Bed bug control: the eggs are why it comes back, and the programme is two visits
Bed bugs come back after the first treatment because the eggs are not affected by it. They hatch seven to twelve days later, which is why the programme is two visits fourteen days apart. The second visit lands after hatching and before the new adults can breed.
How to tell you have bed bugs
- Dark specks like pen flicks along the mattress seam and at the corner piping.
- Bites in a line or a tight cluster, usually noticed on waking rather than at night.
- A faint sweet, musty smell in a room that has been closed up.
- Shed skins, pale and papery, in the seam or behind the head board.
- Small blood spots on the sheet where one was crushed in the night.
Why supermarket sprays do not work
Supermarket spray reaches the surface and nothing else. A bed bug spends almost its whole life inside a seam, a crack in the frame, or the gap behind a head board, and comes out for a few minutes to feed. Spraying the mattress top treats the one place they are not. Worse, a repellent spray drives them further into the frame and into adjoining rooms, which turns one room into three.
What the technician actually does
- The technician turns the mattress, removes the bed back board, and works the seams and frame cracks with a torch before anything is applied.
- Treatment goes into the seams, the piping, the joints of the frame and the skirting behind the bed: the harbourage, not the open surface.
- Items that cannot be treated any other way go through heat treatment.
- Adjoining rooms are checked, because movement between rooms is normal once an infestation is a few weeks old.
- A second visit fourteen days later treats what has hatched since. This is part of the programme, not an extra.
The first visit takes an hour and a half to three hours depending on the number of bedrooms, and biting usually drops within the first few days. The second visit is shorter.
The written guarantee on bed bugs
The 5-year written guarantee covers bed bugs returning in the same unit that was treated, and the second visit is included in the programme rather than charged separately.
What we cannot do
We treat your unit only. If a neighbouring flat has an infestation it can return through shared walls and service risers, and that is a separate case rather than a guarantee claim. We say this before starting, not after.
How the price is set
Two things set it: the floor area, and how far the infestation has spread by the time we inspect. A flat with a single focus point is not the same job as a villa with activity on two floors, and the gap between them is wide. That is why there is no fixed figure we can give before seeing the place. We give you the number on the call or on WhatsApp after a few questions, and always before anyone comes out.