Bed bugs in a tenement flat: when the neighbours have them too

Most Edinburgh homes are flats, and a large share of them are in tenements: four or five storeys of sandstone around a common stair, with eight to twelve households sharing walls, floors and a front door. That shape matters a great deal when bed bugs turn up. A detached house deals with bed bugs on its own; a tenement flat is part of a building.

How bed bugs move between flats

Bed bugs do not fly or jump. They walk, and they hitch rides. In a tenement they have several routes.

Through the structure

Old tenements have lath and plaster walls, timber floors with voids beneath, and pipes and cables that run between flats. Gaps around pipes, behind skirting boards and at the edges of floorboards give a bed bug a way from one flat to the next. They follow warmth and the carbon dioxide people breathe out, so a bed against a shared wall is the most likely place for them to arrive.

Through the stair

Bed bugs can crawl under a front door and along the stair, though this is less common than people fear. More often they travel on things: a mattress carried down to the bins, a sofa dumped on a landing, bags of clothes stored in a shared cellar.

When a flat is treated

A treatment that disturbs bed bugs without killing them, such as a shop fogger, can drive them into the walls and into the next flat. Even professional heat can push a few through gaps if the edges of the flat are not handled carefully.

Is it coming from next door?

A few signs point to a neighbouring source rather than something you brought in yourself:

• the bites and marks are concentrated along a wall you share with another flat;
• a neighbour has mentioned bites or a treatment;
• you have treated once, properly, and they came back within weeks with no travel or new furniture in between;
• bugs are found near pipes, sockets or skirting on a party wall rather than in the bed itself.

A careful inspection looks for exactly this and should tell you plainly if the source seems to be outside your flat.

What to do if a neighbour has them

Check your own flat now, even if you have no bites. Plenty of people show no reaction to the bites. Look along mattress seams, the bed frame joints and the headboard, especially on any wall shared with the affected flat. Keep sleeping in your own bed.

Then talk. The best outcome in a tenement is every affected flat treated in the same week, so bugs have nowhere to retreat to. That takes some co-ordination:

• Owners can agree between themselves, or through the factor if the stair has one. The council’s tenement toolkit explains how shared decisions are made in a stair.
• Private tenants should tell their landlord or letting agent in writing. Under a Private Residential Tenancy the landlord must give 48 hours’ notice to come in, which is plenty of time to arrange an inspection.
• Council and housing association tenants report it to their housing officer and ask for the neighbouring flats to be checked.

If you are arranging Edinburgh bed bug treatment for more than one flat in a close, say so when you ask for prices. Firms often price the second and third flat more cheaply when the visits can be done together.

Choosing a method for a tenement flat

A spray and steam course is the usual choice in tenements because the residual product keeps working along skirting and around pipes for weeks, catching bugs that arrive from next door. Heat kills everything in the flat in a day, but leaves nothing behind, so it works best when the neighbours are being treated too or are known to be clear. Many firms combine the two: heat inside, a residual product at the edges.

Expect a tenement course to need its third visit more often than a modern flat would. Our heat treatment page covers how heat is run in thick-walled flats.

Things not to do in a shared stair

• Do not carry a mattress or sofa down the stair unwrapped. Wrap it in plastic first and tell the council’s bulky uplift service it is infested.
• Do not leave furniture on the landing or in the back green.
• Do not store bagged clothing in a shared cellar or bike store.
• Do not use foggers or bug bombs.