Bedbug Heat Treatment Kingston

Why a Family House Is Planned as One Job

Treat one bedroom and leave the rest, and the household carries on moving between them. A pillow goes from the bunk room to the big bed, a duvet gets dragged downstairs for a film, a school bag sits on one bed and then another. If a single room is cleared while its neighbours still hold a few bugs, the problem simply walks back in.

So in a house in Surbiton or New Malden where more than one person has bites, we plan the bedrooms as a set. Heat suits that, because it deals with eggs as well as the adults and does it in one visit, so there is no fortnight in which some rooms are finished and others are waiting. For how the machines and the camera actually work, the London heat treatment page has the full explanation.

If only one person is being bitten, do not assume the others are clear. Some people barely react. Our guide Do Bedbugs Prefer Some People? explains why the bites can land on one child while the bugs are spread around.

The Layout of a Typical Kingston Semi or Terrace

Many homes in the borough are Victorian terraces or interwar semis, and upstairs they tend to follow the same pattern: two good-sized bedrooms, a smaller third room, a box room over the stairs, a bathroom and a landing tying them together. Some have a loft room added later. That shape helps us, because the rooms sit close together and the landing can be warmed with them.

• The main bedroom is often where the evidence is heaviest, because it is where children end up at night.
• The children’s rooms have the most clutter: bunks, toy boxes, beanbags, books under the bed. Heat reaches into all of it as long as air can get through.
• The box room is easy to forget. If it is a study, a nursery or a spare bed, it goes on the plan.
• A loft room reached by its own stair is included if anyone sleeps there or if bedding is stored up there.

Preparing Several Bedrooms in the Week Before

One room is manageable in an evening. Four rooms with children’s belongings in them is more work, so start a few days ahead and take it a room at a time. We send the list of what must come out before heat, and in a family house it usually means the bathroom cabinet, hair products and deodorants on the dressing table, candles, a fish tank, any plants on the windowsills and anything like a games console that the list mentions.

Leave beds, wardrobes and drawers where they are. It is tempting to drag a bed into the landing to make space or stack mattresses in one room, but that is how bugs end up in a room that had none; our guide on moving furniture between rooms sets out why. For bags, labels and where to keep them, see how to bag and store belongings.

The Day Itself With Children and Pets

1. Drop the children at school or plan a day out. Take what you need for the day in a bag that was packed from a room we are not treating.
2. Cats, dogs and small animals leave the house. A hamster cage in a bedroom goes with them.
3. We walk every bedroom with whoever is at home, confirm the plan and set up the equipment.
4. The rooms are brought up together, held, and checked with the thermal camera until the slowest corners have caught up.
5. We ring when the upstairs is cooling. Once it has cooled, the family can come back and sleep in their own beds that night.

Please do not arrange for the family to stay with relatives for a few nights beforehand. Sleeping elsewhere usually spreads bedbugs to the other house and does nothing to help the treatment.

What About the Rooms Downstairs?

Most of the time the ground floor stays off the plan. The exception is a sofa someone sleeps on, or a living room turned into a bedroom. If there is anything like that, tell us on the phone and we will add it to the heat plan or look at it on the day.

Paying for a Whole Upstairs

Treatments start from £220. Heat for several bedrooms costs more than that, and heat costs more than chemical, because it is a full day with the equipment. Ring 0800 955 1018, tell us how many bedrooms there are and which ones have signs, and we give you the figure on the phone before anything is booked. Where it really is one bed caught early, the Kingston chemical treatment page may be the better route. The rest of what we do in the borough is on the Kingston bedbug control page.

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