Why a Shared House Is Different From Home
At home you knew where every bed came from. In a shared house the mattress, the sofa and the wardrobe have usually been through several tenants, and nobody living there now can tell you what happened before them. Rooms turn over at different times, so a new person with bags and boxes arrives every few months.
None of that means the house has bedbugs. It means you are the only person who will check your own room, and the best moment to do it is before your things are in it.
The Moving-Day Check
Leave your bags in the hall or the car and go into the empty room with a torch. You are looking for small dark spots, pale shed skins and the insects themselves.
- Lift the mattress. Run the torch along the piping on all four edges, under any label and along the handle stitching.
- Look at the bed frame. Joints, screw heads, slats and the underside of a divan base are where they sit in the day.
- Check the headboard. If it is fixed to the wall, look behind it and along its top edge.
- Open the furniture. Drawer runners and the back corners of a wardrobe are worth a look.
- Take photos. Whatever you find, or do not find, a dated picture is useful later.
If you are not sure what you are looking at, our guide to early signs of bedbugs shows what each one looks like.
If You Find Something
Do not move in around it. Keep your belongings out of the room, tell the landlord or agent in writing that day and attach the photos. Who arranges and pays for treatment depends on the tenancy and on when the problem started, and a report made before you unpacked makes that far easier to settle. We are pest controllers, not legal advisers, so for the tenancy side ask the agent or a housing adviser.
If the landlord wants to know for certain, an inspection starts at £120 and confirms it before anyone spends money on treatment. Treatments start from £220, with the figure depending on how many rooms are involved and whether it is heat or chemical.
Going Home at Weekends
The other half of this job is protecting the house you left. If you come back to your parents in Romford with a bag of washing, that bag is how bedbugs would travel. Put washing straight into the machine on a hot cycle rather than onto your old bed, and keep the bag itself off the bedroom floor.
If your family home does end up with them, the Havering page covers dealing with them in a family house and changing the routines that brought them in.
Bedbug Control Romford — Questions
Should I bring my own mattress to a shared house?
You can, and plenty of people do. It helps with the mattress but not with the frame, the headboard or the rest of the room, so check those anyway.
The landlord says the room was cleaned. Is that enough?
Cleaning and treating are different things. A clean room can still have bedbugs in the frame joints, so do your own check before you unpack.
Can I treat the room myself with a spray?
Shop sprays tend to scatter bedbugs into the next room rather than finish them. In a shared house that means your housemates' rooms, so report it instead.
I have bites but nobody else in the house does. Could it still be bedbugs?
Yes. People react differently and some do not react at all. A pharmacist or GP can help with the skin, and call 999 if anyone shows signs of a severe allergic reaction.
How much does treatment for one room cost?
Treatments start from £220. The final figure depends on the number of rooms and whether it is heat or chemical, and you hear it on the phone before anything is booked.
Elsewhere in Havering
The other areas in the borough, each written around a different situation.
Bedbug Advice for Romford
Picked for this page: the guides that go further on what matters for Romford.
HMOs and Serviced Apartments
Getting into every unit at once is the hard half of block work. How it is actually scheduled.
Read more →
The Early Signs, and the Timeline
Week one to month six. What is detectable when, and why 'early' is mostly invisible.
Read more →
Fabric Wardrobes and Clothes Rails
Canvas wardrobes, open rails and the clothes pile by the bed: checking and treating.
Read more →
Only a Hotel Problem?
Where bedbugs really turn up, why homes are where they settle, and what follows.
Read more →Bedbug Treatments in Havering
Every service has its own page for Havering: heat, chemical, hotels, commercial premises and inspections.
Covering Romford
Tell Us About the Property
Tell us about the room and what you found, and we will say whether it needs an inspection or treatment.