Destruction of bedbugs in an apartment: effective means and methods

At what temperature do beetles and the like die?

Laboratory and field tests have proven the effectiveness with which superheated steam can effectively combat the spread of bed bugs. Insects die at a temperature of + 45 ° C, and at + 50 ° C their death occurs within a few seconds. Using this method, electrical appliances such as steam cleaners, steam generators and steamers have become popular in recent years, helping to improve pest control capabilities by killing bed bugs with steam. You just need to spray the insects with scalding steam; in extreme cases, for the first time you can use a household steamer or even just a steam iron. In the future, we recommend purchasing a high-quality branded steam generator designed for this purpose. To remove insects.

Important! High temperature and steam kill not only adults, but also eggs of parasites, which is a great advantage over other control methods. Linen bugs are very sensitive to temperature changes due to heat shock. Italian steam cleaners (Polti brand) have gone on sale in Russia. They are famous around the world for being equipped with steam sanitizers that heat steam up to 180°C to break down the sticky substance that binds eggs to surfaces and eliminate insect odors. Destruction of 100% of eggs.

The only problem is that not all furniture can be processed at this temperature. Before you start treating the apartment, you must find all the places where bed bugs accumulate, because if you leave at least one parasite alive, the reproduction process will begin again.

Isolation of travel routes for bedbugs

All possible ways for bedbugs to enter the apartment must be blocked, even if it is not certain that the bedbugs got into the room along this particular path.

Simply put, if, for example, in your bedroom there is at least a small gap between the heating riser and the ceiling, but you haven’t seen a single bug near it, the gap still needs to be sealed.

How are the most common “entrance gates” to an apartment closed for bedbugs?

The ventilation holes are simply covered with grilles with a plastic mesh with a mesh size of less than 1 mm. Such gratings can be purchased at hardware stores. They are available in standard sizes to fit most standard holes. The grille is simply inserted into the ventilation duct and the entire gap is sealed with silicone sealant along the edges. Even if the size of the grate does not exactly match the hole, you need to take a slightly smaller grate and silicone the entire gap. If the grate becomes clogged with dust over a few years, you can cut it out with a simple knife (it easily cuts silicone) and install a new one.
The joints of pipes with the floor and ceiling are also sealed with silicone or puttied.
The gaps between the front door and the frame are closed with sealing rubber. Such rubber can be purchased in specialized stores for interior products. Keyholes are covered with simple curtains on one side of the door.
In summer, you need to install a mosquito net on the windows, also with sealing rubber bands. The fact is that bedbugs easily make their way between the window itself and the frame of the mosquito net. It is more difficult to reliably protect the entrance to the balcony (which, moreover, must be open in the summer), but mosquito nets that open are also sold for such openings. It is only important, if necessary, to buy and stick a sealing rubber band onto such a mesh.
It is better to replace sockets in the room with ones in which the holes are covered with special curtains. After installing the socket, the gap between it and the wall should also be siliconized.
All cracks and holes in the walls must be sealed with foam or silicone sealant. If necessary, you can even remove the wallpaper, seal the gap, and then put up new wallpaper - in any case, this will be easier and cheaper than trying to kill bedbugs over and over again.

On a note
You definitely shouldn’t expect to block the migration routes of bedbugs with folk remedies such as various herbs, vinegar or essential oils. Likewise, devices designed to repel bedbugs are useless - in reality, they do not affect the behavior of insects in any way, and if a bug wants to run through the ventilation in which such a repeller is located, it will run through it.

At SunMarieDez, we have an unspoken rule of telling all clients with bedbugs how to protect their apartment from bedbugs in the future. Therefore, all of our disinfectors, both before and after treatment, show customers the possible migration paths of bedbugs that they see in the room being treated, and give recommendations on how to block these paths. And those customers who follow these recommendations forget about bedbugs after disinfection.

How to disinfect

Bedbugs can easily tolerate temperatures from 5 to 40 degrees Celsius; they very easily adapt to any living conditions. Bedbugs experience months of “dryness” during which they do not have the opportunity to feed on your blood.

If you want to control bed bugs, you must find their hiding places. The beetles themselves, their shed skins and eggs can be recognized by the eyes.

It is not recommended to fight bed bugs solely with a steam cleaner!

