How Much Time Off Do You Need for Bedbug Treatment in Tower Hamlets?

The time you need depends mainly on which route you choose. Heat puts the disruption into one long day. Chemical spreads it over two or three shorter visits across a few weeks. Neither needs you to move out, and neither needs every adult in the flat to take leave.

The Inspection

If you are not certain it is bedbugs, or not sure how many rooms are affected, an inspection comes first. Someone needs to let us in and show us where people sleep, and ideally that is the person who has been getting bitten, because they can point to where it started. It is a much shorter visit than a treatment.

If you already know it is bedbugs and which rooms, you can often go straight to treatment. We will say which applies when you ring.

Preparation

Preparation does not need a day off, but it needs time, and people underestimate it. Spread it across the evenings before the date.

• Hot-washing and bagging bedding and the clothes near the bed, a load at a time.
• Clearing floors and the space under the bed, so every edge can be reached.
• For heat, taking out aerosols, candles, medication, vinyl, plants and some electronics.
• In a flat share, each person whose room is treated does their own room.

The London guide to preparing for heat treatment has the full list for a heat day.

A Heat Treatment Day

Heat usually takes most of a day. The rooms being treated are raised to a temperature bedbugs cannot survive and held there, with a thermal camera used to check for cold spots. Nobody can be in those rooms while it runs, and pets need to be out of the flat.

Someone needs to let us in at the start, and should be reachable during the day. Whether that person must stay for the whole treatment, and how access works if you cannot be there, is something to ask when you ring rather than assume. Plan for the rooms to be usable again once they have cooled, later that day. The London guide on how long heat treatment takes explains what makes a day longer or shorter.

Chemical Visits

Each chemical visit takes one to two hours. There are usually two, sometimes three, about 10 to 14 days apart, so the bugs that hatch after the first visit meet the residue. Before each visit, the bedding is stripped and washed and the floor cleared again.

After each visit, keep out of the treated rooms until the surfaces are dry, and follow what we tell you on the day. For many people, that means a late start or an early finish on two or three days rather than whole days off.

Who Needs to Be Home

1. Inspection: one person who knows where everyone sleeps.
2. Preparation: everyone whose room is being treated, in their own time.
3. Heat day: someone to let us in and stay reachable; everyone and every pet out of the treated rooms.
4. Chemical visits: someone to let us in at each visit, then out of the room until it is dry.
5. Afterwards: normal life, sleeping in your own bed, and telling us about anything you see.

If none of you can take the time, say so when you ring. It may affect which treatment fits your household. The Tower Hamlets page looks at choosing between the routes when everyone works long hours, and the guide on what affects the cost covers the price side of the same decision.

After the Treatment

There is no time off needed afterwards. Keep sleeping in your own bed, because that draws any survivors onto treated surfaces rather than somewhere new. The London guide on what happens after treatment covers the weeks that follow.

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