Biting insect control in Garsfontein

If you or your children keep getting bitten at home and you're not sure what by, don't start with a spray. Start with the clues. Where on the body are the bites? When do they happen? Who in the house gets them, and who doesn't? In Garsfontein homes the answer is usually one of five culprits: fleas, bed bugs, mosquitoes, bird mites or a spider. Each needs a completely different treatment, so working out which one it is matters more than anything else.

Reading the bites

Ankles and lower legs, often after walking across the carpet

That pattern points strongly to fleas. In a suburb full of family dogs and cats, they're the most common biting insect we treat. Bites are small, red and very itchy, and pets will be scratching too. Our page on flea treatment for Garsfontein homes covers how we deal with them.

Rows or clusters on the arms, neck, back or face, mostly overnight

Bites appearing after a night in bed, often in a line of three or four, suggest bed bugs. Look for dark spots and shed skins along mattress seams and the headboard. They often follow travel, a school camp or second-hand furniture. See bed bug control in Garsfontein for more.

Scattered bites on exposed skin, worse on summer evenings

Mosquitoes, especially if you hear the whine at night. They breed in standing water around the garden: pot saucers, gutters and pool covers.

Itchy bites after birds nested in the roof

Bird mites come down into the house when chicks leave a nest in the roof space. Look for minute crawling dots around ceiling lights and window frames.

A single, painful bite that blisters or swells

Often a spider, such as a sac spider that wandered across the bed, or occasionally an ant or centipede. If a bite spreads, ulcerates or makes someone feel unwell, see a doctor.

How we work it out

We ask questions first: when the bites started, who's affected, whether you have pets, have travelled, bought furniture or had birds in the roof. Then we inspect. That means checking mattresses, bed frames and couches for bed bug evidence, pet bedding and carpets for flea dirt, ceilings and the roof space for nests and mites, and the garden for mosquito breeding sites. Once we know, the treatment is aimed straight at the source, whether that's a flea treatment for the carpets and the dog's resting spots, a bed bug treatment with a follow-up visit, a nest treatment in the roof or a resting-area treatment for mosquitoes.

All of these can be done with the family at home. Treated surfaces should be left alone by children and pets until they have dried completely.

The most common wrong turn

Treating for the wrong biter. We regularly meet families who have thrown out a mattress for what turned out to be fleas, or sprayed the carpets for weeks when the problem was a bird nest in the ceiling. Spending a little time on the detective work first saves a lot of money and frustration.

A tip for Garsfontein households

Keep a simple bite diary for a few days before we visit. Note who was bitten, where on the body, roughly what time, and which room they'd been in. Snap a photo of fresh bites. If you can, put a strip of clear packing tape, sticky side up, beside the bed or near the pet's sleeping spot overnight. Anything that crawls or jumps onto it is evidence we can identify.

What does it cost?

That depends on what we find. Flea treatment is priced on the size of the house and outdoor areas, bed bug work on the number of rooms and items of furniture involved, bird mite work on where the nest sits and how many rooms are involved, and mosquito work on the garden and resting areas. Sometimes the answer turns out to be simple, like an outdoor lamp drawing mosquitoes towards an open bedroom window, and the fix costs nothing.

For the broader city service, see biting insect control in Pretoria. We do the same detective work for families in Waterkloof, and the rest of our local services are listed on the Garsfontein pest control page.

Whatever we treat carries our 3-month guarantee, so if the same biter returns within three months, we'll return as well. You can reach us on 012 012 5526. Alternatively, message us on WhatsApp with bite pictures and a few details and we'll help narrow it down.