Typically the procedure is as follows:

Spraying insecticides into cracks and crevices.
Next, insect repellent is applied to the walls and floors surrounding the infested items and the door frames are treated.
These insecticidal barriers prevent bed bugs from moving from an infested area to a clean area.
In addition, cold or heat helps against bedbugs: small items such as photo frames or books can be “treated” in the freezer. They should be exposed to temperatures of -18 degrees for two to three days.
The alternative is heat: to successfully control bedbugs, the temperature must be above 45 degrees Celsius for at least 30 minutes! Professional services can use special ovens to rid entire rooms of bed bugs.
Items that do not fit in the washing machine, such as mattresses, can be cleaned with a steam cleaner.
Some hotels use special bedding covers that they place over their mattresses.

Experts fight insects with pyrethroids, a group of active ingredients in insecticides. Since many insecticides cannot do anything against parasite eggs and only fight hatched bedbugs, they must work for a long time, at least six weeks (the so-called residual effect). This will ensure that any remaining bed bugs are killed when they come into contact with the treated surface.

Of particular importance: to eliminate the entire bedbug population, the success of bedbug eradication measures must be monitored weekly. In addition, experts recommend repeating the destruction several times within six months.

General inspection of the apartment and assessment of the “scale of the disaster”

Duration of this stage: 10-15 minutes

This stage usually takes the least time: the exterminator inspects the apartment in general, assesses the amount of furniture and things, the general condition of the walls and floors. At the same time, he finds out from the customer the cause of concern, the number of bedbugs and the frequency with which they are found in the room.

For example, the video below shows the treatment of an apartment in which bedbugs were literally everywhere, even under the parquet:

For an experienced professional, the first glance at a room is usually enough to accurately assess the degree of infestation and the difficulty of removing bedbugs. This assessment is influenced by many nuances, the main of which are:

A very large amount of trash and things in the apartment usually indicate a large number of bedbugs, which have somewhere to hide. On the contrary, a small amount of furniture and things at least limits the number of convenient places for bedbugs to hide;
Old renovations, peeling wallpaper, dirty moldy corners are a sign that the apartment is rarely cleaned, which means bedbug nests are rarely opened and they can multiply in large quantities. Fresh renovations, high-quality finishing materials, and general cleanliness in the room suggest that even if there are bedbugs in the apartment, there are not many of them here, because they do not have a large number of hiding places, and people detect them at an early stage of infection and take timely measures;
The number of sleeping places exceeding sanitary standards is usually a circumstance that contributes to the rapid reproduction of bedbugs. This is especially true for rented apartments, where a large number of visitors live and sleep. We came across rooms where 8-9 people sleep on mattresses on the floor in each room. Of course, these are heavenly conditions for bedbugs.

The exterminator also receives a lot of important information from the client himself. If he reports that bedbugs have been poisoned for a long time and without success, they use mainly folk remedies, and in general, the neighbors have a lot of bedbugs, then the apartment is almost certainly very heavily infested, the bedbugs have been here for a long time and have managed to colonize the most inaccessible places.

If, on the contrary, a person reports that there have never been bedbugs, but literally just noticed them, then there is a high probability that there are very few parasites in the house.

A typical example is shown in the video - we were told that there are not many bedbugs in general, but we need to get them all out. And this is what we actually saw:

However, this initial estimate is very approximate and can be significantly modified after careful examination.

For example, we have had cases where, in a seemingly clean apartment, long-term nests of bedbugs were discovered in sofas and behind cabinets, in which thousands of skins from molted larvae had already been compressed. And vice versa, in old Khrushchev apartments we sometimes got infected at an early stage, when bedbugs had just entered the apartment with things, there were few of them here and it was generally not difficult to destroy them.

According to our statistics, approximately 52% of treatments take place in apartments with a general condition that can be described as “average” - there is nothing terribly terrible about them, but they cannot be called fashionable either.

Approximately 27% of treatments take place in “bedbug infestations” - these are the most difficult, but also the most significant cases. Here we encounter either the terrible condition of the apartments themselves, or a neglected situation with bedbugs, or a huge number of people living (or simply spending the night), or several of these factors at the same time.

Here is the same apartment from Balashikha with thousands of bedbugs, but 22 days after the first treatment:

And approximately 21% of the premises being treated at first glance give the impression of being very well-groomed and clean, often elite. We had cases of calls to rich houses in VIP villages near Moscow, or to exclusive apartments in the very center of the city - bedbugs managed to infest here too.

But how contaminated the room that the exterminator looked at at first becomes clear only at the next stage.

Operating principle

A steam cleaner is a device that emits hot steam to disinfect surfaces, loosen stains, and kill small pests such as ticks and bedbugs.

