How Bed Bugs Get Into a Barnet Property
Bed bugs do not come up from drains or in from the garden. They are carried in, and then they spread from whichever room the person who carried them sleeps in. Cleanliness has nothing to do with it.
The new blocks
Colindale, Beaufort Park and the developments around them are dense, high-turnover and well connected. Bed bugs move between flats along service risers and through the gaps around pipework, and the turnover of tenancies means furniture and luggage arrive and leave constantly. One flat is rarely the whole picture.
Shared houses
Around the Northern line stations at East Finchley, Finchley Central, Woodside Park and Burnt Oak there are a lot of houses in multiple occupation. Individual locks on bedroom doors make access the hard part of the job, and a room treated while the room next to it is left alone is money spent to no purpose.
Family houses and the spare room
In the larger houses the usual route is a visitor, a holiday or a piece of second-hand furniture, and the spare room is where it sits undetected longest. By the time anyone notices, it has often been present for a month or more.
Signs of bed bugs
- Small dark spots along mattress seams and piping that do not brush off
- Pale, empty shed skins in the seams or in the bed frame joints
- Live insects in the frame joints, screw holes or behind the headboard
- Bites, which vary enormously between people and prove very little on their own
- Spotting on the underside of the divan base or in its corner vents
Before we arrive
Do not strip the bed, do not deep-clean and do not spray anything. The evidence is what tells us how long it has been going on and how far it has spread, and shop aerosols scatter bed bugs into wall voids where nothing can reach them. Above all, do not move to another room — you take them with you.
