What Happens During a Professional Bedbug Inspection?

People are often wary of booking an inspection because they do not know what they are agreeing to. It is the least disruptive thing we do.

Before We Arrive: Do Nothing

This is genuinely the instruction, and it is the opposite of what most people's instinct says.

• Do not strip the bed. The evidence is on the sheets and in the seams
• Do not deep-clean. A scrubbed room can hide a fortnight of history
• Do not spray anything. It scatters them and makes everything harder
• Do not throw anything out. Especially not the mattress
• Do not move furniture between rooms. That spreads it and confuses the picture

Clear the floor enough to walk around the bed. That is the whole of the preparation.

How Long It Takes

• One bedroom — around thirty to forty-five minutes
• A one or two bedroom flat — an hour or so
• A house with several bedrooms — an hour and a half upwards
• Multiple units or a block — quoted on the number of rooms

Most of that is looking rather than doing. A thorough inspection of a single bed takes fifteen minutes on its own if it is done properly.

Do You Need to Be There?

It helps a great deal for the first ten minutes, because what you have noticed and when narrows the search considerably. After that you are welcome to leave us to it.

For a landlord or an agent, a tenant who is present and willing to talk is worth more than any amount of access arrangement.

What We Will Ask You

• When you first noticed something, and what it was
• Who is affected and who is not — this tells us more than most people expect
• Whether anyone has moved where they sleep
• Whether anything has been treated or sprayed already, and with what
• Recent travel, hotel stays, second-hand furniture, visitors who stayed over
• Whether neighbours have mentioned anything, in a flat or a terrace

None of it is an interrogation and none of it is about blame. It is about working out whether this is a new introduction or something that has been running for months, because the answers point at different treatments.

What We Will Move

Beds pulled out from walls, mattresses lifted, divan bases opened at the corners, headboards pulled forward, bedside drawers removed. Occasionally a socket faceplate, with the power off.

Everything goes back. We will not unscrew fitted furniture, take up carpet or cut into anything without asking you first.

What Happens If We Find Nothing

It happens often, and it is a good outcome rather than a wasted visit.

You get told so on the spot, in plain terms, and it goes in the report. If there is a likely alternative — carpet beetle, fleas, bird mites — we will say so and tell you what to do about it, including when what you need is somebody other than us.

What we will not do is find something borderline in order to sell a treatment. A firm that only ever finds bedbugs is not inspecting.

What You Get Afterwards

• A verbal answer before we leave — you are not waiting on a report to know
• A written report the same day: what was inspected, what was found where, how long it has likely been going on, which rooms are clear
• A recommendation with a price, chemical or heat, and the reasoning
• For a landlord or managing agent, something that can be passed on as it stands

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