Bedbug Control Gants Hill

Why Throwing Things Out First Backfires

The urge to get rid of the bed is understandable, but it rarely helps. Carrying a mattress down the stairs and through the hall shakes bedbugs off along the route, and the ones in the frame, the skirting and the carpet edge stay behind to move into the new mattress. The household ends up paying for a bed and a treatment.

The rule we give every household is simple: nothing large leaves the house before treatment unless we have advised it. If something really does need to go, it is wrapped and sealed first, and ideally marked so nobody else takes it home.

What Treatment Reaches

Most of what people want to throw away can be treated where it stands:

• Mattresses and divan bases. Treated in both routes, with attention to seams, piping and the corners of the base.
• Bed frames and headboards. The joints and screw holes are exactly where treatment is aimed.
• Sofas and upholstered chairs. Treatable, although heavily damaged or split furniture is sometimes better replaced after treatment.
• Clothes, bedding and soft toys. A hot wash or a spell in the tumble dryer deals with these; they do not need to be thrown out.
• Books, papers and boxes. Heat reaches into them. With chemical they are checked, and cardboard is better swapped for sealed plastic tubs.

Heat has the edge for households with a lot of contents, because it raises the whole room, cluttered corners included, to a temperature bedbugs cannot survive. It costs more than chemical. The heat treatment page for Redbridge explains what that looks like in a family house.

When Something Should Go

There are genuine cases for replacing an item: a mattress with torn covers where the bugs have got inside the padding, furniture already falling apart, or a sofa that nobody wants back anyway. The time to decide is after we have looked, not before. We will tell you plainly if we think something is not worth keeping.

If the disagreement is really about the cost of waiting, our guide on what happens if you ignore bedbugs sets out why they do not fade away by themselves.

A Way to Settle It at Home

1. Agree that nothing leaves the house until after the inspection or the first visit.
2. Bag and wash the bedding and clothes now; that part is not in dispute.
3. Make a list of the items someone wants to throw away and read it out when you ring.
4. Let the treatment decide the list. Anything still worth replacing afterwards can go then, wrapped.

For a house in Gants Hill, most families find that the list shrinks to one or two things, or to nothing, once they know what treatment covers. If nobody is yet sure it is bedbugs, an inspection from £120 settles that first.

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