Bed bugs

Right, I’m going to tell a story about what happened to my house. Yes, the house which I was staying last year and I’m currently staying. We thought of since last year was ok to be here, this year will be fine too. But, the answer is NO. The house has given me so much trouble since I was back to UK in end of September.

I shall start the story chronologically. It was an afternoon in the mid of summer this year, when I was still working with Boots for my summer placement, my housemate knocked on my door and asked me about the bites on his hands. To me, I could recognize that it was insect bites. Therefore, I asked him to get some antihistamine cream to apply on his hand to relieve the itchiness. I didn’t suspect anything goes wrong becuz there were more insects in the house during summer compared to the colder seasons. I thought I was just some normal insects’ bites.

Nothing happened until I heard from another housemate that the house is infected by bed bug, it was around mid of September. The new housemate was got bitten badly. (The housemate I mentioned earlier has left Nottingham and back to his home country.) I don’t even know what was bed bug at that time becuz I never hear d of it! It’s named as bed bug becuz it live in the bed! The bug will be attracted to your body heat when you sleep on the bed and come out to suck your blood. Sounds disgusting right? Bed bug infection is very common in hotels and hostels. It is possible to stick on your clothes or luggage and bring the bug to your home. My housemates had contacted the house owner and the house owner asked the people from the council to do a treatment. Bed bug treatment from the council is free in the area I’m staying. The council had sub the contract to a private company to come and spray the chemicals on the day when I flied back to UK. The house was in a total mess and I had to stay in other friend’s house for that night. In order to get rid of all bugs and their egg, we had to wash all clothes at 90 degrees and clean very single item of the house. I had spent a whole night doing these when I returned to my house.

We thought it was the end of the story, but no. The new housemate still got bitten by bed bug after the treatment. This has caused my new housemate had to break the tenancy contract and left the house. She had loss her deposit and 2 months’ rent, which is quite a huge amount of money to a student. Three of us who remained in the house bought bed bug powder from a website and spray the powder in every single corner of the house as prevention. The company claimed that the powder doesn’t kill bed bug chemically but physically by causing the bugs dehydrated and die. Is the powder strong enough? I don’t know. But, one of the housemate got bitten by the bug after she had vacuum the powder that we sprayed in her room. This proved that the treatment earlier (spray chemical by the private company) was failed and the infection has spread. The failure could be due to: 1) The private company didn’t do the job properly. 2) We didn’t clean everything carefully enough.

Last Wednesday, the council’s people came again to check the house and we made another appointment with them. This time, the council will do the treatment by their staff but not sub the contract to private company. We were busy cleaning again for about 4 days before the treatment. We packed the cleaned items into a bin bag and left it in our own room. I swear I never use so much bin bags before in my life. As the bags were everywhere in my room, I hardly walk around for 4 days.

Finally, the job was done by the council’s staffs. My house looks like it has been burglared. They had turned everything upside down to spray the chemicals. I think this hint that the council’s staffs provide better service than the previous one. The person from the private company was just too lazy to move things around. I spent another 2 days to put everything back in place. Gosh, it takes me a week to get everything done! This is damn time consuming isn’t it?

Will this be the end of the story? I do hope this is finale. I have no energy to clean and pack everything anymore. According to the bed bug expert from the council, it’s normal to get bitten by the bed bug in the following two weeks after treatment. But, if we got bitten after two weeks, treatment has to be redone. If the infection is coming back for the third time, I’m gonna leave the house. I rather breach the tenancy contract and lose money, than continue the cycle of get bitten-clean everything-spray chemicals-put back. Wish us good luck.

And…don’t rent this house if you are coming over to University of Nottingham to study soon.