Bedbug Control Kidbrooke

Why the Desk Chair Gets Them

A person sitting for hours in the same chair gives off the same warmth and breath that draws bedbugs to a bed. Upholstered office chairs have plenty of places to hide: the seam where the seat fabric meets the plastic shell, the underside of the seat, the gas-lift mechanism and the joints of the arms. Bites on the backs of the legs or the forearms, rather than the shoulders, are sometimes the first clue.

Turn the chair over and look along those seams and joints with a torch. Dark spotting, pale shed skins or the bugs themselves are what you are after. If you find them, stop moving the chair from room to room.

The Spare-Room Office

Many spare rooms double as an office with a sofa bed or a single bed for guests. That makes them a halfway house: someone works in there all day, someone sleeps in there now and then, and bags, boxes of paperwork and laptop cases come and go. The sofa bed mechanism has a lot of joints, and the paperwork is a lot of cardboard to hide in.

• Open the sofa bed out fully and check the folding frame and the mattress seams
• Check the desk drawers and the back edge of the desk where it touches the wall
• Look at the skirting behind the desk and around cable runs
• Keep laptop bags and work bags off the floor and check their seams

Our guide can bedbugs live in books, bags and backpacks covers the things that go in and out of the room every day.

Heat Treatment and Your Computer

Heat is often the neatest way to deal with an office and a bedroom at once, because it usually needs just one visit and kills the eggs too. The catch in a home office is equipment. Some electronics should come out of the room before it is heated, and we go through what you have with you rather than guess. Laptops, monitors, printers, chargers, any aerosol screen cleaner and printer cartridges are worth listing when you book.

Anything that comes out has to be checked and kept away from untreated rooms, or it simply carries them back in afterwards. Plan to work somewhere else for the day; you have the rooms back once they have cooled. Our heat treatment preparation guide has the wider list.

Chemical Treatment in a Working Home

Chemical treatment is shorter on the day, one to two hours a visit, and you can use the rooms again once they are dry. It needs two visits and sometimes three, about 10–14 days apart, so it means planning around a few mornings rather than one full day. The chair seams, the sofa, the bed and the skirtings are all treated. Kidbrooke Village has replaced the old Ferrier estate with new flats, and in a modern flat with neighbours on several sides a residual has the advantage of staying active at the edges. Our chemical treatment page explains the course, and the Greenwich borough page covers the rest of the area.

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