It is important that you, as a consumer, know which bed bug treatments work and what types of treatment are effective and safe. Eliminating bed bugs require a lot of time and specialized knowledge so your decision on which company to use and which type of heat system to choose is critical. The company that use choose could mean the difference between success or failure.

Don’t Get Taken…Not All Heat Treatments for Bed Bugs Are The Same. As word spreads about the effectiveness of our bed bug control using heat treatments, more and more pest control companies are even offering bed bug heat treatment when they don't even have heating equipment.  The fact is that not all companies are the same, not all heat treatments are the same and steam is NOT heat treatment.

There are 3 main aspects that consumers need to know about and understand if you are thinking of hiring a company to eliminate bed bugs with heat treatment.

#1) BRING THE HEAT
#2) MOVE THE HEAT
#3) MEASURE THE HEAT

I will break these down for you below.

#1 BRING THE HEAT:
This is the first step of the process needed to kill bed bugs with heat treatment. It is broken into 2 sections. First is the initial process of safely increasing the ambient temperature of the structure to the bed bug thermal death point. The second and more important step is thermal soak time at the thermal death point of bed bugs.

There a currently 3 ways a company can raise the temperature to kill bed bugs, Hydronic, Propane or Electric.

Here is a quick overview of each bed bug heat treatment option:

Hydronic:  The use HTF (heat transfer fluid), this heated fluid is pumped into 6 different Fan Coils (like a mobile radiator), the generated heat is then transferred to the room via an internal fan.

Propane:  Propane gas is burned via an open flame in a unit that sits outside the structure. The heat generated by the open flame is blown into the structure via a single duct that is attached to the unit outside. The duct is similar to your clothes dryer vent but larger.

Electric:  Electric heaters (like a big space heater you can plug into a room to add heat) are placed in the structure and use the structure’s power to operate or a large diesel generator is towed to the site to supply the large volume of power needed to operate these heaters. This is because the heat is produce by heating elements inside the heater, you know the red glow given off by a space heater.

So what type of bed bug heat treatment equipment is best and does it matter?

The answer is yes it matters in terms of safety, efficiency and the all important “soak time.” Only a hydronic bed bug heat treatment system can generate enough heat without an open flame or red glowing electric elements and hold thermal soak a multi-room structure. This means all rooms / area are brought up to bed bug thermal death temperatures at the same time and held. Plus Hydronic systems will generate over 300,000 BTU’s using only a single 115v standard outlet.

Soak Time:  This is refers to the amount of time room/rooms are at or above the bed bug thermal death point. If the ambient temperature of a room is 125 degrees and every bed bug was exposed to it they would die immediately. But given bed bugs are also found inside of things like upholstered furniture, box springs, under carpet tact strips and so on.

You soon understand that ambient or surface temperature is solely a guide for the tech to make sure his min / max temperatures are in the killing zone but are also in the safe zone, so no structure or personal belongs are damaged. If you were cooking a turkey in the oven soak time is the time the turkey needs at temperature until internal temperatures needed are achieved. More on this aspect will appear below.

2.  MOVE THE HEAT:  Okay so let’s say you were able to safely generate enough heat to kill bed bugs. Now you have to move the heat, you see just raising the temperature is not enough to kill bed bugs. You have to have enough specialized equipment to take this heat and push the heat into EVERY crack and crevice, under baseboards and eliminate all cool spots. This requires cheap nike air max air movers and lots of them. K-9 sweeps utilizes 12 air movers plus 6 fan coils in total generating over 41,000 CFM’s of air movement. Ask any prospective company how do they plan on moving the air. The room should have enough air movement where even posters and picture on the wall will be removed by the air if they are left on the wall during treatment.

3.  MEASURE THE HEAT:

How should a bed bug exterminator measure the temperature?

Well there are two temperatures that matter and are measured differently. The first and easiest temperature to read is surface temperature. This can be done with use of a red dot non contact thermometer. It simply measure how hot the surface of something is. The next is internal temperature. Reading internal temperatures take specialized thermal couplers. These probes are place under carpet/baseboards, inside of upholstered furniture and inside of walls. It is when bed bug thermal death temperatures are reached in theses areas is the job complete. Think about cooking that turkey in the oven again. How do you know when the turkey is ready? What temperatures are you measuring internal right. Same thing with killing bed bugs with heat. If a company can not measure internal temperatures they need to invest in the needed equipment. K-9 Sweeps uses 12 wireless thermal www.schuhechina.de couplers and red dot non contact thermometers. All readings are monitored live via a laptop computer a printout is given to our customers. This printout shows: min/max ambient temps, soak time at thermal death and internal temps of critical areas. Don’t settle for less!