Bedbugs

[Crafter_Man]

@Chronos

The wood bed was definitely an issue, especially since it was laminated wood, and the lamination was starting to separate. The first time the exterminator came in, his exact words were “you might want to get rid of that.”. The second time, he asked me why I hadn’t, because he’d said that it was absolutely necessary to get rid of it. Would have helped if you’d phrased it that way the first time, bud. Anyway, I’ve now gotten rid of it.

Good. The new one is steel, I assume?

And have you installed bed bug traps yet? (See my post above.)

[CelticKnot]

Mr. Celtic Knot has just been hired to be an exterminator, and bedbugs are a serious problem in this city. The way his new employer eradicates bedbugs is heat. They bring propane and diesel engines to the house and pump heat into the house to bring the internal temperature to 120 degrees for several hours. Every inch of the house must be that hot to kill all the bugs.

I doubt repeated spraying of chemicals will really work.

[Chronos]

I don’t have a new bed yet. I’m still sleeping on the temporary mattress in the living room. I’m trying to stay out of the bedroom completely (aside from necessary treatment tasks) until the problem is taken care of. When I do get a new bed, I’ll also be getting traps.
As an aside, what happened with bedbugs, historically? When I was a kid, they were almost mythical: Everyone knew the rhyme, but parents had to explain what it meant: “Well, see, in the Olden Days, there used to be these things called bedbugs all over the place that would live in your bed and bite you when you slept”. How did we get (almost) rid of them the first time, and what caused them to come back? Or is that a false premise, and they never went away, and people just stopped talking about them?

[eenerms]

The heat has to be 130F to kill the bastards, per my husband the Health inspector. See post 16

[Chimera]

Had them about five or six years ago.

Fortunately it was a cold winter. I bagged up my bedding and most of my linen closet and left it out on the deck for three days of well below zero weather. In the bedroom I vacuumed well and put DE in the corners and along the wall where the bed was, as well as along the bottom of the linen closet.

I also got this spray what was based on spearmint oil which killed them on contact and otherwise repelled them and sprayed it liberally around the linen closet and the edges of the room.

No more bugs after that, with no exterminator.

[Chimera]

@Chronos

As an aside, what happened with bedbugs, historically? When I was a kid, they were almost mythical: Everyone knew the rhyme, but parents had to explain what it meant: “Well, see, in the Olden Days, there used to be these things called bedbugs all over the place that would live in your bed and bite you when you slept”. How did we get (almost) rid of them the first time, and what caused them to come back? Or is that a false premise, and they never went away, and people just stopped talking about them?

They used to use DDT against the little bastards and it was super effective.

Now we don’t use DDT because it is unintentionally effective against a lot of other things, like birds.

[teela_brown]

@Chimera

They used to use DDT against the little bastards and it was super effective.

Now we don’t use DDT because it is unintentionally effective against a lot of other things, like birds.

I had read that. Couldn’t DDT be approved for just limited use against bedbugs? It’s not like it’d be sprayed around with wild abandon; just inside people’s bedrooms and home interiors. That way it hopefully would not get into the environment.