Bedbug Control Angel

What a Platform Gives Them

An ordinary bed frame has a handful of joints. A built platform has dozens: boards laid side by side with a gap between each, bearers screwed into the wall, a handrail, the treads and strings of a ladder, and often a line of cupboards or open shelving underneath. Every one of those seams is dark, dry and a short walk from where someone sleeps.

Many platform beds have no frame at all. The mattress lies straight on the boards, so the bugs that would normally hide in a base move into the cracks between planks and the edge where the deck meets the wall. That is the first place to look in an Angel flat with this layout, before the mattress itself.

Checking Up There Before You Ring

• Lift the mattress and run a torch along every gap between the deck boards
• Look where the platform is fixed to the wall and along any skirting it hides
• Check the underside of the handrail and the joints at the top of the ladder
• Pull a few things out of the storage below and look at the back corners
• Note any dark spotting on the ceiling or wall close to the pillow end

Photos help. If you are not sure whether the marks are bedbugs, an inspection from £120 confirms it before a treatment is booked, and tells us how far along the platform they have gone.

Heat and Chemical on a Raised Deck

With heat treatment, warm air rises and a deck close to the ceiling heats readily. The harder part is usually below: a packed storage bay under the platform can stay cool in its far corners. We aim fans into that space and use the thermal camera on the underside of the boards until it has come up. Heat usually needs one visit and deals with eggs as well.

With chemical treatment, the residual goes into the board gaps, the wall fixings, the ladder joints and the skirting. It is careful, close work on a deck, and like any chemical job it usually means two or three visits about 10–14 days apart because eggs are not reliably killed. Heat costs more than chemical; both start from £220, and the figure for your flat is given on the phone.

Getting the Flat Ready

1. Empty the storage under the platform. Anything washable goes through a hot wash and hot dryer and is then bagged. Anything that cannot be washed gets bagged and kept aside for us to look at.
2. Strip the bed on the deck. Bag the bedding at the top and carry it down sealed, so nothing drops through the boards on the way.
3. Leave the platform built. Taking it apart scatters bugs around the room and gains nothing; we treat it standing.
4. Clear the floor below. Shoes, laundry and boxes off the floor so the ladder, the uprights and the skirting can be reached.

In a small flat there may be nowhere to put everything that comes out. The Islington page deals with preparing a compact home when there is no spare room to move things into.

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