Bed bugs may be tough, but they have no protection from the heat of a steam cleaner. Steam cleaners are a great, chemical-free way to get rid of bed bugs and other pests such as mites. It is enough to spray them with scalding steam to completely get rid of them.

The steam cleaner immediately kills bed bugs and their eggs and cleans the affected areas.

If you decide to use a steam cleaner, you need to be very precise and meticulous in how you apply heat in your home.

Here are some guidelines to follow:

DO use a larger nozzle for your cleaning tool
DO use dry steam or "dry steam" to prevent mold
DO buy a steam generator with a large water tank to prevent unexpected stops to refill the tank
Make sure that the area you are applying the heat to rises above 50°, otherwise your bed bugs will not be killed.
Use steam on furniture, baseboards, walls, ceilings and other hard surface areas
DO NOT use steam on electrical outlets.
DO NOT use a steam cleaner to kill bed bugs unless you have consulted with a professional.
Wear a respirator to prevent accidental inhalation of toxic fumes. Steam cleaners can vaporize chemicals that have been applied to the surfaces you steam.
DO NOT apply heat to objects that may be damaged by it.

Migration of bedbugs from neighboring apartments

This is an established fact: bed bugs do not move between houses on the street, even in summer. Consequently, within one apartment building they easily migrate between apartments, but they cannot move from a private house to another private house. Therefore, destroying them in an apartment so as to forget about them forever is more difficult than removing them from a private house forever.

In fact, in order to guarantee to prevent possible infection of the apartment in the future, you need to:

Find out how bedbugs got into the apartment;
If it turns out that they entered here from neighbors, it is necessary to block the routes of such migration.

Obviously, if this is done, then new bedbugs will not penetrate into the room in the future, and by destroying those that already live in the apartment, you will get rid of them forever. Provided, of course, that you do not bring them in again with furniture or things.

Practice shows that in some cases it is completely impossible to find out how bedbugs enter a room. In other situations, on the contrary, this is obvious. For example, we had treatments in apartments, the residents of which reported that they knew for sure that bedbugs lived with their neighbors, and sometimes the entire house was infected with parasites. That is, they are generally available in all apartments.

It is clear that the infestation of neighboring apartments does not necessarily indicate that the bedbugs came from the neighbors, but the likelihood of this is higher than in cases where the disinfestation customer does not know whether the neighbors have bedbugs.

Therefore, even before exterminating bedbugs in an apartment, it is highly advisable to interview all neighbors, including those who live above and below you.

We know that not all people agree to talk and not everyone admits that they have bedbugs. Moreover, sometimes people in infested apartments do not even suspect that they have bedbugs. Many people do not feel bedbug bites, and until they have so many insects that they simply catch their eye, they will not even suspect that their apartment is infested. And when questioned, neighbors will be told frankly that they don’t have bedbugs.

Still, it's worth asking your neighbors. Our exterminators sometimes, with the client’s permission, go around the neighbors and find out that, in fact, someone has bedbugs in their neighbor’s apartment. Although the owner himself did not do this and did not know about such a blocked neighbor’s apartment. And having learned about this, he already begins to understand where bedbugs could have come from, and can take measures to ensure that in the future they will not enter his apartment.

In addition, in many cases, neighbors not only confirm the fact that their apartment is infested, but also agree to simultaneous disinfestation. This is an ideal option: if you kill bedbugs in all adjacent apartments, you can be sure that they will definitely not come from your neighbors. And destroying them in at least one neighboring apartment reduces the risk of subsequent re-infection. Plus, simultaneous poisoning of bedbugs in neighboring apartments is carried out at a discount and is more profitable for residents. At least in SanMarieDez...

Also, in some cases, people learn from the movements of the bedbugs themselves where they come from. For example:

Insects are sometimes found near the entry points of heating risers in ceiling or floor slabs. In this situation, it is highly likely that bedbugs climb into the room precisely along the risers through the gaps between them and the stove;
Sometimes bedbugs are found in sockets, and with a high probability they climb here through the grooves in the slab;
Bedbugs are often found in rooms where they would not normally live. For example, in the bathroom, on the balcony in the summer - it is obvious that they are running here from the insecticide that the neighbors use at home, and it is obvious that they are getting here through some paths located in these very premises.

However, such pathways cannot always be identified. But at least you need to try to do this in order to increase the likelihood of complete destruction of insects.

We do not have accurate statistics of cases in which the cause of an apartment’s infestation is certainly known, much less the route of entry of bed bugs from neighbors, but in approximately every third treatment, either the homeowners or the disinfector know, or at least guess, where the insects came from. And in these cases, they can often be removed once and for all.

