Bedbug Control Belsize Park

Check Both Old Homes Before Anything Moves

The most useful half hour is spent before the van to Belsize Park is booked. Go over both current bedrooms, not just the one you think is at risk. Look at the mattress seams and label, the joints of each bed frame, the back of the headboard, the skirting beside the bed and the underside of any upholstered chair in the room.

Bites are an unreliable guide here. One partner may have been reacting while the other shows nothing, and it is common for neither to have noticed at all. What you are looking for is evidence: small dark spots, pale shed skins, eggs in seams and the insects themselves. A guide to reading cast skins is in what bedbug shed skins tell you.

Deciding Which Bed Comes With You

Most couples end up with a spare bed, a spare sofa and too many bedside tables. That choice is a chance to leave the riskiest items behind, but only if they are clean enough to sell or give away. If one of them has signs, do not pass it on and do not carry it out on the street untreated. Ask us first.

• Bring the furniture with the fewest joints and seams where it is a close call: a simple metal frame over an old divan with a torn base cover.
• Leave anything second-hand and unchecked until someone has looked at it.
• Keep each person’s bags and boxes labelled so that, if something turns up later, you know which household it came from.

If One Flat Has Them

Treat that flat before its contents are packed for Belsize Park. Packing shakes out every hiding place, and a mixed van load puts the clean household's things right beside the affected one. Heat treatment is usually a single visit, which helps when the moving date is close; chemical takes two or three visits about 10–14 days apart and needs longer. Treatments start from £220, and heat costs more than chemical.

Whatever washes goes through a hot wash and a hot tumble dry and then into fresh sealed bags that stay closed until they are at the new flat. Use new boxes rather than ones stored in the affected room.

The First Weeks in the New Flat

Unpack the bedroom last and check it as you go. For the first month, look at the seams of the mattress you kept every week or so. If anything appears, ring rather than moving the bed to another room to see if it helps. An inspection from £120 will say whether it is bedbugs and whether they came in with one household's belongings.

A lot of homes in Belsize Park are flats inside divided Victorian and Edwardian houses. If you are renting, tell the landlord or agent in writing as soon as you find signs, with the date. For more on treating a flat inside a shared house in Camden, see the borough page.

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