Bedbug Control Teddington

Treat Before You Move, Not After

The temptation is to wait it out and leave them behind at completion. The trouble is that everything you own passes through the rental on its way to the new house. If the rental has bedbugs when you pack, some are likely to travel.

The rental is the landlord's property, so report it to the landlord or agent in writing straight away. Who arranges and pays depends on the tenancy and on where they came from; we are pest controllers, not legal advisers. What we can do is confirm what is there with an inspection from £120.

Which Treatment Fits a Moving Date

If completion is close, heat treatment is usually the better fit. It is one visit, it kills eggs as well as live insects, and there is no follow-up visit to squeeze in before the van arrives. It costs more than chemical.

Chemical treatment usually needs two or three visits about 10 to 14 days apart, so it suits a move that is several weeks off. The last visit should come before you pack the bedroom, not after. Both start from £220, and we give the figure for your rooms on the phone before anything is booked.

Packing So Nothing Hitches a Ride

1. Pack the treated rooms last, once treatment is complete, not first.
2. Wash fabrics before they go in a box. Clothes, bedding, curtains and soft toys, hot wash and hot dry, then straight into a clean bag.
3. Prefer plastic crates to cardboard for anything from the bedroom. Cardboard has folds and flutes that are hard to check.
4. Look along the seams of sofas and bed bases as they go on the van, and mention any doubts to us before moving day.
5. Label the bedroom boxes so you can unpack them first, on a hard floor, at the new house.

Keep packed boxes in a room that has not shown signs, off the carpet if you can, and tape them shut once filled. A box left open on a bedroom floor for a week is an invitation, however carefully its contents were washed.

The First Weeks in the New House

Unpack the bedroom boxes in a room with a hard floor and put the beds together away from the walls for the first few weeks, so anything that did come along is easy to spot. Check the mattress seams every few days. If you want certainty before you move in, an inspection of the empty house is possible; ask when you ring.

The Richmond borough page is about tracing where bedbugs came in so they do not return. If bites were the first sign, our guide on bedbug or mosquito bites explains why a bite on its own is not proof.

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