Treatment

There are several rules for treating a room that you should keep in mind to get rid of an infestation of parasites once and for all.

Use a steamer with mandatory confirmation in the instructions that it is intended to kill bedbugs.

You need a steam generator that has at least four liters of water in the tank. Such devices are very expensive, more than 80 thousand, so it is better to rent a steam cleaner or buy a used one.
Do not use steam cleaners on furniture or carpets. They do not reach the required temperature to kill bed bugs.
Place the triangular fastener on the hose. Most steam cleaners have a wide, square nozzle that cleans upholstery and other surfaces. Connect this attachment to the end of the hose before turning on the unit.
Don't use a carpet nozzle because the bristles will hold the actual steam nozzle too far away.
Avoid using pointed or narrow attachments as this may cause bed bugs and their eggs to be dispersed throughout the room.
Steam upholstered furniture, crevices and cracks. Fill the tank with regular tap water and turn on the steam cleaner. Clean all soft surfaces in the room, from the highest point to the lowest. This way, you can be sure that any bed bugs are swept down and not up. Bedbugs love to hide in soft materials and in all sorts of cracks and crevices.

Items that should be handled with particular care:

mattresses
box springs
furniture
skirting boards
binding tapes on carpets

IMPORTANT ATTENTION: pay attention to cables and sockets! Remove any covers from areas where you need to work before you begin.

Move the steam cleaner nozzle slowly over the appropriate surfaces to ensure they are thoroughly cleaned. 30 cm in 30 seconds is a good pace. This way, each small spot receives enough steam to kill the bedbugs and their eggs.
Remember that steam cleaning can be a long and tedious process, especially if you have large surfaces to cover. Take breaks if necessary, or have someone help you if you're worried you'll be working too shallowly.
If you encounter a live bedbug while cleaning, hold the steam cleaner on it for about 30 seconds. This should be enough to kill him. Once it dies, you can pick it up with a paper towel and throw it away.
Open the windows and turn on the fan when you're done. If you've really thoroughly steamed all surfaces, open all the windows in the room to allow air to circulate. If you have a ceiling fan, turn that on too. It's important to let everything dry quickly so it doesn't get moldy.
Place the fan close to the items you've cleaned, such as on the floor if you've been working on carpet, or higher if you've cleaned a chair, mattress or innerspring.
Repeat the process two to three times to ensure all bed bugs are dead. It often takes two or three passes to kill all the bed bugs so that no bed bugs are missed. It is best to repeat the cleaning after a few hours or the next day.
Don't wait more than a few days between treatments because bedbugs multiply very quickly!

There is an option to increase the efficiency of the steam cleaner

The surface temperature should be between 70 and 80 degrees. This is the ideal temperature to kill bed bugs without damaging your furniture during cleaning. You can use an infrared thermometer to monitor the surface temperature of the pieces you are processing. Place the thermometer about 1.5 cm from the surface immediately after removing the cleaner.
If the temperature is below 70 degrees, you may need to adjust your steam cleaner or use a different one.
Surfaces should be damp but not wet. When you're done, your furniture shouldn't be left wet. To do this, you need to change your device settings accordingly.
If the object being treated becomes too wet, remove the moisture with a dry towel.

Tip: Some items are easier to wash and dry rather than steam, such as curtains and bedding. Gather all these items and place them in plastic bags. Seal bags tightly to prevent cockroaches from spreading to other areas of your home as they move.

Hire a professional to pre-poison the pests with insecticides. While a steam cleaner can kill bed bugs, it may not penetrate deep enough to really affect them all. If you work with insecticides, you will get bed bugs under control faster.
Since insecticides can be dangerous, it is recommended that you hire a professional to take on the job. He has the knowledge to select the right chemicals and use them safely.

What you will need:

steam generator
infrared thermometer
water
towels
fan

How to prepare an apartment for processing?

First of all, you need to take care of where your family will stay for the next 24 hours. During this period you will have to take your pets with you. Chemical treatment of apartments against insects releases toxins that are harmful to the human body. They will disappear within 24 hours, and you can safely return to your normal life;
If you have a large aquarium that is simply impossible to take with you, then you need to tightly close it with a lid. Bedbug treatment can be harmful to animals;
If you have very old furniture in your home that is long overdue for disposal, then throw it away before bed bug treatment begins. If you have such furniture, but you didn’t plan to get rid of it, then tell us about it and the specialist will pay maximum attention to it;
Pack all dishes and kitchen utensils in bags. During processing, the product should not get on plates, pans, stoves or cups;
It is better to cover the equipment with film or bags. This will avoid short circuit. All substances dissolve in water, which can get on equipment and wires. Therefore, take care of your TV, computer and other equipment in your home in advance;
Do not take blankets, blankets or bedding with you. These things are the most common place for bedbugs to settle. After the procedure, simply wash all items in hot water;
Move all furniture away from the walls so that it can be accessed from all sides.

