bag or photograph it. An inspection starts at £120 and tells you whether it is bedbugs before anything is treated.

Treating a Guest Room

A spare room in Sidcup is often the easiest room in the house to treat, because nobody has to be moved out of it. The catch is what is stored there. For chemical treatment the floor has to be cleared and the bedding washed, which can mean sorting years of boxes first. For heat, most contents can stay, apart from the heat-sensitive list we send you.

Either way, do not carry the stored bags into another room to make space. Leave them where they are and ask us what to do with them.

It is also worth checking the bedroom that shares a wall with the spare room, and the one whose door faces it across the landing. If bedbugs have been in an unused room for a while, those are the first places they go looking. Tell us what you find in each when you ring about the house in Sidcup, and we will say whether one room needs treating or more. The wider picture for family homes across the borough is on the Bexley page.

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