Bedbug Control West Ham

Where the Risk Comes In

New stock straight from a supplier in sealed cartons is rarely the issue. The things to watch are the ones that have been in someone else's home:

• Returns, especially clothing, bedding, soft toys and upholstered items
• Second-hand or vintage stock bought from house clearances and other sellers
• Reused boxes and padded envelopes collected from friends or shops
• Stock kept in the bedroom, where bedbugs already live if you have them

Cardboard gives them plenty of edges and corrugation to hide in, so boxes stacked against a bedroom wall become part of the problem rather than something separate from it.

A Routine for Returns and Second-Hand Stock

1. Open returns in one spot away from the bedroom, on a hard surface.
2. Check seams, labels and folds before anything goes back on the shelf. Dark spotting and shed skins are the usual giveaway.
3. Wash and dry what can be washed on a hot setting before relisting it.
4. Throw away the customer's packaging rather than reusing it.
5. Keep stock in sealed plastic tubs rather than open cardboard, and off the bedroom floor where you can.

For clothing in particular, our guide on whether clothes need throwing away explains what washing and drying does.

Before You Post Anything Out

If you have bedbugs in the room where stock is kept, hold off sending soft items from it until the room has been treated and checked. Items sealed in plastic from the supplier and never opened are much less of a concern. You do not want the next problem to start in a customer's home. If you are not sure whether the room is affected at all, an inspection starts from £120.

Treating a Room Full of Stock

Stock changes how each treatment works. Chemical treatment goes on skirtings, bed frames and seams, not on goods you are going to sell, so boxes have to be moved off the floor and away from the walls, and they are not treated themselves. Heat treatment reaches into boxes and stacks and can deal with stock in place, but anything that heat would spoil has to come out first: candles, cosmetics, aerosols, batteries, vinyl, some electronics and some plastics. Heat costs more than chemical; treatments are from £220.

Tell us roughly what you sell and how much of it is in the affected room when you ring about your West Ham home, as it shapes the plan more than the size of the room. If the business has outgrown the house and moved to a unit, see our commercial page; the Newham page covers busy households.

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