Bed bugs clearance - diy

[Anquin]

Ok - I’m gonna start this thread and keep adding to it as I go on...

On 30th April, we discovered a major infestation of bed bugs in DS’s room - aaaarrrggghhh!

This thread describes what we did - and are doing - to rid the house of them and hopefully help others dealing with this horrible pest infestation...

[Anquin]

DS’s bedroom is the box room, and having moved back home from his flat, he had replaced his old single bed with a double divan with storage underneath the lifting slatted base.

The room has a fitted wardrobe, laminate flooring and matching laminate flooring attached to the wall to create a head and side board. The windows have fitted blinds.

The base of the bed was velour, and the bed bugs had colonised the corners of both sections of the base (8 separate colonies)...

[Anquin]

Now - DH (now retired) used to work in an industry that called in experts periodically to find and eradicate these pests, so knew what to do...

First, we decided to get rid of the bed and mattress (a bit drastic, but the infestation was so big, we didn’t think we had a chance of eradication in the short term).

So we completely encased both sections of the base and the mattress in heavy duty plastic, hoovered up as many of the bugs as possible and took each section of the bed and mattress outside (making sure that there were no bugs on the plastic before moving out of the room)...

[Anquin]

Next thing was to get DS to bag up and seal ALL of his clothes and take them to our laundry room with the aim of washing everything at 60 degrees over the next few days, resealing the bags after each wash load had been removed from each bag.

He also had a few suits, which we also sealed in bags - more of that later.

Then we hoovered the room again and started to flush out any remaining bugs using a steam cleaner. The little beggars were behind the laminate on the wall, and also underneath the radiator pipe floor caps, and the steam, well, let’s just say that they don’t like it up ‘em!

[Anquin]

So now we had a completely clear room (DS luckily can sleep elsewhere for the moment).

Knowing that the eggs can lie dormant, and that the room needed to be heated to over 50 degrees centigrade, we attempted to use two space heaters, but only managed to raise the temperature to 37 degrees. So we decided to monitor the room for the time being, while attempting to source a heater that will go above 30 degrees before the thermostat cuts in. I will update this thread once we have found one!

[dalrympy]

Sadly, from experience, all your efforts are unlikely to have got rid of them.

If the infestation is as bad as you describe (and I've seen one place worse than that) then you need hardcore chemicals, a professional steam treatment and you will probably have to lift all laminate and replace the blinds.

You might find it gets rid of them for a while but they'll be back.

[Anquin]

So then we turned our attention to our room (which we have only just had completely refitted, new bed, wardrobes, carpet - everything!) and....

...the little beggars had started to colonise our headboard. At this point I was at an all-time low, thinking we would never get rid of them, but DH examined the extent of this infestation (also checked in and under the bed which is also a lift up storage bed, but from Ikea) and found there were fewer than 10 adults, hiding behind the stapled fabric on the back of the headboard, and also established that there was no way they could have got inside it, as they had laid a few dozen eggs on this fabric in full view.

We trapped the eggs and bugs in sellotape and deployed the steamer again - no more bugs came out, and after examining the whole bed frame were confident we had successfully removed this outbreak...

[Anquin]

Thanks for reading this far!

...so, the next step was to check our DD’s room, which we did the same as our room - and there was no evidence (like shed carapaces) that any bugs had got that far (phew!)

All that remained now was to put in place a monitoring plan and sort out the bagged suits...

[Anquin]

We have a greenhouse, but because of Covid-19, haven’t started any plants this year, so we placed the bagged suits in there for a few days, and the good news is that the temperature rose to over 50 degrees centigrade for a few hours over the warm weather.

Now, the internet tells you that the bugs can only last for 5 days without feeding (on us), but I caught 2 of them, and placed them in a glass jar, covered the top with cling film, and here we are, 21 days later and one of them is still alive!!!

So we thought that the suits could probably do with a 50 degree soaking for more than the 2 hours recommended and plan to get them out of the bags next week!

In the meantime, we have pulled out and closely examined our bed every Thursday, and will continue to do this until next week, after which we will do it every 2 weeks twice, and once a month thereafter...

[Anquin]

So here we are, three weeks after our initial discovery.

We’ve thrown away one bed, steam cleaned two bedrooms thoroughly, observed the bug lifecycle (ongoing!) and now are aware of what they look like, and have found the best way of removing the eggs.

We have a plan for monitoring for these in future, and the knowledge that the steam cleaner flushes them out, and hope that the greenhouse experiment works out for the suits. We are still trying to source the heater for DS’s room to heat treat it, and I will let you know what happens next.

I hope to find that we’ve been successful in our strategy to eradicate these horrible creatures, and most of all, I hope this very long post helps others with similar infestations!

[Smurfie12]

Can youupload a picture of the captured bed bug please.

[Anquin]

@dalrympy, thank you for the heads-up: we’ll continue to monitor and I promise to update the thread regularly with our honest findings...
If they come back, I will let you know...

