Bed Bug treatment with Lambeth Pest Control

I worked for five years for the Lambeth Council, first in Public Health and later for the Lambeth Pest control service. During these years, I came across a number of interesting and challenging jobs that helped me shape what I wanted to do with Inoculand.

Beg Bugs treatment in Lambeth

I had to deal with a large seven-bedroom council house in Lambeth. The tenants had experienced ongoing bed bug activity for years. Lambeth Pest Control had carried out sporadic treatments over the past two years, but it had failed to deliver long-term results. Many bedrooms had two or more beds, and most were heavily infested.

I explained to the tenants that bed bugs have a life cycle that needs to be taken into account, and it was evident that the tenants were spreading the problem from one room to the next by moving contaminated items between the areas. So, the first thing was to have them committing to a plan of action and following our recommendations.

We gave our clients a clear set of instructions:

1. Ensure that all items belonging to a room stay in that particular room until you are confident that the infestation is over. You will thereby limit contaminating other rooms and lessen the risk of re-infestation. Particular items include beds, mattresses, items stored under the beds, suitcases, picture frames above beds, and bedding.
2. If you must move bedding or other contaminated items throughout the house, ensure that these items are kept in a sealed bag.
3. All of the sleeping stations need to be slept in, as people act as bait. The bed bugs will move over the sprayed areas in order to bite the clients. They will thus be exposed to the poison, and, later, the bed bugs will die. In effect, the bed bug population will be depleted and, after three weeks, completely eradicated.
4. Only time will tell if the treatment has been successful. Three weeks with no activity is a strong indicator that the problem is over.
5. Any bed bug activity following the treatment should be reported to Lambeth Pest Control without delay.

I carried out a total of four visits at two-week intervals, spraying all bedrooms and communal areas, beds, mattresses, bedside furniture, floors, and walls.

Could Lambeth Pest Control be offering a heat treatment option?

When I left the Lambeth Pest Control department in 2008, they were not offering any form of heat treatment. As far as I know, the Council staff only rely on pesticides to deal with bed bugs even to this day. But thinking back on that particular home, it would have been much better for the tenants to have their home heat treated.

Two of the bedrooms were so infested that the tenants had to keep on enduring bites while the chemical treatment was depleting the stock of bed bugs. Even doing pest control steaming would have alleviated their suffering greatly and helped the chemical treatment along.

For Lambeth Pest Control, offering a full heat treatment service or a steaming service may not be very practical. Heat treatments are very time-consuming, premium services, and it would probably not make much commercial sense since the services to council tenants are normally free of charge.

How Inoculand Ltd emulated Lambeth Pest Control

I learned pretty much everything I know about residential pest control from the time I spent working for the Lambeth Environmental Health department. They have access to state-of-the-art tools and the best pesticides available on the market. The team I worked with was among the friendliest people you could imagine. My dream was to take it one step further. I was convinced that the way forward was heat treatments and mouse proofing as a means to put a proper end to pest issues.

After more than a decade, we continue to offer pest control services in Lambeth, but this time as an independent pest control provider.