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ChristianKl comments on Open thread, Oct. 20 - Oct. 26, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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After writing the Anti Mosquito thread we went into a discussion into other species to eliminate. While doing that bed bugs came into my attention. I do have rashes that look like the ones shown in the bed bug article on Wikipedia.
Today I searched there are indeed bed bugs.
Does anybody have experiences of getting rid of them?
As mentioned by btrettel, I had some a few months ago that, as far as I can tell, were totally wiped out by one thermal remediation, which seems to be the mirror of hyporational's suggestion. Basically, they heated up the apartment enough that all the bedbugs and their eggs died, and this took ~8 hours and was expensive. I found the extermination company on Yelp.
I have several bookshelves with lots of books, and the bedbugs apparently like to crawl all over the place--there was a husk at the corner between the wall and the ceiling--and so the exterminator was pretty insistent that I go with the thermal remediation (which would kill them everywhere) instead of using pesticides, which would have to be applied everywhere to be as effective.
People in Finland freeze their sheets and mattresses in the winter and it seems to do the trick. I'm not sure if this helps you now unless you have a huge freezer.
While continuing reading I found that the thing I spotted in my home black and therefore not real bed bugs so I'm not certain anymore that it's bed bugs.
In any case it's a sign that I need to clean more ;)
When winter is coming I will probably move my sheets and mattresses outside to freeze.
Most exterminators will check out your residence and give you a quote for free; they're probably much better at identifying (and finding) pests than you are.
They also have a set of incentives which does not match yours.
I did some quick googling and most sources seem to say that you need at least -18C for 24 hours to kill them. I'm not sure if this means that they don't die in higher temperatures at all or if you just need more time.
Another trick people in Finland use is sauna, 60C kills them.
Heat treatment is an option, but most quotes I've seen say 120-140C.
I don't doubt that 60C kills the live bugs. Does it also kill the eggs?
Saunas easily go to over 100C. I don't know about 140C, though...
Sympathies.
In my case, spraying all over the room several times got them down to a tolerable level. By tolerable I mean that I was sleeping with no duvet or pillow so that they would have nowhere near me to hide, and often performing less-thorough sprays, and as far as I could tell, I wasn't getting bitten any more - so given several months, they would have just died off. I was still seeing one or two a week, though, and the spray probably wasn't too good for my health. That lasted maybe a month or so, then my landlord decided to just replace the bed, and I think I only saw one after that. (I've since moved out.)
Vaniver does. Might want to message him about it.