Why a Fixing Recess Is So Good
A countersunk hole is a tapered cone in solid timber with a screw head at the bottom of it. It is dark, it is enclosed on every side but one, it is a few millimetres across, and nothing ever disturbs it.
Measure a bed bug against that and it is not a coincidence: an unfed adult is four to five millimetres long and flat enough to slide into a gap under two millimetres. A fixing recess is not just a place they can use — it is very close to the dimensions they select for.
The Fixings On a Typical Bed
- Countersunk screw holes at every corner joint
- Bolt recesses, usually a larger diameter and deeper, on a bolted frame
- Cam locks and dowel holes on flat-pack construction — a cam housing is a cylindrical cavity with a gap around the shaft
- Slat housings, and the rubber holders on a sprung base
- The screw plates that hold castors or legs on
- Bracket fixings for a headboard or a centre rail
- Pilot holes left over from a previous assembly, on a bed that has been taken apart before
A flat-pack divan or frame commonly has forty or more. They are individually tiny and collectively the reason a frame outlasts a mattress.
The old fixing hole nobody thinks about. A bed that has been moved house, or reassembled in a different room, usually has redundant holes from the first assembly - open, empty and unused. They are better harbourage than the ones with screws in.
Joints Are the Same Argument
Wherever two pieces of timber meet there is a line, and unless the joint is glued and clamped there is a gap along it. Age widens them: a frame that has flexed for ten years has openings a new one does not.
- Side rail to headboard post
- Centre rail to its supporting leg
- The corners of a drawer box
- The rebate a thin ply back panel is pinned into
- Any mitre that has opened up
What This Means for a Treatment
It is the reason a bed comes apart. A treatment that left a frame assembled would have reached the outside of the joints and none of the inside of them, which is where the population is.
- The mattress comes off
- Drawers come out of a divan
- A headboard comes off the wall or off the frame
- Slats are lifted where the design allows
- The frame is separated at its main joints where it is practical
- Fixings and joints are dealt with individually
It is also why the preparation instruction about access to all four sides of the bed matters. A bed pushed into a corner with storage underneath cannot be taken apart, and a bed that cannot be taken apart cannot be properly treated.
Can You Fill Them In?
Filling redundant holes and gluing open joints is a reasonable thing to do to a bed — after a treatment, not instead of one, and not while an infestation is live.
Done at the wrong time it seals insects and eggs into a cavity that the treatment then cannot reach, which is worse than leaving the hole open. Ask before you reach for the filler.
Twyford: What To Say When You Book
"Flat-pack frame", "solid wooden frame", "divan with drawers" and "metal frame" describe four genuinely different amounts of work. It takes ten seconds to say and it is one of the few things that changes the shape of a visit in advance.
Do not squirt an aerosol into a screw hole. It is the instinctive response to finding one occupied and it disperses what is in it into the joint and the timber beyond, while removing the evidence that showed how far the problem had gone.
Bed bugs in Twyford? Pest Control Specialists Berkshire treats bed bugs from £220 for the first room. Bed Bug Treatments in Twyford has the full detail, or call 0118 336 1366.