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Bed bugs

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 11:35 pm
by Ritterskoop
Does anyone have personal experience? Please PM me if you prefer; I understand there is a stigma attached to this, though everything I read says it is not about cleanliness.

I have some bites on my legs and arm I can't explain, but we don't see any bugs in the mattress. The cat is not scratching, so that's good, though my reading says bed bugs would only go after her if I was not available.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2018 12:18 am
by SportsFan68
One of my best friends, now deceased, got them from a caregiver who brought them into her home. In a matter of weeks, she was covered with mildly inflamed bites, and her bed was encrusted with the remnants of bedbug eggs and bedbug waste. GoogleImage bedbugs so you can see how small they are. I never saw one and feel fortunate I never carried a breeding pair from that house to mine.

The kids moved her into their house and went to work on her house, bleaching all reachable surfaces. They burned the mattress and threw anything that was obviously contaminated or not obviously contaminated, like all the carpet. They tried turning off the heat to freeze them out, and that didn't work. They tried overheating the house, and that didn't work. They finally called in Orkin, and that worked. I was surprised that after they were done, there was no horrible pesticide odor, either in the house or the furniture.

The bites are similar to those from mosquitoes. If you do have bedbugs, they will start to increase geometrically now that they have a comfortable home. If it is bedbugs, I think you will probably have to call in an exterminator at some point, and you will probably have to wash all your clothes and furnishings. Your exterminator can probably give you advice on that.

Good luck! If that's what it is, I'm sending all my best wishes to help you get through it.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2018 7:59 pm
by Ritterskoop
Sprots, that experience sounds pretty overwhelming. I've willed that this not be like that :)

We are leaning away from bedbugs being the cause, seeing no evidence of them on the mattress or box springs unit.

We have vacuumed and will steam clean the carpet soon, and are washing everything made of cloth in the room, a pile at a time.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 12:18 am
by SportsFan68
It was overwhelming. The bedbugs weren't the cause, but she lived with the kids the rest of her life.

Here's hoping . . .

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 7:32 am
by Beebs52
Could it be spiders? Jeff has gotten bites before and it wasn't bedbugs or fleas. We thought baby spiders.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 9:51 am
by tlynn78
Beebs52 wrote:Could it be spiders? Jeff has gotten bites before and it wasn't bedbugs or fleas. We thought baby spiders.
.. in which case, the answer is far simpler, burn the place down.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 2:18 pm
by Beebs52
tlynn78 wrote:
Beebs52 wrote:Could it be spiders? Jeff has gotten bites before and it wasn't bedbugs or fleas. We thought baby spiders.
.. in which case, the answer is far simpler, burn the place down.
wimp

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 2:32 pm
by tlynn78
Beebs52 wrote:
tlynn78 wrote:
Beebs52 wrote:Could it be spiders? Jeff has gotten bites before and it wasn't bedbugs or fleas. We thought baby spiders.
.. in which case, the answer is far simpler, burn the place down.
wimp
Proudly.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 4:59 pm
by Beebs52
tlynn78 wrote:
Beebs52 wrote:
tlynn78 wrote:
.. in which case, the answer is far simpler, burn the place down.
wimp
Proudly.
Now if it were a scorpion...

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 6:59 pm
by Ritterskoop
My new theory is mosquitos. Still no visuals on the bastards.

Cleaned everything thoroughly and we'll see what happens next.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 7:34 pm
by Beebs52
Ritterskoop wrote:My new theory is mosquitos. Still no visuals on the bastards.

Cleaned everything thoroughly and we'll see what happens next.
Little bitty ones are sneaky.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Sun Feb 18, 2018 6:04 am
by ghostjmf
Hope for your sake its not bedbugs.

Get in the bedbug-sniffing dog.

What happened to someone I know: The neighbor in building had bedbugs. Everybody was scared because they can literally eat through walls.

Caretaker was laundering everything at very high temps required. Drycleaning much stuff, also recommended.

This wasn't being done fast-enough for people who ran building.

Even though tenants own units, building required they hire company at their own 10K expense each to dump all their belongings into smallish plastic bags, then steam-blast bags at required temp. And then call in exterminators to gas the apartments. Even though these tenants did not have bedbugs yet.

Person I know saw their carefully designed home being ransacked & demolished & had what doctors said were 7 heart attacks in rapid succession, even though they had recently passed medical tests with flying colors for their age.

