This page explains in detail the full process of getting rid of bed bugs. Before you get started though, you need to ask yourself if you’re equipped and prepared for the task. Read here to find out if you need an exterminator or not. This section breaks down getting rid of bed bugs into four parts. First, you will need to pretreat your apartment. This involves finding the bed bugs, isolating them, and preparing the rooms and furniture for the use of pesticides and heat. The second phase is the extermination of the bed bugs through various methods. The third phase details how to check whether you are actually bed bug free, and how to prevent a future infestation. Finally, we have included a list of things you must be sure not to do when dealing with an infestation. The first phase of exterminating a bed bug infestation is pretreatment. This begins with a general cleaning of your house including tidying and vacuuming, throwing out of items that are beyond saving, and finding all of the areas where bed bugs are hiding.
If you live in an apartment, before anything else, notify your landlord and neighbors. Start the pretreatment with a widespread extremely thorough cleaning of the residence: Once you have finished the initial cleaning, you will need to inspect every nook and cranny of your residence and identify where the infestation is, so you will know where to focus your treatment. It may be helpful to read our page on identifying an infestation first. Keep note of any bed bugs or signs of bed bugs from your general cleaning and begin your inspection: Now that you have identified an infestation, cleaned your house, and identified sensitive areas, you are ready to begin treatment. There are dozens of different options for getting rid of a bed bug infestation and we will cover several of them. What we recommend for anybody trying to solve this problem is what is known as an ‘Integrated Pest Management’ (IPM) solution. An IPM solution combines multiple techniques including pesticides, natural solutions (heat), sanitation, and prevention and emphasizes using harmful products only up to an environmentally justifiable level.
Before starting any of these treatments, make sure you have completed all the steps in the pretreatment section. Otherwise, the treatment is far less likely to be successful. The use of several of the suggested methods in conjunction will give the best results. You should treat your residence at least three times, allowing for a week to two weeks between each treatment. The following methods can be used to eliminate bed bugs in areas in which you have identified bugs and / or congregations of bugs. Mattresses are a key area of infestation and where people are generally bitten, so the topic deserves some notes of its own. Once you have identified an infestation in your mattress (small dark fecal spots, blood stains, eggs, holes in the mattress or paneling of the bed, bed bugs) you can either treat the mattress, encase it in a special cover, or throw the mattress out. Get bed bugs out of cracks in the wall or from behind loose wallpaper with a flat knife, a playing card, or using hot air from a blow dryer on its highest setting.
When the bugs come out, catch them with paper towels, packing tape, or special bug ‘sticky traps.’ Half a minute to a minute of continuous air from a blow dryer on its highest setting should kill the bed bugs. After doing this, we recommend applying one of the special dusts as mentioned above inside the opening to both kill any remaining bed bugs and to ensure no bed bugs return. Once you have cleared the bugs out of the area, caulk, seal, or repair the crack (or hole or loos wallpaper, etc.) so that the bugs will not be able to get in again and so that any bugs inside will not be able to get out. As mentioned in the pretreatment area, by this point, all removable or washable affected items should have been discarded, laundered, or bagged with a Nuvan strip and left in the sun. Once you have eliminated the infestation (or if you don’t have an infestation but are worried about getting one), it is important to put in place measures to ensure you don’t get a re-infestation.
Start by sealing any bed bug hiding spots that you can. Mattress covers (as described in the previous section) will keep bed bugs out of your mattress permanently. Repair cracks in walls, repair or remove loose wallpaper, and tighten light switch and electrical outlet covers. Apply caulk to close openings in cabinets or where the walls meet the ceiling. The most important thing to do in order to prevent a re-infestation or a separate future infestation is to increase your awareness. Be sure to carefully inspect any used furniture you bring into your home. Dry your bedding often on the hottest dryer setting. After you have gone travelling, immediately wash all of your clothing in hot water and thoroughly inspect and vacuum your suitcases. When you check into a hotel room, inspect the bed area for signs of bed bugs. Place your luggage on a rack that is far from the bed and the walls so that no bugs travel home with you. You can periodically place bed bug detection systems (for example the ‘Catchmaster BDS’ or ‘Verifi Bed Bug Detector’) around your bed and see if they catch any bed bugs to alert you of an infestation early.
This is a good thing to do after a trip, after a worker comes to your house, or after guests stay over. This is also a good idea after eliminating an infestation in order to see if any bugs are left over. There are a few methods that it is important not to use when dealing with a bed bug infestation. ‘Bug Foggers’ and ‘Bug Bombs’ will not kill bed bugs. They will only serve to scatter a congregation of them, thereby taking what may have been a local infestation and spreading it all over the room or the residence. High temperatures are very effective at killing bed bugs. They can also die in very low temperatures, but this will only happen if the temperature remains significantly below freezing for several weeks and is thus not a recommended solution. In addition, concentrated heat such as that from a washing machine or dryer on their highest setting, a steamer, or continuous contact from a very hot blow dryer will work to kill bed bugs but raising your thermostat, for instance, will do nothing except cost you more money.