Pest Control in a Block

The structural problem

It Is Not Your Bit

In a flat, the roof, the eaves, the external walls, the service voids and the drainage below ground are almost always communal. So the resident hearing something overhead, or watching wasps go into the fascia, or finding droppings under the kitchen units, usually cannot commission an inspection, cannot authorise a repair and cannot fit anything.

Which produces the standard stall: the resident rings a pest controller, the pest controller says the way in is the communal roof, and everybody goes back to the beginning.

Two exceptions worth knowing. Anything wholly inside your demise — bed bugs in your furniture, ants coming up through your own floor — is generally yours. And the lease is the final word on where the boundary falls, so if it matters, read it.

Making it move

A Finding, Not a Complaint

Managing agents act on maintenance items. They do not act well on complaints, not out of indifference but because a complaint is not a work order.

So the thing that moves this is a written finding that says where something is getting in, which part of the building that is, and what it needs. That converts "there are rats" into "there is an open pipe entry at the base of the north elevation", which is something somebody can instruct.

Worth including: the location, a photograph, what it is, what it needs, and whose responsibility it falls under. If a drainage defect is beyond the boundary it is the water company's, reported for nothing — and telling an agent that saves them money, which tends to get attention.

If several flats are affected, say so and say it together. One report signed by four households is a different document from four separate complaints.

The pests that need the whole block

Three of Them

For most problems, one treatment at the right place covers everybody. Three do not work that way.

Bed bugs. They travel between flats through voids, along service runs and in shared laundry. Treating one flat while the neighbours do nothing is how a building-wide problem gets established, and it is the commonest reason a block ends up with a chronic issue. A block needs a coordinated approach and a survey of the flats either side, above and below.

Cockroaches. Same mechanism — service voids and ducting — and worse, because a repellent product used in one flat drives them into the next.

Mice. A connected void is a corridor. One flat baiting alone is feeding a population that lives in the structure.

All three are cheaper handled together than repeatedly and separately, which is an argument worth putting to an agent in those terms.

If you are the agent or freeholder

The Economics

The pattern that costs the most is responding flat by flat. Six separate attendances over eighteen months, each treating a symptom in one demise while the source stays in the structure, costs considerably more than one survey of the building and one programme of proofing.

Three things worth having:

• A building survey rather than a flat visit, covering the roof, the low-level envelope, the bin store and the drainage.
• The bin store looked at seriously. It is the single commonest source in a block and it is nobody's favourite.
• A record of what was found and done, which matters for leaseholder queries and for any subsequent dispute.

We are happy to deal with an agent directly with a resident arranging access, and to attend out of hours where access is easier.

Short answers

Drain Blocker Questions

Going further

Drain and Rat Guides