Pests in a Building Converted Into Apartments
When a big old building is converted, the shell stays and the homes are fitted inside it. The walls keep their thickness, the corridors keep their length, and the roof stays one large structure over dozens of front doors. New kitchens and bathrooms need water, drainage, heating and power, so pipes and cables are threaded through fabric that was never designed to carry them. The result is a building with far more hidden space than its floor plans suggest, and a pest that gets into that hidden space can reach apartments a long way from where it started.
Thick walls and the gaps around them
Solid masonry walls of that age are deep, and every opening cut through them for a waste pipe, a flue or a cable leaves a tunnel rather than a hole. Where the tunnel is not packed tight, mice and cockroaches have a sheltered passage from one side to the other. Dry lining, added to make old walls warm and flat, can leave a narrow void between the plasterboard and the masonry that runs along the whole length of a room.
Long corridors and communal areas
Corridors, stairwells, lobbies, bin stores and bike stores belong to everyone and are looked at closely by no one. A mouse can travel the ceiling void above a corridor, and bed bugs carried out of one apartment on furniture or bags can be carried along the corridor into the next. Communal parts are usually the freeholder's or managing agent's to deal with, while the inside of an apartment is normally the responsibility of whoever lives there or lets it.
Old service runs and new ones
A conversion often keeps old ducts and chases and adds new risers beside them. Warm heating pipes running between floors suit cockroaches, and boxed-in service runs give mice a vertical route through the building. If you see signs in your kitchen or bathroom, the boxing around the pipes is the first place to look, and it is worth asking the neighbours above and below whether they have noticed anything.
Big shared roof spaces
One large roof covers many top-floor homes. Birds nest along its edges, which can bring carpet beetles down into the rooms below, and wasps choose high eaves and parapets that are hard to see from the ground. Squirrels reaching the roof from nearby trees can move across a wide loft space. Access to that space is normally held by the managing agent, so residents on the top floor are often the first to hear a problem but not the ones who can open the hatch.
When a managing agent arranges treatment
Treating one apartment in a building like this can work for a pest that was carried in, such as bed bugs in a single bedroom. For pests moving through the structure, it helps to deal with the affected homes and the communal areas together. Managing agents and freeholders can contact us to arrange treatment across several apartments or a whole block, and residents can help by reporting what they see to the agent as well as to us, with dates and locations.
The houses and newer homes around the site
Beyond the converted buildings, Friern Barnet is streets of houses along and off Friern Barnet Lane and Colney Hatch Lane, with the newer housing built around the old hospital site. Friary Park and Coppetts Wood bring trees and squirrels close to gardens, and the North Circular and the Friern Bridge retail park run along the southern edge. Houses here get the usual garden and loft problems, priced as houses.
