I have a small lodge/retreat center.
We never had bed bugs for 15 years. Then 5 years ago they started showing up every couple years. Best investment ever was to buy a set of bed bug heaters. (Almost $2k USD)
I co-own with my friends lodge. I have wood bunk beds. We treat with DE baseboards, all cracks in bunk beds and supporting wood. The idea is if anyone brings them in, the DE kills them before they reproduce.
Yes, put DE in sockets, baseboards, carpets, bedframes.
Whenever they visit us, we heat the room overnight to 130 and the combo of DE to remove most hiding spots and heat to kill them works great. Never had to use anything else. DIY solution and affordable. You can see whole home bed bug treatments with heat can cost thousands with a specialist. In case of a bad infestation, if you own the heaters (or can rent nearby), you can just treat again 11 days later in case you missed any eggs.
You just wipe up the remnants and you can put a room/unit back into play within 24 hours.
You never can know if the guest that finds them was the guest that brought them, unless there is obvious large infestation that has been there for awhile. But if you don’t see the poop, you are lucky and caught it early and someone in the last 1-30 days brought them in.
DE is all I would do until your first visit. Hopefully it will be years/never before you ever have to deal with it.
Okay I’m so fascinated. I assume it’s not one of those contraptions that is like an insulated box into which you stick furniture, whole and assembled, and then turn up the heat until it’s all hot enough to kill the bugs?
I assume it is one of the contraptions that’s a massive heater where you just close the door to a room, set up a bunch of fans, and heat the whole room until you achieve a uniformly hot temperature in every little crevice? If that’s the situation, then what’s to stop the bugs from just moving into a cooler room while you’re doing one room?
I keep doom scrolling through accounts of people who just can’t get rid of bed bugs. I checked every little part of my airbnb and have found no evidence of any (hallelujah) but I assume it will happen one of these days and I need to be ready. I read about bedbug sniffer dogs in France but there don’t seem to be any operating in Sydney so now my husband has a fantasy of training a bedbug sniffer dog and renting out their services, since there seems to be a real demand for it.
Anyway, can you tell us about this set of bed bug heaters you bought? Since we’re not likely to train a sniffer beagle, I want to explore the possibility of buying a heater when the horrible day arrives and I find a bedbug.
just youtube bed bug heaters. Yes. you need 4 normal 110v circuits of 30 amps each . 8 extension cords to power the heater. You just heat the room to 130F for 8 hours. You can use a lazer temp gauge to check if all the areas reach the required temp. The bugs COULD run through the walls. But they don’t seem to be good at it. And if you put your diatomaceous earth along the baseboards, they will die before laying more eggs. It just works, if you have walls that are that easy to crawl through, you just finish in main problem room, and then do the room next door as well. Its like a 2 prong attack. You put a layer of DE wherever they might run, and then you heat the room so they have to run. Usually you will find BB while there are only a few hundred. So its not like the horror stories of millions. You just heat them, they die, you vac them up and wipe the poop dots away and you are good to go. If you are worried about it, try sleeping in the bed before the guests… (be a real superhost!) hehe
This is excellent information, thank you so much – I feel better prepared for when the horrible moment comes!
I should add, if you have a guest that find bites and you find BB. The ideal thing is to move the guest to a second room. (This is more of a hotel scenario) Then leave their luggage in the problem room while its being heated. Basically make sure they don’t take BB to their next stop or home. This is the crux of the problem and why it spreads. People that have them at home run with their luggage to a hotel while the home is treated. Now the hotel has it. (Or your VR)
And similarly, people get bit at a hotel and don’t say anything and then leave a bad review and just keep moving the bugs around when the best thing to do it quarantine and heat everything before moving anything. So if you have a VR with multiple rooms, educate the guest who found the bugs, then assure them you have the solution. Put them on a cot for the night in another room, and treat all their luggage and the problem bedroom before moving anything. Boom problem solved without the next hotel or VR getting hit. Remember, the BB are not on the person. They hide in the bed area. So the person can take a shower, throw their clothes in a clothes dryer (heats over 130F for 20 minutes should be fine) then they are basically guaranteed not to be a carrier. Leave their luggage in the room and heat it… Problem solved.
Also, we dont’ usually refund our airbnb guests when they find bugs because we tell them THEY may very well have brought them from their last vacation. It’s kind of a touchy subject because most guests will not believe you. But its usually clear if the BB have been their for awhile. (Lots of poop dots) .
But imagine someone takes a trip and even just 1 bug goes in their luggage. Guests didn’t get bitten. Goes home, the bug lays eggs while the luggage is not in use for months. The BB chill out waiting. Guest goes on another trip months later and shows up with a bunch of BB and sleeps near that bag. Now the guest discovers BB bites in the morning and assumes it came from your bed when that guest actually brought them to you. There is no way to know unless the infestation is obviously well entrenched with all stages of size bugs and lots of poop.
