Bed Bug Heat Treatment

If the infestation is limited to one room only, it may not be necessary to do the full home. Also in some circumstances, clients only need to treat one item in particular, such as a bed or a sofa, in which case we can use a heat tent.

Steam is very effective at killing 100% of all life stages of bed bugs and other pests exposed to it on mattresses and accessible surfaces. However, its efficiency decreases if bed bugs are located beneath a fabric cover.

We use spare racks on which we place the hangers spaced adequately apart and expose the clothes to the heat for 20mins. Then we unload the racks on top of the bed and repeat the operation until the wardrobe is almost empty, at which time the heat will effectively penetrate the area.

In some circumstances, you simply cannot use any chemicals whatsoever.

Therefore the only option left is heat treatment. It is by far the safest  and most eco-friendly solution available.

Inoculand Ltd provides heat treatment in London and the surrounding counties such as Essex Surrey, Kent and Sussex. Do not hesitate to contact us to check whether we can provide heat treatment in your area.

Bed bugs that have previously been exposed to pesticides and survived often develop a strong resistance as a consequence. There are already instances of bed bugs in America that are 100% immune to insecticides. In this case, heat treatment is the only solution.

In practice, you cannot carry out heat treatment inside a kitchen or bathroom as it could cause damage to the domestic appliances and to the bathroom ceramic goods. It would be very rare for a client to report bed bug sightings in a kitchen or bathroom – but if there is, we would use steam and/or spraying methods.

Heat treatment is 100% effective as a killing method since no bed bug stages can survive above 56 °C.  However as a pest control treatment it may only manage to kill up to 95-100% of them.

But in practice, a few adults bedbugs may find a ways to escape the heat by crawling deeper inside the wall or underneath the floorboards.

Also bedbugs may find refuge in cold spots. Ottoman and mezzanine beds are particularly difficult to deal with since we cannot turn them around easily.

After a bedbug heat treatment, whatever bedbugs that may have survived it, will be dehydrated and weaken, so this will further enhance the effect of any chemical treatment that would follow.

Read more on how to prepare your home for fumigation

Before carrying out heat treatments, the tenants need to remove items that are prone to heat damage.

Televisions, computers, mobile phones, game consoles, waxes, perfumes, and plants would need to be placed inside the bathroom or kitchen to be safe.

But there are a number of other things that are not so obvious, and really, pretty unpredictable. The rule of thumb is that cheaply-made items are more likely to suffer damage than quality-made items.

Over the years we carried out a very large number of heat treatments, and we had the occasional problem. In most instances, it was very limited and insignificant to the client. In some other instances, the items needed to be replaced.

1- Wallpaper is held with glue, there is no way to know for sure how well it was done, and if they used quality glue. We never witness wallpaper falling down outright, but we have seen it a few times curling in some areas.

2- Laminated furniture has a PVC coating. But it could be quality spray-coated PVC or a thick laminate held with quality glue, or a thin laminate with a cheap adhesive. We never had any issue with painted PVC, but we had once the laminate of a cupboard door popped out suddenly, almost 2 weeks after the heat treatment was carried out.

3- Cheap Venetian blinds are often made entirely of PVC as well. But even the more expensive aluminum ones may have PVC fittings that could let go under the weight when heated up. Once, we saw a heavy aluminum blind fall to the floor, we could not put it back as the plastic fitting had changed shape. And once, the PVC slates of a blind curled a little.

Carrying out a full heat treatment is going to generate heat and a build up of CO2. As such it is likely to trigger  your fire alarm or sprinkler system. Therefore it is imperative to get it disconnected.