Pros and cons of a steam generator

To ensure the safety of interior items and the person who uses the steam generator as a means of exterminating insects, you need to know:

When working, do not set the steam cleaner to high humidity, so as not to damage wall coverings (wallpaper) and fabric materials;
there is no need to direct a strong stream of high-temperature air onto plastic and wooden surfaces, especially painted ones;
It is prohibited to use steam cleaners near sockets and electrical appliances, this may lead to a lack of electrical wiring;

ON A NOTE!

Before steaming, it is recommended to wrap a cloth around the steam generator nozzle to prevent insects and their eggs from being blown away by the directed air.

Disadvantages of killing bedbugs with a steam generator

the directed high-temperature air flow cannot penetrate very narrow gaps or penetrate dense fabrics;
Bedbug eggs can only be removed a short distance from the nozzle;
Steam consists of moist air and can damage furniture and some surfaces, affecting their appearance.

Benefits of Steam Treatment

The benefits of steam are an environmentally friendly and completely natural solution to exterminating furniture monsters.

The use of steam cleaners has no impact on the environment and occurs without the use of insecticides. Once rooms have been treated, they can be re-treated, or you can return to them and live your normal life immediately, without waiting.

Even with the addition of a disinfectant, a steam jet ejector can operate in the presence of people.

This method is fast and effective, with the help of a jet of steam you can directly target insect clusters, you can reach hard-to-reach places in niches and cracks.

Due to its properties, the disinfectant can be an ideal complement to highly heated dry steam and can eliminate the unpleasant odor associated with insects.

A mixture of steam and disinfectants can be sprayed in the presence of people without problems. Thus, you remove not only bedbug eggs from surfaces, but also excrement left by insects.

Steaming bed bugs has many other benefits:

Steam cleaners are very common now, so you can buy them at any hardware store;
The method allows you to get rid of parasites in your home at a low cost;
This method is the safest if there are small children or people with allergies in the house (chemicals and insecticides are not used);
Hot steam treatment allows you to destroy insects on surfaces and objects that cannot be treated with chemical insecticides.

The nuances of simultaneous baiting of bedbugs and cockroaches

According to our statistics, in approximately 16% of apartments with bedbugs we also find cockroaches. These insects coexist quite happily with each other, cockroaches do not eat bedbugs, as homeowners sometimes hope for, and usually these cohabitants do not even meet each other, since they hide, run, and feed in different places. Although there are exceptions...

As a rule, disinfestation customers either immediately ask to destroy both bedbugs and cockroaches, or agree to the disinfectant’s offer to destroy cockroaches along with bedbugs. Still, since the apartment is being prepared accordingly for treatment, this requires effort and time, it is better to remove all insects immediately so as not to repeat this procedure in the future to kill cockroaches.

Moreover, such simultaneous bullying has several specific features:

Cockroaches and bedbugs need to be poisoned using different means. Sometimes they can be effectively poisoned with one drug, but more often the bedrooms and hallway are treated for bedbugs with one product, and the kitchen and bathroom for cockroaches with another.
Preparing for this treatment is a little more difficult due to the need to move furniture and appliances in the kitchen.
Disinfestation itself against two insects takes longer. As a rule, in a standard apartment, baiting bedbugs and cockroaches lasts half an hour longer than exterminating only bedbugs.
Both the need to use different means and the high labor intensity of such processing increase its cost. As a rule, in ordinary apartments there is a surcharge of 700 rubles for additional destruction of cockroaches. This is quite inexpensive compared to separate baiting of cockroaches, which now (as of autumn 2021) is carried out on average for 2800-3600 rubles in one apartment.

Similarly, if fleas, ants or other insects are found in an apartment along with bedbugs and the owners decide to poison them too, for each type of insect destroyed, the price of treatment increases by 700 rubles.

