Bedbug Heat Treatment Croydon

Drawing the Line Around the Treatment

A house is not a flat. There are stairs, a landing everyone crosses, a spare room, maybe a loft conversion or a box room used as a study, and a sofa downstairs that somebody retreated to when the biting started. Heat treats the rooms it is set up in and nothing else, so the boundary we draw on the phone matters more than anything that happens on the day.

We ask three things to set that boundary:

• Where has anyone slept since the first bite, including one night on the sofa or in the spare bed?
• Where have the bitten person’s clothes, bags and laundry been kept or put down?
• Which rooms share a wall, a floor or a door with the room where the signs are strongest?

If the answers stay inside two bedrooms, we quote for two bedrooms. If they spill onto the landing, into a teenager’s room and down to the living room, the quote covers those rooms too. Heating the obvious room and leaving the sofa is how a house ends up paying twice.

What the machines do and why the eggs die too is on the London heat treatment page for the full explanation. This page is about the size and shape of a house.

The Upstairs Only, or the Whole House

When the first floor is enough

Most houses we are asked about have the problem upstairs, in the bedrooms, and nowhere else. Nobody moved downstairs, the living room furniture is leather or wood, and nothing from the bedrooms has been stored below. In that case the first floor, landing included, is the sensible unit, and the ground floor carries on as normal apart from the day itself.

When it has to be everything

A whole-house treatment makes sense when people have been sleeping in different places, when a fabric sofa or armchair has been used as a bed, or when the signs are in a downstairs bedroom as well as upstairs. It costs more, but it closes the doors bedbugs would otherwise use to come back into the treated rooms.

Rooms nobody uses

Larger houses often have a guest room or a study that has barely been opened in months. These still need a look, because an empty bed can hold a quiet population. The Purley page deals with houses where several rooms sit unused, and whether they belong in the treatment.

One Day, Planned From the Top Down

A bigger house takes more equipment and more of the day than a single bedroom, but the aim is still one visit. Ask when you ring whether your layout can be covered in one day, and we will tell you plainly before you book.

1. Work from the top floor down when clearing the heat-sensitive items: aerosols, candles, medication, vinyl, plants and the electronics we name. Put them in the kitchen or a room outside the treatment, not on the landing.
2. Leave furniture, mattresses, clothes and books where they are. Emptying wardrobes onto the stairs spreads bedbugs to the one route every room shares.
3. Bag and hot-wash the bedding from every bed in the treated rooms, including the spare bed.
4. Walk the technician round on arrival and point out every place anyone has slept.
5. Take the household and the pets out for the day. Cats that roam the whole house need to be out of it.
6. Come back when we tell you the rooms have cooled. The beds can be slept in that night.

Storage beds, ottomans and chests of drawers are where houses hide the most. Before the day, read bedbugs in ottoman and storage beds so you know what to empty and what to leave in place.

Attached Houses and the Edges

A detached house has no neighbour on the other side of the bedroom wall. A semi or a terrace does. Heat leaves nothing behind once the rooms cool, so where a bedroom shares a party wall or a loft space with next door, we may put a light residual at the edges. If we do, we tell you where it is and when those surfaces can be touched, and you follow those instructions.

When Heat Is More Than a House Needs

If the signs are on one mattress in one room and nobody has moved, the course of visits on the chemical treatment page may be the more proportionate answer, and it costs less. We say so on the phone rather than quote for heat by default. If you are not sure what the marks are, or how far they reach, inspections start from £120 and settle the boundary before any money goes on treatment.

The Price for a House

Treatments start from £220. Heat costs more than chemical, and the figure rises with the number of rooms inside the boundary. Ring 0800 955 1018 with a room count and the answers to the three questions above, and you get the price on the phone before anything is booked. The Croydon bedbug control page covers what the household does to make one treatment enough.

← Bedbug Control Croydon · Bedbug Heat Treatment London, in full