Do You Need to Replace an Infested Mattress?

Reason One: It May Not Be Yours

In a furnished let the mattress, the base and often the sofa belong to the landlord. That makes disposal somebody else's decision rather than yours, whatever state the item is in.

• Report it, in writing, with photographs
• Ask for the condition of the item to be recorded by whoever inspects
• Do not dispose of it yourself, even if you are certain
• Keep the reply — it matters at the end of a tenancy as much as it does now

Disposing of somebody else's property is a different argument from a bed bug problem, and it is one nobody wants to be having at check-out.

Reason Two: Getting It Out of a Flat Is the Hard Part

A mattress leaving a house goes out of a bedroom, down a staircase and through a front door. A mattress leaving a flat goes through a communal hallway, down a communal stairwell or into a lift, past other people's front doors, and into a shared bin store.

Every one of those is a place it can shed, and every one of them belongs to other households.

Reason Three: It Is Probably Treatable Anyway

A mattress is a sealed textile envelope. There is no route into the interior for an insect that walks, so everything is on the outside: the piping, the seams either side of it, under the labels, inside the handle recesses, the vent grommets and the tufting.

All of that can be reached, opened out and worked along, which is why the answer for a mattress differs from the answer for a piece of upholstery whose frame sits behind a stapled dust cover.

When It Genuinely Does Need Replacing

• The cover is split or torn, so there IS now a route into the interior
• It is already at the end of its life and was going anyway
• It has been soaked in a shop-bought product by somebody trying to deal with it themselves
• It is heavily soiled for reasons unrelated to this

Only the first of those is a bed bug reason. A sound mattress with bed bugs on it is not an argument for a skip.

If It Does Have To Go, From a Flat

1. Wrap it in heavy polythene and tape it closed in the bedroom, before it moves
2. Book the bulky waste collection first, and take it out on the day
3. Shortest route. Do not rest it against a wall in a communal hallway
4. Cut or mark the cover so nobody takes it
5. Do not leave it in a bin store, a stairwell or a car park for days
6. Tell the managing agent if there is one

Slough: The Replacement Goes In Last

The expensive version of this runs the same way every time: mattress out, new one delivered, room never treated, new mattress colonised within weeks from the frame, the base and the skirting that were left alone.

If you are replacing, replace after the room has been dealt with and after you have been told it is ready. Then fit an encasement on the new one, which seals the piping and seams permanently and makes every future check a glance.