Of course, at home you can kill both bedbugs and cockroaches at the same time on your own. At the same time, it is extremely important to choose effective means: against bedbugs - based on organophosphorus compounds, against cockroaches - based on pyrethroids. It is advisable to remove all insects at once and not expect that the bedbugs can be poisoned immediately, and the cockroaches “will somehow be caught with traps.” It is much more convenient to treat the entire apartment at once, since time and effort have been spent preparing the apartment for pest control and children and pets have been removed from here.

The effectiveness of such comprehensive disinsection in SanMariDez is identical to that of baiting only bedbugs. In 84-85% of treatments, all insects disappear after the first disinfestation; in another 12-13% they are destroyed by repeated baiting. At the same time, repeated disinsection is almost always required precisely to destroy young nymphs of bedbugs. Cockroaches almost always die out completely after treatment.

Choosing a steam cleaner for bedbugs

We suggest considering global brands that you can purchase on Amazon with delivery to Russia.

Vapamore MR-100

Uses dry steam to kill bed bugs
Lifetime Warranty
Large reservoir for long-term use

Atrix HEPA

The suction power is very powerful
Purifies air by suction
Comes with several additional attachments

Housemile Anti-Dust

Uses a carbon filtration system
Effective against dust mites and bed bugs
Easy to clean

Conair Extreme Steamer

Very light
Comes with 3 useful attachments
Holds a stream of steam for 15 minutes

Handheld steamer Sunbeam

Heats up in 45 seconds
Extremely portable
15 minutes continuous use

Atrix Bed Bug Vacuum

Purifies the air with a 4-level HEPA filter system
Comes with multiple attachments
Picks up bed bugs with powerful suction

The Atrix Bed Bug Vacuum seems to be the most attractive. Why?

It has a number of attachments and very high suction power to pull bed bugs and their eggs out of cracks and crevices.

Vapamore MR-100

Capable of quickly creating very hot steam (210+ degrees)
Lifetime warranty on heating element, boiler and all internal electrical parts.
In addition to removing bed bugs, also clean your bathroom, kitchen and floors.

Cheaper models only have a 1 year warranty. It also has a maximum tank capacity for longer steaming times before requiring a new refill.

McCulloch 1275

For people who want an inexpensive steam cleaner option.
It has a slightly smaller water tank and a 1 year warranty.

What should you consider when purchasing?

Not all equipment is created equal. Before purchasing a bed bug steam cleaner or vacuum cleaner, you should first consider your needs.

Below are some questions you may want to ask:

Do you want something that can disinfect surfaces?
Where do you want to use it?
And how long do you want it to last?

Below are some factors to consider before purchasing.

Nozzles

Some steam cleaners and vacuum cleaners are portable devices that you can travel with. In many of these cases, the product does not come with any attachments.

Baits are useful because bed bugs can be difficult to find and hide in hard-to-reach places. If you find bed bugs in a crack near the ceiling, how can you get them out?

Attachments can simplify the cleaning process and save a lot of energy when it comes to killing pests, such as curtains covering tall windows.

When purchasing steam cleaning attachments, try to purchase at least one larger brush head so that you can apply steam to a larger area. Smaller nozzles will focus too much pressure on one spot, potentially scattering bed bugs in all directions and possibly increasing the size of the infestation.

Strength and Durability

Steam cleaners and vacuum cleaners differ in their purpose and design. Some were created specifically for travel. These portable devices are not as durable as regular models. They are designed for a year or two. The larger model is more expensive, but can last for several years. They also hold more water or dirt and can be used throughout the home without having to refill with water or empty it repeatedly.

IMPORTANT!

Having a large water tank is especially important for steam cleaning jobs to avoid interruption of heat treatment.

Destruction of bedbugs as the culmination of disinfestation

At the next stage, all places where parasites were found are treated with an insecticidal preparation. For this, a cold fog generator is used, which sprays the product over a long distance and in a very dense stream, very thickly covering the surfaces with a layer of the drug. This ensures that all bedbugs on these surfaces are sprayed and given a lethal dose of the drug.

The duration of such treatment is 30-50 minutes in one room.

The more things and furniture there are in a room, the longer it will take to treat it and the more likely it is that somewhere bedbugs will remain untreated and repeated disinfestation may be required.

When processing a room, only people wearing a respirator may be in it. As a rule, only the handler stays here, but sometimes the customer himself wants to be present during the disinfestation and orders a separate respirator for himself. Sometimes this is required in cases where the customer has already called scammers posing as disinfectants before us, and after appropriate processing, some valuable things have disappeared. Unfortunately, this happens...

