Commercial Bedbug Treatment Lewisham

One Message, Several Units

The report usually arrives as a text or an email from one tenant, and the natural response is to deal with that room or flat and move on. In a building where the units share floors, stairs, a kitchen or a bathroom, that is the response most likely to cost you twice. The unit that reported it is simply the one where somebody noticed.

So the first decision is not heat or chemical. It is how many units to look at. The London commercial treatment page has the full explanation of how we handle multi-occupied buildings; this page is about the decision a landlord faces in the first few days.

Which Units to Look At

Not every room in the building needs inspecting every time. The ones that do are the ones connected to the reported unit, by structure or by use:

• The rooms or flats directly above and below, sharing the floor void
• Anything on the other side of a party wall from the affected bedroom
• Shared living rooms and any sofa a tenant has been sleeping on
• Units whose tenants have mentioned bites, even in passing
• Any room that has changed hands recently and was not checked at the time

An inspection of those units tells you whether you are treating one room or a cluster. Our Lewisham inspections page explains what a tenant receives in writing, which is the same record you can ask for across the building.

Who Pays When More Than One Unit Is Involved

We are pest controllers, not legal advisers, and the answer depends on each tenancy and on the cause, which often cannot be proved. What we can describe is how the practical side tends to go. In a house let by the room, the landlord usually controls the shared parts, so the kitchen, hallway and living room tend to fall to the landlord whatever happens with the bedrooms.

Where the building is split into self-contained flats on separate tenancies, each tenancy may say something different, and a freeholder or managing agent may be responsible for the common parts. Sorting that out before treatment starts avoids a job stalling halfway. For the tenant’s side of the same question, read Tenant or Landlord: Who Arranges Bedbug Treatment?

Treating Connected Units Together

Once you know which units are affected, treat them in the same window. Doing one flat this month and the flat above next month gives bedbugs a route back into whichever was done first. That applies whichever treatment is chosen.

Heat suits units where the tenants can be out for most of a day and want it over in one visit; in a shared building we usually add a light residual at the shared edges afterwards. Chemical suits a building where several short visits are easier to arrange than a full day, and it leaves a residual at the skirtings of each unit. You can mix them, unit by unit. The heat and chemical pages for Lewisham cover each in a converted house.

A Record for Each Unit

For a landlord, the paperwork matters as much as the treatment. We record which units were inspected, what was found in each, and what was done where, so you have one set of notes for the building rather than scraps from separate visits. Keep it with the tenancy records.

That record earns its keep later: when a new tenant moves into a room, when a unit reports again, or when a question comes up about which flats were treated and when. If bedbugs reappear after a long quiet spell, the Forest Hill page explains how a new arrival differs from an unfinished job.

How Several Units Are Priced

Work across several units is quoted on the rooms and units involved. Treatments start from £220 and inspections start from £120, with heat costing more than chemical. Tell us how the building is laid out and how many units you are responsible for, and you get the figure on the phone before anything is booked. For a tenant in a single room, the bedsit page is the better starting point.

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