A Shop at Street Level and Flats Over the Top
The parades on Chamberlayne Road and Harrow Road were built with living space above the trade, and the two have never really been separated. An oven, a fridge motor and a hot water system running into the evening warm the floor of the home above them, and the boxed pipe and duct runs serving the shop pass up through it. Steady heat, damp air off a small kitchen and food handled somewhere in the building most of the day is all a German cockroach asks for, whatever the state of any single kitchen in it.
What a German Cockroach Looks Like, and Where It Sits
Roughly a centimetre and a half long, light brown, with a pair of dark bars behind the head, quick on its feet and able to climb almost anything. Daylight goes by wedged into a warm crack: the motor compartment behind a fridge, the underside of a worktop, the void behind the kickboards, the casing of a microwave. Ten minutes with a torch after midnight is worth a week of looking in the afternoon: where cockroaches hide in kitchens takes those places in order, and why they appear at night explains the hours.
The Cellar Steps, the Yard Gully and the Front Light Well
Underneath the house the picture reverses. An Oriental cockroach reaches two and a half centimetres, is very dark and glossy, moves slowly and struggles with a smooth vertical surface, and it wants cool damp rather than warmth. Cellars under these houses, the gully beside the back door, the drain at the foot of the front steps and the ground behind the bins all provide it. From there it reaches a back-addition kitchen through the hole round a waste pipe, under a cellar hatch, or up a soil stack never sealed where it passes through a floor. One sitting quite still on a step after dark, or several turning up after heavy rain, is how most people meet it.
Why It Matters Which One You Have
The comparison of the two species settles which is which, and the answer decides where the work goes. German cockroaches are an indoor problem carried in or come through from another home in the building, so the search follows the warm services and takes in the kitchen next door. Oriental cockroaches are about damp, gullies and what is going on below the ground floor, and putting it right includes the dripping tap and the corner of the cellar that never dries. Scratching under the floor at the same time is a different tenant altogether: that is rat control in Kensal Green, and the drains beneath these streets are covered on Pest Control Kensal Green.
What to Do This Week
- Go into the kitchen after dark, switch the light on and note where they run to, since that is where they live
- Empty the cupboard under the sink and the one beside the cooker so the backs can be got at
- Move rice, flour, cereal and pet food into sealed boxes and wipe the worktops before bed
- Mend the dripping tap, dry the sink at night and clear the gully outside the back door, because damp draws the Oriental species as strongly as crumbs do
- Stop stacking cardboard under the stairs or in the cellar, where it is shelter and food
- Leave shop sprays and foggers alone: they scatter cockroaches into the walls and towards the flat next door
If you are unsure what you are looking at, the signs guide covers droppings like coarse pepper and the dark, capsule-shaped egg cases. Insects walking steadily in a line along a worktop are far more likely ants, and something small, round and patterned sitting still on a sill in spring is a carpet beetle.
Booking: What to Tell Us
Say whether it is a flat over a shop, a back flat behind one, a whole terraced house with a cellar, or trade premises; which floor you are on; where and when you have seen them; and whether a neighbour has them too. Flats in one building do far better dealt with close together than one after another, so ask the landlord or managing agent whether that can be arranged. Sightings for a while afterwards, as eggs already laid hatch out, are no sign in themselves that anything has gone wrong, which this guide sets out. Come back to us if they carry on past the period we give you.
Shops, Cafés and Takeaways
Food premises are quoted per site rather than at the flat or house price, because the kitchen, the storage, the waste arrangements and the trading hours differ in every unit. Anyone running a food business has a legal duty to keep pests away from the places where food is prepared and stored, so one sighting needs acting on at once. Ring and describe the premises, and say whether there are flats above.
Keeping a Kensal Green Kitchen Clear
Once they have been dealt with, fill the gaps round the waste and heating pipes under the sink and behind the boiler, and ask the freeholder about the holes where services cross floors and party walls. Keep waste in a lidded bin instead of a bag on a landing, and look a second-hand fridge or cooker over outside before it is carried up the stairs. How to prevent cockroaches returning goes further, how cockroaches get into properties covers deliveries and cardboard, Cockroach Control Brent covers the borough and the Brent cockroach advice takes the first few days in order. Nobody should feel awkward about ringing, since cockroaches are no verdict on housekeeping.