This is also why you need to very carefully choose the pest control service itself, focusing first of all on recommendations about proven services from friends, and only then on reviews on the Internet, which can easily be faked. Sometimes, for safety reasons, people prefer to contact state sanitary services, but in most cases this is impossible to do: state SES employees do not officially respond to private calls.

There is a semi-state company, the Moscow City Disinfection Center, but the quality of its services is much inferior to that of good private services, despite the fact that sometimes you have to wait weeks for an exterminator to come from it, and the price of treating a two-room apartment will be no less than 10,000 rubles.

All other people must be outside the apartment, and pets must leave the premises with them.

Sometimes handlers use steam generators along with chemicals, because bedbugs die instantly from contact with steam. However, it is impossible to remove all parasites from the premises in this way. Therefore, by the way, people who try to destroy bedbugs with a steam cleaner cannot do this: it will help kill some of the insects, but all of them need to be poisoned with chemicals.

In the apartment itself, windows and doors are closed during treatment, the ventilation is sealed with a sheet of paper and tape so that the drug is not drawn out by air from the room and settles only here on the surfaces.

Upon completion of the treatment, the exterminator leaves the room and closes it. After this, at least 2-3 hours, and preferably 6-8 hours, do not enter the room. During this time, the entire preparation will settle and dry on surfaces, and all insects will die. After this, the room can be cleaned and ventilated, but it is better not to wash those surfaces with which none of the people or pets come into contact, so that the drug remains on them for at least a couple of weeks and even bedbugs that accidentally survive or enter the room again from contact with they died.

Steaming clothes

The steam cleaner device is based on the formation of steam when water is heated by a heating element. The kit includes several nozzles that allow you to direct a stream of hot air directly to your clothes.

The steam straightens the fabric, disinfects it, and eliminates odors. But if clothes infested with bedbugs can be washed without damaging them, then it is better to use a washing machine, hot water and a hot dryer.

Is there a guarantee for the results of disinfestation?

The exterminator issues a guarantee only after a personal inspection of the apartment. We do not give an automatic guarantee based only on the fact of the order, since before inspecting the premises we do not know all the circumstances of its contamination.

Still, the apartment may be old with holes like a sieve in the walls, and the whole house may be infested with bedbugs. In this case, even with the complete destruction of bedbugs in the room, new parasites will be able to creep in from neighbors within a few weeks. In this case, it is pointless to give a guarantee that bedbugs will not appear for any significant period of time.

For the same reason, we do not guarantee the results of disinfestation in communal apartments and student dormitories. Although it is generally not difficult to remove bedbugs from any room here, it is sometimes completely impossible to protect these premises from the penetration of new bedbugs.

In other cases, it is obvious to the exterminator that the apartment is constantly changing occupants. For example, 15-20 non-residents can live here, and new people move in every week. In this case, infection can also occur with each new resident and his bags, which means it is impossible to guarantee that there will be no bedbugs.

We provide a guarantee for premises in which there is a high probability that new bedbugs will not appear. In this case, under guarantee, we will poison those insects that hatch from eggs laid before disinfestation (the drugs have little effect on bedbug eggs), or that could survive in unfound shelters.

In particular, several times during processing we discovered bedbugs in computer system units. Initially, during the first inspection of the apartment, we never take them apart, but if after disinfestation the bedbugs appear again, then we check them too. This is why you need a warranty visit.

Operating rules

The main rule: to get rid of insects, the flow of high-temperature air must be directed at the parasite itself, which dies after a few seconds.

IMPORTANT!

To enhance your bed bug control, you should choose a high-efficiency steam cleaner. With smaller devices the results may not be as effective.

To get rid of bed bugs using a steam cleaner, you need to know the general rules of use:

Treatment should begin in places where large numbers of insects accumulate: sleeping places (beds, sofas) and adjacent areas, seams in upholstered furniture and mattresses, etc.
The steam cleaner should produce a stream of steam and air above 50°C. First, work around the perimeter of the room to remove frightened insects from their hiding places. Then you can quickly kill them.
Separately, you need to treat the back walls of cabinets and other furniture, especially near the sleeping areas.
Bedbugs love to hide on clothing or in bedding, so you'll have to treat clothes from your closet.
“Steaming” is also necessary for curtains, carpets and other home textiles.
Before you begin removing bed bugs from upholstered furniture, you should read the instructions as some surfaces can be damaged by hot, humid air. Then you should use a special spray with a spray;
To reliably get rid of parasites, bed bug control should be carried out regularly (weekly) using a steam cleaner until the parasites are gone forever. Repeated treatments kill new larvae that hatch from surviving eggs.

