Do Mattress Encasements Help With Bedbugs in Lewisham?

What an Encasement Actually Is

A bedbug encasement is a fitted cover that surrounds the whole mattress and closes with a zip. It is not the same as a mattress protector, which usually covers the top and sides with an elasticated skirt and leaves the underside open. The things that make an encasement worth having are simple:

• It covers all six sides of the mattress, with no open underside
• The fabric is woven tightly enough that bedbugs cannot bite through it or squeeze through it
• The zip closes completely, with a flap or stop at the end so there is no gap for a bug to walk out of
• The seams are sealed rather than just stitched

A cover that fails on any of these is a mattress protector with a zip, and it will not do the job described below.

What It Does

Once a mattress is sealed inside a proper encasement, anything that was already inside the mattress cannot get out to feed, and anything outside cannot get into the seams and piping where bedbugs like to sit. The mattress stops being a hiding place.

It also gives you a smooth surface with no seams to hide in. Dark spotting or a live bug on a pale, plain cover is far easier to spot than the same thing tucked into the piping of a mattress. That makes an encasement a useful way of keeping an eye on things after treatment.

What It Does Not Do

This is the part that gets lost. An encasement protects one object. Bedbugs do not live only in the mattress, and in a problem that has been going for a few weeks they are usually spread through the bed frame joints, the headboard, the skirting, the edges of the carpet and sometimes further. None of that is touched by a cover on the mattress.

It also does not kill anything quickly. Bedbugs sealed inside a mattress can survive for a long time without feeding, so the cover has to stay on, undamaged and zipped, for many months rather than a few weeks. Take it off early and whatever survived walks straight out.

And it does not stop you being bitten. The bugs in the frame and the room will still come out at night and find you on top of the cover.

When It Is Worth Having

• After a chemical treatment, where the mattress has been treated and you want to stop it becoming a hiding place again while the follow-up visits are carried out
• After a heat treatment, as a way of watching for anything new arriving, particularly in a flat that shares walls or floors with others
• On a good mattress you want to keep, rather than replacing it
• On a divan base, where a matching encasement for the base closes off another hiding place

If you are about to have a treatment, ask us before fitting one. For chemical treatment we normally treat the mattress first; for heat the mattress is heated with the room. Fitting it at the wrong moment can leave the mattress untreated.

When It Is Not Enough

If you have bites, spotting or live bugs, an encasement on its own will not end the problem. It may even hide it for a while, as the bugs move to the frame and the edges of the room. The treatment itself is what deals with them: chemical treatment in seams, frames and skirtings, or heat treatment of the whole room.

Looking After One

Check the zip is fully closed each time you change the bedding. Look for any small tear, and cover it with strong tape rather than leaving it. Wash the encasement according to its label, and take care putting it back on so it does not tear on the corner of the frame. A damaged encasement is worse than none, because it gives a false sense that the mattress is sealed.

An encasement cannot tell you whether the problem came from the flat downstairs; the Lewisham overview covers what a shared building means for treatment.

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