Bedbug Control Forest Gate

Why You Cannot Tell From Looking

A mattress that has been re-covered or rewrapped can look clean on the surface while the old filling, the border and the base keep whatever was living in them. The seller may genuinely not know. There is no receipt trail, no shop to go back to and no way of finding out which house it came from.

That does not mean every doorstep mattress has bedbugs. It means the first few weeks of sleeping on one are the time to be watchful, and that bites in that window should be taken seriously rather than put down to something else.

Checking One You Have Already Bought

Do this in the room where it already is. Do not carry it round the house to somewhere with better light.

• Run a torch along the piping and the stitched border on every side
• Look under the care label and around any handles or air vents
• Check the underside, and the fabric of a divan base if one came with it
• Look for dark spotting, pale shed skins, tiny pale eggs and live bugs
• Check the bed frame and headboard it has been sitting on too

If you find nothing but still wake with bites, an inspection from £120 is a sensible step. We look at the whole room, not just the new bed, because a mattress can be blamed for a problem that came from elsewhere.

What Not to Do If It Has Them

1. Do not drag it outside. Carrying it down the stairs and through the hall sheds bugs along the way, and a mattress left in a front garden or on the pavement passes them on to whoever picks it up.
2. Do not move to the sofa. The bugs follow whoever sleeps on the sofa, and the problem doubles.
3. Do not buy a replacement yet. A new mattress in an untreated room becomes the next one they live in.
4. Do strip and hot-wash the bedding, bagging it in the room before it goes to the machine.

Whether it can be kept is covered in our guide can you keep your mattress after bedbugs. If it does go in the end, it goes after treatment, sealed, and the council or a licensed waste carrier takes it.

Treating the Room

Treatment is for the room, not just the mattress, because by the time bites start they are usually in the frame and the carpet edge as well. Heat takes the mattress, frame and room to a temperature bedbugs cannot survive in a single visit, eggs included. Chemical treats the seams, frame and skirtings and usually needs two or three visits. Heat costs more; both start from £220.

When you ring about a house or flat in Forest Gate, tell us when the mattress arrived and when the bites began. The Newham page covers busier households if several people share the bedroom.

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