Instead of using hot water that can be hard on fabrics couldn’t you just soak them in water? Don’t dustmites need to breathe?
You’d have a hard time getting the air out of the fabrics at the scale that dustmites exist.
A better way to kill dustmites - lower your thermostat to 65 over the winter. Dustmites cannot thrive at that temperature.
Put the fabric in the refrigerator or freezer. Freezing a dustmite will explode the shell, killing it. Dustmites are very dependant on water - but they get what they need from the air. A low humidity (below 50%) will also kill dustmites.
So I guess I never have to worry about getting them here in Utah? I mean, we’re on the east edge of the Great Basin desert.
There are also laundry additives that take care of dustmites. National Allergy sells a variety of products to deal with dustmites. I’ve tried several things from them, all of which worked fine. The main differences have been in what fabrics the different products could be used on and how they were applied.
My understanding is that the issue with dustmites is not just killing them, but also denaturing the protein in their carcasses and droppings. The proteins are the actual allergens, so it doesn’t matter if the mite is alive. Obviously, though, killing them is good so they don’t reproduce. But even if you killed the mites in, say, a pillow, the proteins would still bother an allergic person until they had been denatured chemically or with heat.