[Anquin]

@Smurfie12, I will do, as soon as my phone and iPad coordinate! They are about 0.5cm in size...

[Lightsabre]

How awful for you all. Have you checked all of your soft furnishings ie, sofa's and behind pictures and any wallpaper?

[Anquin]

Image of bedbug - and update: they are both still alive, the other one must have been asleep before...

[Anquin]

@lightsabre, yes we did - no further found! DS’s Bed came from a storage unit, and he’d previously treated the bed for bugs in his flat, and thought he had gotten rid of them, so the chances are the bed came into the house with dormant eggs which then hatched (DH had said that the bugs he had seen before in the flat were fly larvae, and he hadn’t spotted bed bugs or we wouldn’t have allowed the bed back into the house)

[Anquin]

And yes, it’s made me much more alert to what to watch out for, and my house has never been so cleaned in it’s life!!!

[ouch321]

Ah OP deep sympathy.

I was scared I had them a couple of years back. Always getting bitten on my face and sometimes in the dreaded lines and clusters. Still now

Never managed to find any sign of them or associated evidence. I remember reading all the bed bug forums and getting into quite a state about what to do.

I'll keep am eye and see how it goes for you. Wishing you luck

[dalrympy]

The main thing to look out for are tiny black dots, particularly in wood and on mattresses - specially down in the little folds around the edge of the mattress.

[ouch321]

I never found any even did the credit card on the seams thing, and when I had a pest control guy come out for tropical ants - a neighbour brought them onto the building retiring from a holiday- I asked him if I could get him to check it as well and he couldn't find anything.

I have never been able to find out what bites me but after 2 years I know I'd see evidence by now so I have discounted that it's bed bugs. No idea what it is though.

I feel really bad for you genuinely

[Gimmecaffeine]

Deep sympathy. Bed bugs are horrific.

It sounds like you have probably cut down the population, but unfortunately it is extremely unlikely to have done the job.

I'd really recommend getting experts in, but be wary of treatments. Spray pesticides can work but tend to 'scatter' them, making them harder to find and spread elsewhere, inuding potentially to neighbours. The bastards can lie dormant for months and wait it out. Heat is more effective but is hideously (££££) expensive and doesn't always work, it just takes one female to survive and you're back to square one. Bed Bugs UK have a really good reputation if you'te vaguely London based, and have given me brilliant phone advice for free.

If you must DIY, try cimexa powder. It is completely non-toxic powder that works by dehydrating them. It works quickly and effectively, you just dust very very finely with a paintbrush. Steam is effective too but you do need a powder too. DO NOT spray, nothing commerically available will be strong enough.

Keep washing and tumble drying, you can dry on a high heat things that don't need washing.

A passive monitor is good for sanity. Don't buy interceptors/sticky traps, they are shit and can make things worse.


Finally, try to avoid binning things. Unless the mattress is torn they don't live inside it, although encasements are nice. There will be other bedbugs around the bed so binning it doesn't really help, it just means they form a harborage elsewhere. You want to let them do whst they do naturally so they are predictable and you can get them with a powder. Scattered bedbugs make life shitter.

chin up, they are fixable.

[Gimmecaffeine]

www.amazon.co.uk/Bed-Bugs-Limited-Passive-Monitor/dp/B00SJEH0R0?tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21

Passive monitor

[Anquin]

Thanks for all the hints and sympathy. We are monitoring closely and I’ll post updates weekly - I think now cutting down to checks fortnightly might be a bit optimistic so we’ll continue with once a week checks for the foreseeable future...

[usernaming]

Watching with interest, op.
I'm at my wits end. I went away for Christmas and must have brought them back from the hotel.
I've thrown out my bed and my huge sofa in the sitting room.
I've tried lots of different sprays and spent a fortune on things that turned out not to work - Daemetrous [sp] earth [which is worse than useless and does not work] and have recently ordered Cimexa [sp]
I also have strong double sided sticky tape round the legs of furniture and the single easy chair I'm using - which has also got a plastic cover encasing it.

I even bought an expensive steamer that was too difficult and heavy for me to use, I have Rheumatoid arthritis and chronic fatigue.

I use isopropyl alcohol 70% as an instant knock down spray but the price of it since Covid is astronomical. I found a really heavy duty hair spray called glued is good for knockdown too but that's not cheap either.

From what I've read op, clothes need to be washed at 60% and held at that temp for 30mins. And the bedbugs can live 12 to 18 months without feeding.

I wish you luck op.

[usernaming]

Meant to add I'm doing 4 lots of laundry a day - and I live alone - to
try and keep on top of it.
Spraying my chair, the encased mattress, pillows and bed stead in isopropyl daily too.

[Northernsoullover]

Just a tip.. if you ever go to a hotel always strip the sheet and check the joins on your mattress for bed bugs. I've done identifying pest infestations as part of my degree and we all check hotel beds now.