Bedbug Heat Treatment Redbridge

The House Decides the Plan

An interwar semi in Gants Hill and a Victorian terrace in Ilford need the same treatment but a different plan. The semi usually has two good bedrooms, a small box room over the hall, and one wall shared with the house next door. The terrace has neighbours on both sides, narrower stairs, and often a back bedroom sitting over the kitchen. Tell us which you have when you ring, because it changes how the equipment gets upstairs and how the rooms are grouped.

How heat kills every stage, eggs included, is covered on the London heat treatment page for the full explanation. What follows is the household and the building.

Which Rooms Go in the Day

The rooms we heat are the ones people sleep in, plus any room somebody has slept in since the bites began. In a busy house that list is usually longer than the parents first think:

• Every bedroom with bites, spotting or a live bug, however small the sign.
• The room a child moved into when they could not settle in their own.
• The sofa or sofa bed if an adult has been sleeping downstairs to get away from it.
• The spare room if a relative has been staying in it. Families with a grandparent staying for a stretch will find the Wanstead page useful.

Leaving one of those rooms out to save money is the usual reason a house needs a second go. We would rather quote honestly for the whole sleeping area than sell you half of it.

The Box Room, the Loft and the Back Bedroom

These are the rooms that make a family house harder than a flat, and each has its own problem.

The box room

In many semis the box room has become storage: suitcases, spare duvets, bags of outgrown clothes, stacked boxes. Heat can treat what is in the room, but it needs air moving round it, so thin the stack out and open it up rather than carrying it downstairs. If much of it is in cardboard, read our guide to bedbugs in cardboard boxes before the day.

A loft bedroom

A converted loft sits under the roof, with eaves cupboards that run behind the walls. Those cupboards are exactly where cold spots hide, so empty them enough for us to get the fans and the camera in.

The back bedroom in a terrace

It is often reached through another bedroom or down a short step, and it tends to be the teenager’s room. We plan the equipment route so we are not dragging heaters across a bed that has just been stripped. For a teenager with exams coming up, see the South Woodford page.

Running a Family Through the Day

The day goes well when each person has a job and one adult checks the lot. A pattern that works:

1. Two or three days before: each person clears their own room of the items on the list we send — aerosols, candles, medication, vinyl, plants, the electronics we name. A parent goes round afterwards with a bag and checks the drawers.
2. The night before: beds stripped, bedding bagged and hot-washed, floors clear. Nothing leaves the bedrooms except the items on the list.
3. The morning: pets out of the house for the day, children to school or to a relative, and one adult stays to walk the technician round and show where the signs are.
4. The afternoon: we ring when the rooms are cooling, so nobody walks back into a hot upstairs.
5. The evening: remake the beds with the clean bedding and sleep in your own rooms.

If one adult is doing all of this alone, the Goodmayes page is the one to read. If nobody in the house can shift a wardrobe, ring first and read the Barkingside page.

Shared Walls and the House Next Door

Heat finishes what is in the room and then leaves nothing behind. In a detached house that hardly matters. In a semi, and even more in a terrace with a wall on each side, there is a route in from next door that the heat cannot close off. Where that is a real risk we may put a light residual along the edges of the rooms on the party wall, and we tell you where before we leave.

You do not have to tell your neighbours, but it helps if you do. When the houses either side have the same signs, the Seven Kings page is about several houses on one street finding bedbugs.

What a House Costs

Treatments start from £220, and heat costs more than chemical because it is a full day on site with the equipment. A three-bedroom semi with a box room costs more than a single bedroom. Ring 0800 955 1018 with the number of bedrooms and which ones have signs, and you get the figure on the phone before anything is booked.

If the problem really is one bedroom found early, a course of chemical treatment in Redbridge may be enough, and we will say so. For the household side of bedbugs across the borough, start at our Redbridge page.

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