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I recently made a long post in a thread about bed bugs that contained some horribly uneducated advice from people who have been watchign the reality tv shows, The Exterminators and Verminators, listening to these people on the forums who make claims that household heaters will eliminate your bed bug problem can put you, and your house in danger, and even worsen the infestation you may be having!!!!  
 
so i have decided to place my full post in a new thread so people can read proper methods on the removal of bed bugs. it is a long read but worth the knowledge.  
 
bed bugs are not as dumb as you think, if you place heaters in your room and seal it you will waste money on nothing and possibly burn your house down, bed bugs will crawl under the baseboards and into the walls behind the drywall...........heat wont get ALL of them, especially if the walls containing bed bugs are INSULATED..... you are wasting your time with HEAT  
 
stop encouraging each other with uneducated ideas you get from watching tv. these people are trained proffessionals with proffessional equipment, not a bunch of store baught heaters and sealed entrances  
 
as far as i know xterminators dont do the heat method (in this area) because, THERE ARE MUCH BETTER AND MORE THOROUGH WAYS TO ELIMINATE BED BUGS THAN BURNING YOUR HOUSE DOWN!!!! (sure, the fire might kill them but you wont have bed bugs OR a house)  
 
lets take a bedroom infestation example, this is how i am trained to handle bed bugs  
 
First of all, if you have travelled recently, stayed in a hotel, make sure you locate your luggage bags, turn off the lights grab a flashlight and do a little inspection around, if you have had your luggage in more than one area you probably have a multi room infestation....not good.  
 
lets just say after inspection you come to the conclusion that you only have bed bugs in your bedroom, you keep your luggage in your closet...  
 
first thing you want to do, to ensure a good start, is yes, vacuuming, really grind it into the ground to crush any guys that could be in the fibres  
 
Now, empty all dressers of clothes, all bedding, all anything you want to wear or sleep on or w/e and bag it all up, SEALED COMPLETELY with clean bags that came from outside the house or infested room to make sure no cling ons are on the bag, and will infest other areas. label bags from where they came from, you will want to know if drawers had evidence of bed bugs in them so you can save money on your laundry bill, or if thats not a problem, WASH IT ALL IN HOT WATER WASHING MACHINE.  
 
Then, Move everything away from the walls into the center of the room so you have a few feet of clearance, loosen carpet so you can get under your frames, (should be a gap between the actual floor and the drywall) Remove baseboards floorboards (if applicable) DO NOT REMOVE ANYTHING BUT THE SEALED BAGS OF CLOTHES FROM THE ROOM, you want to keep the infestation where it is untill eliminated. if washing your clothes outside of your home, DO NOT BRING CLOTHES BACK IN SAME BAG! put them in a new one  
 
now everything is in the center of the room, vacuum the baseboards really get it in there and rub it hard kill any guys that are in that carpet. vacuum any spot you couldnt get to in the pre vacuum session.  
 
depending on what kind of vacuum you have you may have bed bugs crawling around in your vacuum, gross.....moving that around the house can create the possibility of spreading the guys around, again creating a multiroom infestation, not good! dump contents into a bag, seal it, if already bagged (bag vacuum) bag it again, seal it..you will want to vacuum some diatomaceous earth, this will shred any guys that are in the hose of the vacuum, very nice. rub bristles down with something hard to kill any cling ons......great vacuuming is done!  
 
Now, onto the mattress!!!! exterminators will use a steam gun, bed bugs bodies cant handle the temperature from the contact of the steam, so instead of lacing your mattress with pesticides, steam will be used to eliminate all 5 stages of the bed bugs lifespan from your mattress! simply by going over the mattress a few times making sure you get into every crack or seam where the bed bugs WILL hide.  
 
Time to grab your boxspring! rip the covering off the bottom, and grab your steam gun, its time to kill some more using the same method as with the mattress! make sure you thoroughly get the inside and outside of the boxspring to ensure maximum killage.  
 
Finally onto where they are hiding, the walls the cracks all of that stuff, using a dust that is designed to kill bed bugs ex. tempo. put a light even layer of dust in all.....light switches, plugins, underneath all of the wall surrounding the room (in the gap between drywall and actual floor, make a fine even layer) behind doorframes inside any lights in the walls and any crack or crevace in walls floors or even any cracks near the corner of the ceilings!!!(bed bug mating is extremely painful for female bed bugs they get peirced in the back by the males!!!!!!!and injected with babygoo! so they will literally hide way up away from the males) get it got it good.  
 
once you are sure, all harboring sites of bedbugs have been dusted, all bed bugs in mattresses or boxsprings have been steamed to death, and if bad enough walls have been treated with a residual spray(optional but sometimes necessary step), place glue boards and pest monitor traps around previous harboring areas and around feeding area (bed) Inspect regularly once every day or 2 days for several weeks to make sure they actually were eliminated, and your done!!!!  
 
as you have probably figured out, this is not an easy process, hence why bed bugs are such a problem!!!! they are not as easy as placing heaters in your room or opening a window, and telling people to vacuum improperly will only spread them around the house!!!!!  
 
 
so i am begging you stop telling each other ideas that you have watched on tv, you are NOT a trained professional just because you watched a reality tv show, and you may have caused even worse infestations on the people who read these forums.......  
 
if you have any questions or problems feel free to call me at 1-204-571-5791  
 
thanks a lot, sorry for the long read but people have to know the proper method even tho you more than likely will not have the equipment, or the pest products to do these procedures, i simply wanted to educate some of you on why these are around still to this day and save some poor people from listening to bad advice  
 
thx for reading  
 
Jordan  
 
Edited by jacquieandjordan, 2010-03-18 07:24:56