Company that demolished home had dumped "take to hospital" info kit into one of those plastic bags to be steamed, without, of course, marking which one, even though caretaker had told them not to touch that, & hospital claimed to caretaker that they did not know this regular patient because EMTs had spelled patient's name wrong. But they did treat patient. Patient died.

Neighbor on the other side of bedbug apt had stroke so severe they had to be moved to nursing home near family. In Puerto Rico. I don't know how they or their family fared after hurricane.

Person who actually had bedbugs is also dead. I don't know cause.

Person I knew & neighbor who had stroke had discussed hiring lawyers to fight being forced to have home-demolishing firm destroy their homes. I sure wish they had.

At least you own your own home & will be in control of the process if you do have them. Call in the dogs.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Sun Feb 18, 2018 10:17 am
by Ritterskoop
First night back in my bed after cleaning, I woke up with several new bites. Still can't see any bugs but I'll call the exterminators tomorrow.

Roommate and cat are fine, so it's at least contained to one room.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Sun Feb 18, 2018 11:52 am
by ghostjmf
Make sure they bring in the bedbug-sniffing dogs.

They'll tell if its bedbugs. If it is, they'll tell if its confined to one room.

The bugs really can eat through walls.

And it doesn't make sense to spray if the decon on all your clothes & other stuff wasn't done 1st. Throw out upholstered stuff, mattresses.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Sun Feb 18, 2018 3:56 pm
by ghostjmf
Caretaker for person discussed here had been through this before when a world-travelling guest brought them to caretaker's apartment. The washing at prescribed hot temp & dry-cleaning, followed by the folks with the gas, does work. You don't have to go through the 10K vandalizers & steamers unless you really want to. Because its faster.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 5:05 pm
by Ritterskoop
Consultation today - the guy said if we have bugs, which he didn't see any with just a flashlight inspection, the treatment is to raise the temperature in the house to 140 degrees for three hours. That will kill anything.

Roomie is not sold, so he will spend a night in that room first to see if he gets bitten.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 7:54 pm
by ghostjmf
Roomie is being an idiot.


Get the dog. Consultation without dog is useless. Training is same as for drug-sniffing, but with bedbugs.

Dog can pick out the one chair that was gotten from used-furniture store, & was successfully fumigated 10 years ago.

GET THE DOG.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 8:01 pm
by ghostjmf
And the treatment, as I delineated in my description, is to steam all the belongings at whatever the required temp is. Dryclean all that can't be steamed. Then fumigate. Maybe several times.

Get a diff consultant. WITH A DOG.

My aquaintance's neighbor, the neighbor who did have bedbugs, & who is now dead, their friend isn't telling us of what, was told by a dermatologist "those are not bedbug bites".

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 11:45 am
by BackInTex
Be careful!
Houston woman died from bedbug extermination that warmed apartment to 139 degrees, suit says

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 11:59 am
by ghostjmf
Heating the apt to that temp sounds like a good way to set house on fire. Or at the very least melt lots of stuff you were just trying to decontaminate. Its a shortcut around steaming & drycleaning individual items, then spraying, maybe repeatedly.

It isn't an option my now-dead-from-heart-failure acquaintance was given by their building. It *sounds* less destructive than what *was* done to their apartment, so I can see why people would go for it.

Ritterskoop should get a trained bedbug-sniffing dog in 1st. You don't want to do any of this expensive & destructive stuff without a positive ID of the bugs. Other things can bite you (such as body-lice, which, like bedbugs, you can pick up from public seating; buses, planes etc).

Animal fleas also bite some people, but they're pretty obvious hopping on animals.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 12:26 pm
by littlebeast13
For as long as this thread has been on the first page of the Bored, I've had this nutty commercial from the 80's assaulting my head...



lb13

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 6:59 pm
by Ritterskoop
Miscommunication with the exterminator meant they did not show up today for the expensive heat treatment, which I wasn't sure I wanted anyway. We did a good bit of prep, and are pretty irritated, but also took it as a sign from the universe that we should go the other path, which is

diatomaceous earth powder.

I spread it everywhere and cleared out a spider web, and will check back in a few days. I'm going out of town next week anyway, so I'll do one more treatment of the stuff and let the cleaning folks vacuum thoroughly late next week.

I'm predicting all better in two weeks, and that it was never bed bugs to begin with.

Re: Bed bugs

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2018 11:37 pm
by Ritterskoop
I enjoyed learning about the bedbug dogs. There is one certified dog available in NC ( a second agency has 5 or 6 but their website is under construction so it seemed a little fishy). I'm sure the market supports far more dogs in areas with higher concentrations of population.