How a block connects its flats
Water, waste, heating and electrics run up through a building in risers and across it in ducts, floor voids and ceiling spaces. Where pipes leave these routes and enter a kitchen or bathroom, there is often a gap around them. To a cockroach, the whole block works like one large home with many kitchens attached. That applies to the newer blocks around Wembley as much as to older ones.
Service ducts and risers
Risers tend to be warm, dark and rarely opened, which makes them ideal for German cockroaches. Insects can move several floors up or down inside one without ever crossing open ground. The boxing-in around pipes in a kitchen or bathroom is frequently where the riser meets your flat.
Pipe runs and shared walls
Pipes behind kitchen units, under baths and along skirting boards give cockroaches a route between neighbouring flats on the same floor. Cavities in party walls, gaps where a wall meets the floor slab and holes drilled for cables do the same job. Oriental cockroaches, which prefer cooler conditions, are more likely to travel through ground-floor voids and drains than to climb a riser.
Flats above shops and takeaways
Where homes sit over food premises, as in the flats above shops in Harlesden, the business and the flats share walls, drains and sometimes ventilation. An infestation in one can reach the other. Both need attention for a lasting result; the shop is a commercial job and is quoted per site.
Why treating one flat may not be enough
If your flat is cleared while the one beside or below still has cockroaches, they can come back along the same routes. That does not make treating your home pointless, because it protects your kitchen, but the best outcome in a block comes when affected neighbours act at around the same time. Mice move through buildings in a similar way — see can mice travel between flats.
Who to tell
- Your landlord or managing agent, if you rent or live in a managed block
- Your housing association, if you are a tenant
- Neighbours on either side, above and below, who may not have noticed yet
- The freeholder or residents' association, if communal areas are affected
Housing association tenants, including those in Stonebridge, should report sightings to their landlord as well as arranging help, so the rest of the building can be looked at.
Signs they are coming from next door
Cockroaches that first appear around boxed-in pipes, at the back of the sink cupboard or behind a bath panel, rather than near where food is kept, may well be arriving through the structure. So can a sudden appearance after a neighbour moves out, refits a kitchen or sprays their own flat. Other ways in are described in how cockroaches get into properties.
Other pests that use the same routes
Cockroaches are not the only insects that make use of a building's hidden connections. Bed bugs can travel along pipework and through gaps in party walls, as can bed bugs spread between flats explains, and tiny Pharaoh ants nest in warm voids and spread across several homes. If what you are seeing does not match a cockroach, it is worth ruling those out before anything is booked.
Closing the gaps on your side
After cockroaches have been dealt with, filling the gaps around pipes where they enter your kitchen and bathroom makes it harder for insects to cross from elsewhere. In a rented flat, ask your landlord before altering anything. Everyday habits that help are set out in preventing cockroaches from returning.
Arranging treatment in a flat
For a flat, cockroach control in Brent is £190, and a house is £240. When you book cockroach control, let us know if neighbours have seen them too, so the building can be considered as a whole.