If you are knowledgeable and can work with the guest to make sure they don’t become a carrier. (Scare them about taking BB home with them and let them know you are the solution rather than the problem(. It is the ideal scenario for everyone.
The public health departments should really be more proactive on this front and have some “safe hotels” where guests can go to stop BB from moving around.
I’ve seen the heat working in action. Moved infested bunk bed to center of room. Heated the room. Left a cardboard box on the tile floor under bed. Come back to check room after it is at 130F. Moved the cardboard and a bunch of ‘runners’ had crawled under the cardboard to escape the heat but weren’t dead yet. They just run around until the heat kills them.
The last thing that I would say that will make this difficult is carpet floors, headboards attached to walls, built in furniture, etc. You want to move everything to the center of the room and after room is heated fully, move everything around, flip things over onto a different side, aim the heaters at different walls for 30 minutes each. Make sure their is nothing to hide under. They also make styrofoam covers for fire sprinklers. 130F SHOULD NOT trigger fire sprinklers, but why take the risk.
I’ve probably done this myself successfully 5-10 times since 2016. It’s just one more hassle that you have to educate yourself on if you are going to be an amateur hotelier.
You can read about people that pay $5000 for a treatment like this. But having the knowledge and tools to DIY make it really not a big deal.
Also, after heating a room, it is super fresh! So if you ever have some funky smells, you can bust out your heaters and freshen things up.
A quick google for “bed bug heaters” shows you a bunch of big blue fan/heater options. You basically have to get a set that is big enough to heat your largest room. Pricing is $1300-$2700. A good set will come with all the extension cords you need. They turn your room into a giant convection oven. My set is a heater/fan combo, with another fan for the other side of the room.
If you are in the USA. I bought from this guy in 2016.
These seem similar
I’m not affiliated with either. Shop around. They are all just toasters with fans essentially. Very simple machines.
This is all fascinating and useful information, thank you so much. I just have one last set of questions: does the heat damage things? Does it make the wood/timber expand or shrink; are there any specific things that need to be moved out of the room before heat treatment?
Similar question – e.g., will it melt the guest’s deodorant and cosmetics in their ditty bag? My kid & their spouse had bedbugs in their NYC apt. Room heaters were not an option given an extensive collection of vinyl records, artwork, and other heat-sensitive items.
They put washed or steam ironed clothes in plastic bags, used a heatbox to put luggage in, sprinkled diatomaceous earth, and had two pesticide treatments from a guy with a bedbug-detecting dog. They still had to throw out their wood platform bed frame, kept finding eggs in the crevices. The landlord had some legal responsibility to pay for the treatments. The critters are probably still lurking in the apartment building somewhere and may reappear.
Google says:
Heaters kill BB at 130. So that all could have been avoided. Heat works. The heaters can’t heat over 132F. And who wants nasty chemicals all over the house. Also, could have easily moved everything out of the room with the wood bed and heat treated that room and saved the furniture.
Like many people, we have exterminators come into the properties once a month.
The important thing for us is that on every occasion, they leave us an official notice on their official stationery stating the date that they came and provided their services.
Although in many years of hosting I’ve never had to deal with bedbugs (touch wood, cross fingers etc.) I’ve always thought that the monthly documents would placate a guest should we have an infestation - proving that we did everything we could to offer bug-free apartments.
I would think that extermination that frequently would create a situation where the bugs eventually become immune, just like bacteria do when antibiotics are overprescribed.
I live in the tropics where insects are prolific. I have never used exterminators nor poisonous chemicals, just keep the place clean and do not have any indoor insect issues. I have an organic insect spray that uses a base of cinnamon oil that I use occasionally. Plus, I don’t want to kill the harmless spiders and geckos that keep the other insects at bay.
Well thanks, I’m sure heat alone is do-able in one apt in a multi-apt walk up bldg, but depends on the landlord’s contractual obligation and what they are willing to pay for or reimburse.
In a loft apartment, all one big room, there’s no place to move stuff to another room.
Personally, I wouldn’t risk it with valuable collector vinyl. Also if the temp does go a bit high due to a calibration or whatever, I imagine worst case scenario the ceiling sprinklers activate.
I think you’re right. At least, that’s the case here with mosquitos. Every year (or every couple of years) a new strain comes along that has become immune to the usual repellants.
With this company though, they change the chemicals used if one becomes less effective. Another great thing about the company we use is that they offer money-back guarantees. Although I’ver never had to put that to the test!
Another question…what about potential infestation from using public transport that has cloth covered rather than vinyl seats? Could bed bugs infest these seats?
That’s exactly what the original poster of this thread was talking about- they have had infestations in Paris of bedbugs on trains, in airports, and other public places.