Nothing Comes Through the Party Wall
It is worth saying plainly, because it changes where you look. Bed bugs walk a matter of metres to feed and no further; they do not cross a solid party wall between two whole houses, and they have no interest in a garden, a drain or a drive. If they are in your house, somebody or something brought them to the room they are in, and that room is the place to start. The guide to how bed bugs get in runs through the usual carriers and the daytime hiding places guide shows how close to a bed they settle.
The Room That Is Used Four Times a Year
The box room over the hall, the bedroom kept for visiting family, the loft conversion that doubles as a study - these are the quiet rooms of a Preston house, and a few bugs left behind after a stay can sit in an empty bed for a long stretch without anyone knowing. The next guest is bitten within a night or two of arriving, which makes it look as though they brought the problem with them when in fact they met what the last visitor left. Strip a spare bed and look at it when the room is not in use rather than an hour before somebody is due.
Where the Cases Get Put Down
With the Metropolitan line at Preston Road, bags come back into these houses from journeys of every length and land wherever there is room. A case set down on a duvet unloads whatever it is carrying straight into the bed; a case stood on a hard floor, emptied beside the washing machine and looked over along its lining seams and wheel recesses does not.
Furniture Bought Second-Hand and Parked in the Garage
Most Preston houses have a drive and many have a garage or a side door, which makes them convenient places to receive furniture. A bed frame, a headboard, a mattress, a nursing chair or a chest of drawers collected from a house clearance or a private sale goes in the back of a car, comes up the drive and is indoors within the hour. Any of those can carry bed bugs in its joints, screw holes and seams.
Use the space you have: unwrap it on the drive or in the garage in daylight, tip a frame up and look into every joint and fixing hole, run a finger along the piping of an upholstered piece, and only then carry it up the stairs. The guide to bed bugs in sofas and furniture shows what to look at on a soft item. Leaving a suspect piece in the garage for a few weeks settles nothing, since a bed bug can wait months between meals.
Making Sure Before You Book
Bites decide nothing on their own. Some people come up in rows of lumps, others show nothing at all, and plenty of itchy marks in a family house have nothing to do with insects. Look for the evidence the bugs leave: fine dark spotting along mattress piping and seams, pale shed skins in frame joints, and live insects in screw holes and behind a headboard. The first signs guide shows all three. Marks concentrated around the ankles in a house with a cat or dog are more likely fleas in Preston, and an itchy rash with nothing at all to find in the bed can come from the larvae of carpet beetles.
Things Worth Not Doing
- Moving into the spare room, which takes the bugs along and turns one charged room into two
- Setting off a shop-bought fogger, which pushes them into wall voids and under floorboards
- Taking bedding to a relative's machine rather than washing it at home
- Skipping the bed before you ask, when a mattress can usually stay
- Piling the contents of a bedroom into the landing, the loft or the garage
Getting the Upstairs Rooms Ready
Preparation is the part of this that belongs entirely to you, and it makes more difference than anything else you can do. Work one bedroom at a time and keep its contents inside it. Strip the beds, wash the bedding as hot as the label allows, bag it straight out of the machine and leave the bags in the room they came from until we have been.
Pull the beds away from the walls so the skirting and the carpet edge can be reached, empty the drawers of a divan base, take down what hangs on the wall behind the headboard and clear the floor of the fitted wardrobe. Vacuum the edges and the frame, then empty the cleaner outside into a sealed bag. The preparation guide sets out the whole list, and we will go through it for your rooms when you book.
Booking and What Follows
Tell us how many rooms have signs, which floor they are on, whether anybody sleeps downstairs on a sofa, and whether a recent visitor or a piece of furniture is the likely source. Keep sleeping in your own bed unless we tell you otherwise. Finding the odd one for a while afterwards is not by itself a sign that anything has gone wrong, which this guide sets out alongside what the timescale hangs on. If bites are still happening beyond the period we describe, ring us rather than waiting it out.
Habits That Keep Them Out of a Preston House
- Give a guest a luggage rack or a hard chair for their bag instead of the end of the bed
- Strip and wash a spare bed after a stay rather than closing the door on it
- Open cases next to the washing machine, not on the duvet, and deal with the washing that evening
- Look over any second-hand bedroom furniture on the drive before it comes indoors
- Keep enough clear floor under the beds to run a torch along the skirting
Unlike the seasonal pests the Pest Control Preston page sets out month by month, bed bugs keep going all year in a heated house, so there is no quiet period to wait for. The borough-wide page is Bed Bug Control Brent, the Brent bed bug advice covers the first day or two, and houses in neighbouring Kenton are priced the same way.
