Will Carpet Cleaning Kill Fleas?

It’s that age-old question among homeowners with pets, the possibility of carpet cleaning as a solution to killing the fleas that are causing everyone in the house a whole lot of headaches. In short, Perth carpet cleaning will indeed be a useful option for eliminating your flea problem, however, you are only solving a portion of that problem.

That’s due to the fact that fleas can also reside in numerous additional areas in and around the home, places such as your furniture upholstery, a pet bed, and of course, the pet or pets that are the source of this scourge in the first place. So while you are wiping out the fleas and the eggs that have taken up residence in your long lasting carpet, you aren’t fully eradicating fleas from your home.

Flea infestations can be a real challenge to eliminate completely, so it’s very important that you understand the many different factors that can play a role in wiping out every flea living under your roof.

Keeping Fleas Away

Like many annoying insects of their size, fleas seek out warm and moist environments in which to live and breed. This is why pets will often see more of a flea infestation during the warmer months of the year, any place where moisture is in the air you can bet fleas will want to go there.

Particularly dense infestations are very tough to eradicate and the longer you allow these fleas to reside in your home, bite you and your family and your poor pet, the more likely you all are to be uncomfortable and miserable. Not to mention the more fleas you will have in your house as eggs are laid and hatch.

Fleas breed at an incredibly high rate and that can result in their eggs and larvae finding their collective way into your carpet and other hard to clean furnishings and components. When these pests are widespread throughout the home, that can make carpet cleaning a good foundation for a wider strategy towards flea removal.

Dose Your Pet First

Your cat or dog is constantly scratching, their skin is getting red and irritated and you’re at your wit’s end seeing your furry family member suffer. The carpet is playing a role in that discomfort as fleas and eggs make their way into the fibers and allowing more fleas to get onto your pet.

So the first thing you must do in order to fully kill fleas is to apply a reliable flea treatment to your pet’s skin. It may take up to two to four doses in order to destroy all of the fleas and eggs in your pet’s fur. But while that medication is coursing through your pet’s system, new fleas will also die off and their eggs killed as well.

Therefore, you really need not be worried so much that new fleas will replace the old ones. The new ones will die off fast as well, the bigger concern is making sure that any fleas or eggs that fall from your pet and into the carpet will also be given a quick death.

For many homeowners, that quick death solution is to steam clean the carpets. But this will only work if you have also eliminated the fleas and eggs from the pet as well. So dosing first is of paramount importance in the struggle to kill off your flea problem.

Vacuuming

You will also need to vacuum the carpeting as well, along with the furniture, the pet bedding, basically anywhere your pet likes to lay down, sit, hang out, or even run inside the house. Think of your pet as a walking flea depository and every move the animal makes is dropping more fleas, larvae, and eggs everywhere it goes.

A vacuum can be effective at picking up the eggs and larvae and even the fleas themselves but only those that are positioned near the top of the fibers along the surface. Anything that has fallen deeper into the pile is going to be nearly impossible to retrieve through suction.

Death By Steam

Your carpet cleaning professional uses very hot steam to clean your carpets. That extremely high temperature will wipe out all the fleas, larvae, and eggs as these insects are too delicate to withstand such heat, which can get as high as 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Just make sure your pet is up to date on all flea treatments, because fleas that get back in the carpet without having been exposed to flea medication previously will only restart the cycle of infestation all over again.