When a Visitor Brings Bedbugs Into Your Home: Bexley

Guests bring bags, and bags are how bedbugs travel between homes. The visitor almost never knows: many people do not react to bites at all, so they can live with a small problem for months without noticing. That is worth remembering before the conversation starts.

How You Know It Came With the Visit

Often you do not know for certain. The pattern that points to a visitor is signs that begin in the room they slept in, a week or two after the stay, in a house that had none before. Look at the guest bed first: the seams and piping of the mattress, the joints of the frame and the back of the headboard. Small dark spots, pale shed skins or live bugs there tell you where to start.

If you have only bites and nothing else, an inspection confirms whether it really is bedbugs before anyone is blamed or anything is paid for.

Raising It With the Guest

The reason to tell them is practical. If they have bedbugs at home, they will keep having them, and they may bring them back next time. Put it as information, not an accusation.

• Say what you found and where, and that it started after the stay.
• Mention that plenty of people get no reaction and never notice.
• Suggest they check their own bed seams and frame.
• Keep the next visit on hold until both homes are clear.

If they are embarrassed, the calm version of the facts helps: bedbugs are about luggage and travel, not about cleanliness.

Dealing With the Guest Room

A guest room has one advantage: usually nobody sleeps there. It also has a problem, because with no one to feed on, bedbugs may go looking for the nearest occupied bedroom. So do not wait for them to go away on their own.

1. Keep the door shut and stop using the room for storage or for anyone else to sleep in.
2. Bag the bedding in the room and take it straight to a hot wash.
3. Leave the mattress and bed frame where they are rather than taking them downstairs.
4. Check the beds in the neighbouring bedrooms, especially the one nearest the guest room door.
5. Ring us to arrange treatment of the guest room, and any other room showing signs.

An empty room that still holds them is its own subject; the Sidcup page covers the spare room nobody sleeps in.

Heat or Chemical for a Guest Room

Heat raises the room to a temperature bedbugs cannot survive, kills the eggs, and is usually one visit. For a guest room that is often attractive, because nobody has to be kept out of their own bed and it can be finished in a day. Heat-sensitive items come out first, and it costs more.

Chemical treatment works well on a single contained room and costs less, but it needs two or sometimes three visits, 10 to 14 days apart, because it does not reliably kill eggs. It also works best when someone sleeps in the bed between visits to draw the bugs across the residue, which an empty guest room does not provide. We will talk that through when you ring. Treatments start at £220, and the heat treatment page describes the day.

The Next Visit

Once both homes are treated, visits can carry on as normal. It is reasonable to ask the guest to keep their bag on a hard floor or a rack rather than the bed for a while. Our guide to unpacking after a holiday has the same habits for your own travel.

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