Lifestyle, growth phases, nutrition

Bedbugs are parasites that prefer a nocturnal lifestyle. To effectively get rid of bedbugs in an apartment, you need to know exactly where they make their nests. It’s interesting, but bedbugs choose exactly the period when it’s easiest to get close to a person. This sleep time is between 2 and 5 am.

If you find discarded shells, eggs and excrement in the corners of the apartment, this means that the infestation is already too serious. The first generation of bedbugs makes nests as close as possible to a person, whose blood they feed on. This is the inside of a bed or sofa, a wall covered by one side of the bed, or a bedside table. As the colony of bedbugs grows, they look for new places for nests, spreading throughout the apartment.

The lifespan of a bed bug is up to 14 months. When hunger occurs or the temperature drops, the bug goes into hibernation, in which it can remain for more than a year. Activity begins the moment a person appears nearby. Parasites cannot fly, but move very quickly - up to 1 meter per minute. This makes it much more difficult to fight them.

Lifespan of a bedbug

Reviews about the application

When Marina found bed bugs in her bed, she was simply scared, because she had always believed that domestic bloodsuckers only appear in dirty rooms. Faced with an unpleasant situation, she called a special service that performed professional chemical treatment. The smell in the apartment was incredibly disgusting. She washed all the clothes and curtains, but the smell of insecticide persisted. But the bedbugs appeared again. She was at first in despair. Salvation came with a steam gun that her husband bought at a hardware store. They steam-cleaned all the sofas and furniture, baseboards and carpets. The blood-sucking insects were defeated with the help of a steam generator and they all died, and the smell disappeared.

The beetles moved into Sergei's apartment from neighbors who carried out bedbug baiting. Fearing for the health of their little son, Sergei and his wife did not decide on chemical treatment, and did not rely on traditional methods. A friend suggested that Sergei use a homemade steam cleaner for bedbugs. Sergey steamed all the sofas and bedding, the positive effect appeared immediately. In the near future, Sergey plans to repeat the process of removing parasites with a steam cleaner to destroy everything.

If sanitary standards are violated in the apartment...

In practice, it is in apartments that sanitary standards are violated much more often than in private houses.

The most common situation is the number of beds exceeding the permissible number for a specific area. For example, we often come on call to two- or three-room apartments, where each room has 6-8, and sometimes more, sleeping places, including bunk beds. Despite the fact that according to sanitary standards, only 2 beds are allowed in one room.

It is quite obvious that such apartments are simply a paradise for bedbugs. There are a lot of things here and they all touch each other, that is, there are plenty of places for shelter, there is rarely a full cleaning, and most importantly, there are a lot of people here.

From a pest control point of view, it is much more difficult to remove bedbugs from such apartments. At a minimum, there are a lot of bedbugs here, more than in a regular apartment, and there is more furniture and things that need to be treated (for example, mattresses) than should normally be in the apartment. Therefore, the price for exterminating parasites here will be higher than in a room where sanitary standards are maintained. Typically, an exterminator on site calculates the number of actual beds and for each of them over two per room charges a fee of 500 rubles. Then the treatment here is carried out using the same technology as in a regular apartment, but with a significantly higher consumption of product and with the opening of all bedbug hiding places and spraying of all beds.

Of course, a guarantee for the result of treatment in such apartments is not given simply because they often change tenants, and new guests regularly introduce bedbugs in their things. Even after perfect treatment, parasites may appear here within the next 2-3 months.

What is the best way to treat

Cost calculation

How much does it cost to exterminate bedbugs? The cost of the service depends on the professionalism of the specialists and the materials they use. The most commonly used types of chemicals are:

Executioner. German insecticide with strong action. Considered one of the strongest in its line. It costs about a thousand rubles per bottle. The product is based on a special potent substance fenthion, which perfectly kills both bed bug larvae and adult bed bugs;
Klopmotor. Russian development against bedbugs. It is quite economical. One bottle is enough for a standard two-room apartment. But there is also a minus, the substance is very toxic.
Tetrix. Quite difficult to find on the open market. But this drug is one of the most highly effective. Produced in the Netherlands. The solution is dosed.
Karbofos. An ancient but reliable remedy for blood-sucking pests. It is inexpensive, but is rarely used by exterminators, as it is considered outdated.
Kombat, Fufanon, Mikrofos, Pyrethrum, Sinuzan are also actively used

The question of how much does bedbug disinfection cost worries many people who are faced with this unpleasant problem. Know that the cost is not so high, but directly depends on the market price of the insecticide.