Now, you may think this sounds like the appropriate way to entertain dinner company, but it’s also the only effective way to treat bedbugs. Welcome, Michigan Bed Bug Specialists! Were we ever glad to see you!
The regimen is a two-step process. First, the team treats your entire home with a chemical spray around all floor boards and entries.
Second, they super heat your home using trucks with generators to pump out extremely high heat and fans to blow the heat. (They bring their own generators, so this doesn’t run up your electric bill.)
Computers in their trucks let them know when the room has reached the right temperature. (Note his shirt wet with sweat. They don’t stay in the rooms, but they do have to go in each time to change out the position of the heat and fans.)
All 5 stages of bedbugs die at 122°F. for 2 minutes. Bedbugs have exoskeletons which explode at that heat.
Michigan Bed Bug Specialists brought the temperature of each room up to 150°F. for 30 minutes just to make sure the heat penetrated to the interior of stuffed chairs and couches, through walls, and deep into closets. When we returned an hour after they left, it was still 120°F. in the kitchen! This was a huge day for them, lasting from dawn until dusk, and they looked like they’d been hiking in an Iraqi desert by the time they finished.
After contracting with the Michigan Bed Bug Specialists to rid our home of bedbugs last Friday, we had a lot of work to do on our end to prepare.
Preparation includes both preparing your home and preparing yourselves for the “Big Day,” which will be bigger than you can imagine, both physically and emotionally. Whoever is going to treat your home will have a very specific list of instructions for how to prepare, but it will probably include removing from your home at least the following:
*All pets and living things
*Plants
*Medications and vitamins (can be stored in refrigerator)
*Fresh fruits and vegetables (put all foods into refrigerator)
*All things chocolate and/or melty: chocolate chips, chocolates, chocolate bars, soft candies (into the fridge)
*Cosmetics, especially lipstick, chapstick, deodorants . . . anything soft
*Flammable substances like oxygen tanks, linseed oil (which should never, ever be stored with rags at any time), aerosols, matches, propane and cigarette lighters, fire extinguishers, fire sticks, etc.
*Musical instruments (won’t melt but will detune, and heat is hard on thin wood)
*Vinyl records, any irreplaceable films, DVDs, video tapes, and CDs (probably won’t be harmed, but they didn’t want to take a chance on wedding videos, etc.)
*Anything assembled with hot melt glue, arts and crafts, some picture frames (We lost one lampshade that apparently had been assembled with “hot melt glue.”)
*Candles (even fake candles with soft exteriors), wax figurines, crayons (anything soft that can melt)
*This isn’t on the lists, but I had 3 bottles of shampoo and hand lotion in pump-top bottles that overflowed. I’d recommend either removing open bottles with pump tops or setting them in a sink to catch any overflow. Or, just screw down the lids tightly.
*I worried about our photos and framed art, but only one was damaged (our 40th wedding anniversary photo—a 20X30″ framed enlargement that now has a buckle in the middle although the color is still okay.) If you have any doubts or questions, ask the point person for your treatment team.
Last, but maybe should have been listed first:
*Unplug ALL electronics, which I think includes anything that’s plugged into a wall. (You can keep your refrigerator and stove plugged in.)
*Open all chairs and couches that can be opened up. We didn’t know to do this, but when we returned home, we noticed that the team had done this for us. They also pulled off all covers and bedding and made loose heaps on top of beds and couches.
*They didn’t say we needed to do this, and they are bonded and insured (make sure you contract with a team that is), but I believe in “lead us not into temptation” so removed all loose money and credit cards. It just seems responsible to not leave valuables laying around.
We were allowed to store things in our garage, although it was still below freezing at night (although just above freezing in the garage, so we could also keep our plants there). I carefully wiped down and inspected every item that went from our house into our garage, although I never found a bug or larva on anything. Bedbugs feed on blood, so they are not drawn to inanimate objects or plants, preferring to lodge as close to their food source (you) as possible. I think only as infestations progress will bedbugs start popping up everywhere and laying eggs everywhere, including your favorite upholstered chair, pajamas, and bedroom slippers. Creepy, I know, but so devious. Alan and I never saw any bedbugs anywhere in our home except around our bed (when first discovered), but I have no clue where all they might have been hiding.
The other thing you have to prepare is yourself. Theoretically you can take possession of your home after the treatment is complete (which took 10 hours for us). However, as I mentioned, it was 120°F. in the kitchen an hour after they left, and hotter in the bedrooms, so definitely not a pleasant sauna temperature for a restful night’s sleep. Alan booked us a room at a nearby hotel, which looking forward I thought was an extravagance, but in retrospect it was a blessed comfort and practical necessity.
The Michigan Bed Bug Specialist team arrived at sunrise!
However, in order to insure that victims don’t spread their invisible, unseen bedbugs to an unsuspecting hotel, there’s a very particular process for this too. We had to wash two sets of clothes on the sanitation cycle of our washing machine and then dry them on high heat (to make sure there are no living bugs or eggs on our clothing). From the dryer, we made two piles of clothes in plastic bags: one to dress in on the morning we left our home, and one to change into upon entering our hotel room. We included pajamas and all our basic supplies, then used twist ties to make sure the bags were secure before loading them into the trunk of our car.
On the morning of the extermination procedure, we dressed in one set of clean clothes and then were not allowed to sit down on anything or touch anything, so we made that change just before the guys arrived at 8:00 am (and they were punctual). After we arrived at the hotel, we changed out of these very sanitized clothes into yet a new set of carefully sanitized clothing, and put the first set back into the plastic bag, retying it (to be thrown immediately into the washing machine to be re-sanitized upon returning home the next day).
This might sound like overkill, but the last thing anybody should want to do is spread bedbugs. Frankly, I was more paranoid about getting bedbugs from the hotel than giving them to the hotel at that point, but paranoia and how to protect yourself going forward is another story, which I’ll share about this Friday. So, stay tuned for Part 3. (Or, if you don’t have bed bugs, you might want to skip all this yukkiness and just tune in again for the weekly recipe that will come out on Saturday.)
“So they came to Jerusalem. Then Jesus went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves” (Mark 11:15. Oh, that I would be as passionate about ridding my soul of sin as I was about ridding my home of bed bugs!)
P.S.—If you live in southern Michigan and need help with bed bugs or know somebody who does, I can definitely recommend the Michigan Bedbug Specialists: https://michiganbbs.com/
Summer Setting 