Pest Control Thornton Heath

Pest Control in Thornton Heath

Thornton Heath is a densely built neighbourhood in the CR postcode area of south London, sitting between Croydon and Norbury. The streets are packed with Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses, many converted into multiple flats, alongside some interwar housing and post-war estates. That density and the age of the buildings drive the pest activity. Mice are one of the most common calls we get from Thornton Heath. The terraced houses share party walls and mice travel through gaps in those walls, around pipework and along cable runs without ever coming outside. In converted flats, the shared risers and voids between units provide routes between floors. A gap around a pipe under a kitchen unit or behind a washing machine is often the only visible clue.

The busy commercial strip along Thornton Heath High Street and Brigstock Road has a high concentration of food outlets, restaurants and takeaways. The waste from these businesses attracts rats, which also use the Victorian drains beneath these streets as routes from the sewer system to the surface. Cracked and broken drain pipes are one of the most common sources of rat problems in this part of south London and we often recommend a CCTV drain survey to find the source. The railway lines cutting through the area provide further corridors for rat movement and properties backing onto the embankments see the most activity.

Bed bugs are also an issue in Thornton Heath, particularly in the multi-occupancy buildings where higher tenant turnover can introduce them. Wasp nests appear every summer in the roof spaces and wall cavities of the older houses, tucked behind the Victorian brickwork and under the original roof tiles that give the terraces their character.