A Bed Bug Treatment undertaken at a House in London, UK
We have followed a heat treatment specialist as he carried out a Bed Bug Treatment at a house in Central London to show how the treatment works and what you might experience if you undergo a heat treatment for bed bugs.
We were called by a customer who was based in London and had experienced some itchiness from bites. She was concerned that she might have bed bugs. She had checked her bed but couldn’t find any signs of bed bugs.
We explained over the phone how to check for bed bugs and what to look for. Things like small blood spots on bedding. We advised the customer to wash her bed covers at a high temperature then see if the bites continued.
A day or two later, we received a call from her. The bites were continuing and after reading the advice on our website, she had found some red spots on her bed sheets which she believed to be blood or squashed bed bugs.
Our Visit to the House to Carry out a Survey
Upon closer inspection at the house, we found signs of bed bug egg in the bed base and some red spots on the sheet. We do not always need to visit a property to look for bed bugs as the signs are usually quite clear and we can identify an infestation from a description or from a photos which you can send to us on our business WhatsApp or upload through our website.
Bed bugs can be persistent pests and difficult to completely eradicate, so we advised this customer to use heat treatment to remove the infestation. Many pest controllers will recommend the use of pesticides, however bed bugs have evolved to become resistant to their ingredients and many insecticides are no longer effective at removing the infestation properly.
We generally treat the whole house and not just the area showing signs of an infestation as bed bugs can easily move between rooms and can be found hiding in carpets, sofas as well as cracks in skirting boards in other rooms. Bed bugs can also travel on humans or pets meaning they could have spread anywhere in the house. Sometimes they will feed on domestic pets too so do not always nest in or near the bedroom.
We arranged to return the following day and gave the customer our bed bug heat treatment preparation checklist to make sure her house was prepared for the treatment.
The Bed Bug Treatment
We use vans with no signage for discretion and usually arrive around 8am to start the treatment. The house had been prepared according to our preparation instructions and we made sure that all items were moved away from walls of the room to allow the heat to circulate. We also checked items that could not be heated for bed bugs and treated these with insecticide before taking them away from the property.
The main thing we ask customers to do is to turn up their heating that the property is already warm, this means it is quicker to get the room up to the required temperature.
On this occasion, we use our large diesel bed bug heater, setting it up at the front of the property and running a pipe up into the main bedroom where we had initially identified the main infestation.
We also ran the pipes into the other rooms and positioned our fans in the appropriate positions to circulate the heat around the rooms.
Once our heater was running at full temperature, we ensure all windows and doors are closed to retain the heat. In around an hour the property was up to 141 degrees Fahrenheit. We monitor the temperature using our thermal cameras to look for cold spots and move items where necessary to allow the heat to circulate.
We monitor the temperature of each room for the next 4 hours, constanlty checking for cold spots and moving items where necessary. During this time we start to notice bed bugs crawling around on the bed frame looking for solace from the heat. They will not find any!
We continue to heat the property for a further hour to ensure that every bed bug, egg and larvae is killed and we can start to see dead bed bugs all over the floor and under the bed.
Post Treatment
After the bed bug treatment, we turned off our heaters, removed our fans and began to clear up. The house was still very very warm, so we opened some windows and doors to allow it to cool down as much as possible.
On returning to the house the customer was shocked at how many dead bed bugs were on her bedroom floor and underneath the bed.
We offer a Bed Bug Treatment Guarantee for 6 Months
We are so confident in our service that we offer a 6 month guarantee with any bed bug treatment undertaken.
If you think you might have bed bugs, please visit our bed bug advice page or contact us to arrange a telephone consultation or a free no obligation quote.
