What DDD means

The clear split

A simple rule: if what is being treated is a visible animal, it is not disinfection.

We specialise in disinfection only — the first row. That means we have no “also” service for insects or rodents to add on. It is a deliberate choice: a narrower specialism gives deeper experience.

Three letters, three completely different trades. All they share is history and the fact that they are often sold as one package.

Where the abbreviation comes from, and why it misleads

DDD is an old industry label from a time when all three fields belonged to a single epidemiological service and were planned together. Today it survives as a convenient shorthand in company names and adverts, but it creates the misleading impression that this is one service with three variants.

In practice these are three different specialisms with different knowledge, different preparations and completely different working logic:

That is why the question “do you do DDD” almost always has to be narrowed down. Otherwise the client orders one thing, gets another and is unhappy with both.

Where to turn

If your problem is not micro-organisms, we cannot help you — and it is more honest to say so straight away:

• Insects indoors — a disinsection service. In Latvia, for example, dezinsekcijariga.lv.
• Rodents indoors or in the building — a deratisation service. For example, deratizacijariga.lv.
• Mould, odours, micro-organisms, treatment after an incident — that is our work.

If you are not sure which group your problem falls into, describe it in the enquiry form. If it is not our field, we say so and point you in the right direction — that is a shorter route than a call-out that ends with the conclusion that you should have phoned somebody else.

Where they overlap

In practice there are situations where two services are needed one after the other:

• The smell of a dead animal inside a structure. Removing the animal and dealing with the reason it got there is deratisation; treating the premises and removing the odour afterwards is our work. More detail: dead animal odour removal.
• Contamination after a long-standing problem. Once the cause is gone, the sanitary treatment of the premises remains: surfaces, gaps, textiles, odours.
• A food business with a hygiene plan. There you usually have both regular surface disinfection and separate monitoring against animals. Those are two contracts and two providers, even if the plan is one document.

In cases like these the order matters: deal with the cause first, treat the premises second. In the opposite order the treatment is wasted money — a few weeks later the situation is exactly what it was, only the treatment has been paid for.

The commonest mistake when ordering

The mistake is ordering a method rather than a result. Somebody calls and asks for “ozone treatment” or “fogging” because an acquaintance recommended it or a forum said so. But the method follows from the problem, not the other way round.

With a proper description we can often say on the phone whether a visit is needed at all and what it will cost. With the word “DDD” that is impossible.

The other widespread mistake is assuming that a company with a longer list of services is more convenient. In practice it means part of the work is passed on to subcontractors, and you never find out. We do not do that — if the job is not ours, we do not sell it.

How to place your own problem from the signs

In most cases the question is settled in a few minutes if you know what to look at. Three groups of signs point to micro-organisms and therefore to disinfection:

• A patch that grows gradually and is linked to a damp spot: an external-wall corner, a window reveal, a bathroom ceiling, the wall behind a wardrobe.
• A smell that gets stronger in warm weather, after the room has been shut up or after rain, and weakens once the room is aired.
• Contamination after a specific event: flooding, a sewage failure, illness in the household, a long period standing empty.

If those are the signs, this is disinfection and our work. If the problem can be seen with the naked eye, moves about and has a definite appearance, it belongs to a different field and a different specialist — and this page has then already given you what you needed: the right direction rather than a call-out.

There are borderline cases too, where nothing is clear without an inspection. An example: a smell in the stairwell of a pre-war building that gets stronger in warm weather. It could come from damp timber structures, from a damaged soil stack, or from a dead animal in the floor structure. The first two are our work; the third starts with a different service. In cases like that the source is identified first, and only then is it clear who will deal with it.