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Bed Bugs in Flats and Shared Walls
If you live in a flat and the bed bugs arrived with no travel and no new furniture, the explanation is usually on the other side of a wall.
The routes between one home and the next
Bed bugs do not chew through brick and they do not need to. What they use is everything that already passes through the structure: service risers, cable runs, water and waste pipe penetrations, the void under a shared floor in a converted house, and the boxes behind sockets and light switches on a party wall.
A socket box is a particularly good route. It is a dry, dark, stable cavity that very often connects straight through to the identical socket in the next home, and nobody ever looks in one.
This is why, in a flat, the inspection is not only your bedroom. We check the party wall services, and where the evidence sits at a shared boundary we say so.
Photographs on this page are for illustration purposes only.
Why one flat on its own often is not enough
A treatment kills what is in your home. It does nothing about what is in the home next door, and if that route is open the population walks back. People end up paying for the same treatment two or three times and concluding the treatment does not work, when the problem is the scope.
That is not an argument for doing nothing. It is an argument for treating your flat and simultaneously getting the adjoining ones looked at, which usually means getting the freeholder or managing agent involved.
What to ask for, and what we give you
The useful thing to have in that conversation is a written record: what was found, where in the property, whether the evidence was at a shared boundary, and what was done about it. That is what turns "I think it is coming from next door" into something an agent can act on.
We provide that as standard on this kind of job. It is also what a tenant needs if a landlord is reluctant, and what a leaseholder needs if a block manager is treating it as an individual problem.
Where several flats are involved, treating them together in one visit is both cheaper and more likely to end it than treating them one at a time over three months.
If you rent
Report it in writing, with dates and photographs, as soon as you find evidence. Keep a copy. Whatever the position on who pays, the record of when it was reported is what matters later.
Do not start treating it yourself with shop-bought products first. It rarely works, it can scatter the population further into the building, and it complicates the professional treatment that follows.
Before you book
Quick Answers
Who pays in a rented flat?
That depends on the tenancy agreement and the circumstances, and it is a question for your landlord or agent rather than for us. What we can do is give both sides a clear written account of what was found and where, which is usually what the discussion turns on.
Can you treat several flats in one visit?
Yes, and where a shared wall is implicated that is what we would recommend. Treating connected homes at the same time is the version that finishes.
Tell Us What You Have Found
Bites, spotting on a mattress seam, or something you have found and cannot identify — tell us what you have seen and where.
Get in touch
Book a Bed Bug Visit
Tell us which rooms are affected, how long it has been going on, and what you have actually found. A photograph of a mattress seam is worth more than any description.
- Phone
- 01908 465226
- Message us on WhatsApp
- sales@miltonkeynespestcontroller.co.uk
- Milton Keynes Pest Controller Service
- Address
- South Row
Milton Keynes
MK9 3DQ - Covering
- Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and parts of Hertfordshire