Bedbug Heat Treatment Wandsworth

Two Kinds of Home, Two Kinds of Job

Heat treatment in this borough tends to fall into two shapes. One is a flat in a mansion block or a converted terrace, where the rooms are ours for the day but the walls, floors and stairs belong partly to other people. The other is a whole Victorian or Edwardian house, where one family has every floor and the question is how many of them need heating.

What the machines do, why it reaches the eggs and why one visit is usually enough is on the London heat treatment page, for the full explanation. This page stays with the buildings.

A Flat in a Mansion Block

Mansion block flats are often generous inside and awkward to reach. There may be a narrow common stair, a small lift or no lift at all, and a managing agent or porter who likes to know when equipment is coming through the entrance hall. Tell us on the phone which floor you are on and how the building is entered, and if the block has rules about contractors, check them before the day.

Inside, the solid walls work in our favour: they hold warmth well once they are up to temperature. The weak points are elsewhere. A chimney breast with an open flue, an old service hatch, or a gap round a pipe where it passes into the next flat all let heat bleed away, and they are also the routes a bedbug uses to wander next door. We look at each of them before the heaters go on.

Because a block is shared, heat on its own leaves nothing behind for a bug that comes back through the wall later. In most flats we put a light residual at the room edges once the rooms have cooled, and we tell you where it has gone.

A Victorian or Edwardian Terrace

A family house gives us the whole building, which makes planning simpler, but a terrace has its own habits. The rooms are tall, so there is a lot of air to move before the furniture catches up. Sash windows rattle and let warmth out; they stay shut, and we may block the worst draughts for the day. Boards laid over a void, with gaps between them, are exactly where eggs get pushed out of sight, and the thermal camera is how we make sure the heat has reached down into them.

The harder question in a house is how far to go. If the bites are in one bedroom and the signs are there and nowhere else, one room may be the right quote. If two children have been sharing a bed with a parent, or someone has been sleeping on the sofa to escape the bites, the floor as a whole is usually the surer thing to treat, because leaving one room out tends to mean doing it again.

• Loft rooms run hot already and are usually easy to bring up; tell us if there is one.
• Basement or lower-ground rooms can be cold and damp and take longer; mention them too.
• A split flat above or below, where a house has been converted, puts you back in the shared-building position described above.

What We Need to Know When You Ring

The figure we give on the phone depends on the rooms, so the more precise you are, the more useful the quote. Have these to hand:

1. How many rooms have signs, and which rooms people have been sleeping in over the last few weeks.
2. Whether it is a flat or a house, which floor, and whether there is a lift.
3. Anything unusual in the rooms: a piano, a large aquarium, built-in wardrobes, a waterbed.
4. Who else is in the building, if it is a flat, and whether anyone next door has mentioned bites.
5. Whether you rent, and if so whether the landlord or agent knows yet.

If you are not sure it is bedbugs at all, start with an inspection in Wandsworth rather than booking heat on a guess.

Heat, Chemical, or Neither Yet

Heat suits a period flat or house where the belongings are many and the rooms are full of places to hide: bookshelves, picture rails, old furniture with joints and backs. It suits people who want the problem dealt with in a single day. It does not suit a home where much of the contents cannot take heat and cannot easily be moved out, and it costs more.

Where the signs are caught early in one room of a flat, chemical treatment in Wandsworth can be the sensible, lower-cost route. We will say so on the phone if we think it is.

If you have wool rugs, silk cushions or clothes that cannot go in a hot wash, read our guide to delicate fabrics before the day. If the flat has underfloor heating, the Wandsworth Town page deals with that.

What It Costs

Treatments start from £220, and heat costs more than chemical because of the equipment and the time on site. A whole house costs more than one flat bedroom. Ring 0800 955 1018, give us the room count and the details above, and you will have the figure before anything is booked. For how the borough’s other building types are handled, see the Wandsworth bedbug control page.

← Bedbug Control Wandsworth · Bedbug Heat Treatment London, in full