Bedbug Control Tottenham

Check It Outside, in Daylight

Look at every piece on the doorstep, the landing or the pavement before it comes in. Once it is in the bedroom, anything living in it has already arrived. Take a torch even in daylight, and an old bank card to run along seams.

• Beds. The joints where the side rails meet the head and foot, the slats and their brackets, and every screw hole.
• Mattresses. The piping round the edges, the handles, and the label. Look for dark spotting like felt-tip dots, pale shed skins, tiny white eggs.
• Sofas and armchairs. Lift every cushion, turn the whole thing over and look at the fabric stapled underneath.
• Drawers and wardrobes. Pull the drawers right out and check the runners and the corners inside the carcass.

Old Marks Are Not Always a Live Problem

Second-hand furniture sometimes shows old spotting from a problem long since dealt with. Faded, flat stains with nothing living near them are a different thing from fresh dark marks, skins and eggs. Our guide to dead and live evidence explains how to tell old from new. If you are not sure, leave the piece outside and decide later; a bed you did not take costs you nothing. Plenty of Tottenham households have furnished a whole flat this way without a single bug; the checking is what makes that work.

What to Do With Soft Things

Donated bedding, curtains, cushion covers and clothes go straight into a bag at the door, then into the washing machine on the hottest wash the label allows and a hot tumble dry. Tie the clean load in a fresh bag until it is needed. Things that cannot be washed, such as a stuffed headboard, are the ones to be most choosy about.

Cardboard boxes from a move or a donation are worth emptying outside and recycling rather than keeping. Bugs like the corrugated layers, and a stack of boxes under the bed is a gift to them.

If Something Got Through

If bites or bugs appear in the first weeks in your Tottenham flat, do not start dragging donated furniture out to the bins. Carrying it through a stairwell spreads bugs along the way and to the neighbours, and the item can almost always be treated where it is. Keep sleeping in your own bed, hot-wash the bedding, and ring us.

If you want to know what you are dealing with first, an inspection from £120 confirms it. Treatments start from £220, priced by rooms and by heat or chemical, and the figure is given on the phone. In a flat on a large estate chemical treatment is often the more affordable route; the Haringey page covers the rest of the borough.

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