Is Dealing with Bed Bugs Yourself Better than Getting Professional Help?
Among the most challenging pests that you can ever deal with are bed bugs. They have impressive hiding skills and they reproduce rapidly. What makes things worse is that the eggs are resistant to most forms of available pest treatments. This means that your first attempt to kill bed bugs and their eggs is never sufficient enough to consider the job done.
What should you do if you find bugs in your home? Treating a bed bug infestation is complicated. There are many factors that must be considered to attain successful results. Some of these factors include:
- Level of infestation
- Site-specific issues
- Neighbors dealing with bed bug infestations
- Clutter
- Ability and willingness of neighboring rooms to cooperate
A successful process of getting rid of bed bugs will take weeks, or even months. It takes patience and cooperation to make the entire procedure work and make your home or room free of these pests.
Where Should You Start?
Calling for professional pest control services may seem like the best solution, but it is still possible to take certain steps on your own if you figure out that you can still control the infestation. To control bed bugs, the first thing that you should do is look for these pests carefully. Then, you should be able to kill them and capture them before they spread. This may sound like an easy task, but it must be done repeatedly with the right tools to slowly reduce visible bed bugs until no single bug is left.
Learn how to identify bed bugs here.
Tools You Can Use to Deal with Bed Bugs and Their Eggs
There are many tools you can use nowadays for your efforts in dealing with the pests on your own. The first ones you can easily find at home and can be used for finding these pests are:
- It will be difficult to find bed bugs during the daytime, but try sparing some time at night and use a flashlight to look for these pests in your beds and furniture. Also focus on mattress and box springs.
- Old credit card or playing card. Any of these cards are thin enough to fit into cracks and crevices where bed bugs hide. Pushing the edge of the card along the cracks can slowly push the bugs out. You can either capture them or immediately kill them.
- A roll of tape. An easy way to capture bed bugs when using a credit card or playing card is using a clear plastic packaging tape. This can capture bed bugs and allow you to get a closer look and properly identify the bugs.
- Hot soapy water and a piece of cloth. Using these are effective in capturing the bugs and luring them out of their hiding spots because of the heat. This can work as a steam cleaner but getting a high-quality bed bug steamer is more effective in immediately killing these pests and their eggs on contact. Just remember that using the tape for capturing bed bugs may no longer work when you opt to do this because of the wet surface.
- Garbage bags or plastic bags. Use these to hold infested items like bedding and clothes. This can prevent bed bugs from spreading. Dissolvable laundry bags are also highly recommended if you’re planning to wash the infested items in hot water and dry them at high heat for about 30 minutes or more. You can also have delicate items dry cleaned. Tell them about the issue so they can handle the job properly.
- Use box spring and mattress covers. Bed bug mattress and box spring encasements are like zippered fabric bags that will kill any remaining bugs. These work by preventing the bugs from escaping and eventually starve and kill them. Keep the encasement on for about a year to make sure that not a single bug or egg will survive.
Now that you have the tools, it is time to start with the entire process of treating bed bugs on your own.
Create a Clean Zone
Start by creating a clean zone in your home or room where you can move your belongings and furniture that you’ve finished inspecting to reduce the risk of a re-infestation. Create your clean zone by doing the following:
- On an open wall, start by inspecting the corners and then proceed to the edges. Using a card, try to dig out anything from the cracks and crevices, working your way along these thin spaces. After this, check the floor for anything that moves suspiciously.
Putting some diatomaceous earth inside the cracks can also help to trap those that you weren’t able to reach. This will also prevent bed bugs from entering again in case they’ve been hiding deep in the crevices. You can use a HEPA vacuum cleaner to pick up the bugs that you dug out of the cracks and make sure that the area is clean and clear of these bugs.
Once you’ve established the clean area, you can now start inspecting your belongings and moving them one by one to the clean space. It is ideal to sort your belongings and separate those that you can wash and those that require a more thorough inspection. This will make the entire inspection process easier.
Similar to how you created your clean area, use your tools to check every item inside the infested room. When checking each item, focus on joints or overlapping parts where the bugs could possibly be hiding or where these bugs hid their eggs. Get started with the bigger pieces of furniture. You can then move one item after another to the clean area around these bigger items.
Click here for more tips on finding bed bugs.
As soon as you’re done, wrap your treated bed, mattress and box springs with bed bug encasements. This will give you an advantage in preventing remaining bed bugs from escaping and spreading. It will also reduce the number of items that you’ll have to check from time to time to control a bedbug infestation.
Using Commercial Bed Bug Products
An additional solution for pest management in your home is the use of commercial bed bug products. If you have children and pets inside your home, make sure to use a product labelled to be safe around them. Though you may find these safe alternatives, it is safer to keep your children and pets away from the infested area prior to starting any treatments.
If you’re searching for high quality bed bug products, feel free to visit bedbugsos.ca. When dealing with these pesky critters, calling for an exterminator can be anyone’s go-to option. However, with patience and cooperation of everyone in the infested home or building, it is possible to eliminate bed bugs yourself. All it takes is using the right tools and taking preventative measures to avoid a re-infestation.
