For Immediate Response
For Immediate Response
You had the house treated for fleas, the technician has been and gone, and a week or so later you spot one jumping on the carpet. It is natural to wonder whether the treatment worked. More often than not, what you are seeing is the flea life cycle catching up, and how you look after your carpets over the following weeks has a big say in how quickly the problem is over.
Fleas go through four stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Victoria’s Department of Health notes that the full cycle can take anywhere from two weeks to eight months, depending on temperature, humidity, food and the flea species.
The stage that catches people out is the pupa. A fully grown larva spins a cocoon that sticks to carpet fibre, pet hair and dust, and the flea develops inside it. The adult can stay resting in that cocoon until it senses a host nearby through vibration, pressure, heat, noise or carbon dioxide. That is also why people get bitten when they walk into a house that has been empty for a while.
HealthyWA makes a similar point: your carpet may contain fleas in all stages of development, not just the adults you can see, and a severe outbreak may need more than one pesticide treatment. So a flea that appears after your treatment can simply be one that was still tucked away and developing when the treatment went down.
If the fleas came in on a dog or cat, treating the carpet alone will not fix it. HealthyWA’s advice on managing a flea outbreak is to treat your pet, its bedding and your house at the same time, because focusing on only one or two of those areas wastes the effort. Ask your vet which flea product suits your pet.
Vacuuming is the most useful job you can do after a flea treatment. Your technician will tell you when you can start. Once you can, HealthyWA recommends vacuuming carpets, floors and upholstered furniture every day for at least a week.
A few things make that vacuuming count:
Walking around and vacuuming both create vibration, one of the cues that brings adults out of their cocoons, so seeing a few fleas while you keep up the routine is not a sign you are doing it wrong.
Ideally, ask this before the technician leaves. There is no single answer, because it depends on the product that was used and its label directions. Ask your technician when carpets can be shampooed, steam cleaned or otherwise wet-cleaned, and follow what they tell you. If you did not get an answer on the day, call the office and check before booking anything.
It also helps to know what a carpet clean can and cannot do here. According to HealthyWA, steam cleaning kills many adult and pre-adult fleas, but some eggs may survive and hatch afterwards. It also suggests checking with the carpet cleaning company that your carpet is suitable for steam cleaning. In other words, a clean is a good partner to a pest treatment, not a replacement for one.
If you have a crawling baby, tell your technician before the treatment. HealthyWA notes that toys can become contaminated on treated carpet and that steam is preferred where babies may come into contact with insecticides.
Once your technician has said the carpets can be cleaned and flea activity is clearly settling down, a professional clean is a sensible way to reset the house. Pet hair, flea droppings (they look like tiny dark specks) and general soiling collect where pets spend their time, which is usually where the fleas were worst.
When you book, tell the cleaner that the carpet has had a flea treatment, when it was done, and anything your technician said about cleaning. Ask how their method works and how long the carpet will be out of action. A Perth carpet cleaning company such as Magic Dry, for example, uses a dry cleaning method with carpets dry in about two hours, which keeps the time that kids and pets need to stay off the floor short.
There is one situation where carpets deserve extra thought before you even unpack: moving into a house or rental where a dog or cat used to live. HealthyWA explains that flea outbreaks can happen when people move into premises where pets previously lived, because fleas in their early stages can stay in carpets or at undisturbed edges of floors for up to a year and develop into adults once the house is occupied again. If you are moving into a home like that, talk to us about the timing of a treatment and your carpet cleaner about the clean, and make sure each knows about the other.
If fleas are becoming a regular problem in your home, have a look at our flea pest control in Perth page and the rest of our residential pest control services, or contact the Pest Be Gone Solutions team to book a treatment or ask about one that has already been done.
