Bitten Soon After Moving Into a Kensal Green Terrace
Houses and flats here are let and re-let regularly, and the floor covering rarely goes anywhere when the people do. Larvae work down into the pile away from the light and into the joints of the boards beneath it, then spin a sticky cocoon and simply wait. What brings them out is warmth, vibration and the carbon dioxide of something breathing nearby, all of which arrive together on the day the van is unloaded. That is why a place can be spotless at the viewing and produce bites round the ankles within the week. Can you have fleas without having pets? explains how a household that has never kept an animal ends up scratching.
What to note down before you ring anybody
Write down the date you moved in, the date the bites began and which rooms they happen in. Flea bites are small and itchy and usually cluster on the ankles and lower legs, because that is as high as a flea can jump from the floor. Take a torch along the carpet edge, under the bed and into the gap where carpet meets bare board, looking for dark specks that smear reddish on a damp piece of kitchen roll. Ten minutes walking about in white socks will tell you the rest. How to know if you have fleas at home goes through the checks, and any bite that looks infected is one for a pharmacist or GP.
Cats and Foxes Along the Cemetery and Canal Edge
The green edge of the area works as one long corridor for animals. Rough grass and planting along the cemetery boundary and the bank of the Grand Union give foxes quiet places to lie up by day, and cats treat the chain of walled back yards as a single territory to be crossed at will. Fleas come off an animal where it rests rather than where it walks, so a fox that sleeps under your shed or behind a stack of timber, and a neighbourhood cat that has taken to a warm corner of the yard, both leave eggs and larvae a few feet from the back door. A cat flap fitted years ago, or a back door propped open all summer, covers the remaining distance.
Where you have an animal of your own, the pet and the rooms are two separate pieces of work that have to happen together. Ask your vet about treating every cat and dog in the household at the same time, indoor cats included, and read whether a pet treatment clears the house for the part the vet cannot reach. Where fleas hide around the home covers the less obvious spots and fleas in beds and sofas deals with the furniture.
Raising It With a Landlord or Agent
Put it in writing early, with the dates, the rooms and whether you know of an animal having lived there before you. Who arranges and pays for a treatment turns on the tenancy agreement and on how the fleas got there, so it is worth reading what the agreement actually says before the conversation. If you are the landlord, dealing with it while a house or flat stands empty is far simpler than working around a new tenant's furniture and it heads off a complaint in the first fortnight. What a landlord should weigh up between tenancies covers when it is worth doing, and Stonebridge looks at the same question for housing association tenants.
How the Rooms Are Counted Here
A terrace let as one house is counted room by room, not as a whole building: the bedrooms and living rooms where bites happen or where a pet spent its time, and any room with carpet, a rug or upholstered furniture in it. Halls, landings, stairs and a shared entrance hall in a converted house are never counted, even where they are carpeted. Bare boards are not an exemption either, because larvae shelter in the joints, under a rug laid over the top and inside a sofa. Tell us the layout and which rooms are involved and we will confirm the total before you book.
Getting the Rooms Ready
- Speak to your vet about every cat and dog in the household, so the animals are dealt with alongside the rooms
- Vacuum slowly along the skirting, under the bed and round the edges of every rug, then empty the vacuum into an outside bin
- Hot-wash pet bedding, throws and any blanket an animal sleeps on, where the care labels allow
- Take shoes, bags and storage boxes off the floors and clear the bottoms of the wardrobes
- Leave rugs where they are rather than carrying them through into a room that is not being treated
- Count the rooms that need doing, leaving the hall, the landing and the stairs out of it
Preparing a property for flea treatment has the full checklist, and our Brent flea advice takes in the wider picture. If you have only just arrived, flea problems after moving into a new home is the place to begin.
The weeks after the visit
Keep vacuuming daily for a good while yet. Cocoons hatch over a period rather than all at once and the vibration of the machine is part of what brings them out, so the activity is useful rather than a nuisance. How long it carries on depends on the rooms and on how settled the fleas had become, and nobody can honestly put a date on it; how long flea treatment takes to work sets out what affects it. If bites are not easing, or live fleas keep appearing, tell us which rooms and when, and why fleas can still bite after a treatment explains what is normal in the meantime.
Making Sure the Bites Are Fleas
Ankles and lower legs, plus something tiny that jumps, point to fleas. Bites appearing overnight on the arms, neck and shoulders fit bed bugs better, which suit buildings where rooms change hands often. Itchy skin with no clear bite marks, alongside small bristly larvae along a carpet edge, can turn out to be carpet beetles instead. It is worth settling which of the three you have before anything is booked.
Keeping Fleas Out Once the Rooms Are Clear
Almost all of this comes back to the animals and the floors. Flea Control Brent covers homes across the borough, and there is more on the Pest Control Kensal Green page about our other services in NW10.
- Keep every animal's flea protection up to date on your vet's advice, whatever the season, and have a rescue or new pet checked before it settles in
- Vacuum the spots your pet sleeps in weekly and put its bedding through the wash as often
- Once you are certain nothing is living under there, close the gap beneath a shed, a decked corner or a stack of timber in the yard
- Fit a microchip flap if other people's cats have learned to let themselves in
- Check a second-hand rug, mattress or armchair before it comes through the front door
- If a pet has lived in a house or flat you are leaving, say so, so the next household is not caught out
