There has been a resurgence in the population of bed bugs in recent years, and naturally, so have ways to get rid of them. Have you found blood spots on your bedsheets and bite marks on your skin? This could mean you have a bed bug infestation at home and a probable cause to look into booking Discreet Bed Bug Inspections to confirm if the worst has indeed happened. But fear not! Here are some safe, effective ways to solve this problem once and for all should it happen to you.
Bed Bug Infestation at Home? Safe, Effective Ways to Solve the Problem
Bed bugs are small, oval, brown insects that feed on the blood of humans or animals. Most bedbug bites are painless but can turn into itchy welts later. They can enter your home undetected through clothing, used furniture, and luggage, to name a few routes.
Their flat bodies enable them to fit into tiny spaces. Bed bugs have a concise development duration. It takes as little as a month to produce three or more generations under favorable conditions. This enables them to increase rapidly in number and spread throughout the entire house.
Hunt The Bed Bugs in Your Bed
The first step in solving the bed bug problem in your house is removing them from your bed. First, strip all your beddings, from pillowcases to bedsheets, sealing them in a plastic bag. Doing this will help you contain the bugs in the bag and prevent them from spreading to other parts of your home.
You can dispose of them and buy new ones, or wash and dry them with your washing machine using the hot water setting if the tags on the bedding permit it. This heat treatment will kill any bed bugs in Barrie (or their eggs) that could be hiding in your bedding.
The next step is to kill the bedbugs hiding on your bed. You can do this by vacuuming your mattress, pillow, and the cracks in your bed frame, headboard, and footboard. Follow this up with a high-pressure steamer that will penetrate deep inside the mattress, headboard, bed frame, and footboard to kill bed bugs and their eggs on contact.
Cover your mattress with a bedbug-proof cover to prevent re-infestation and make future inspections and treatments easier. Ensure that any product you apply to your mattress is dry before covering it with a bedbug-proof cover.
Contact a Professional
Contact a professional such as Pest Control Bradford when you need to get rid of your nasty non-paying tenants called bed bugs. You should, however, check with your country’s regulatory body to find qualified practitioners in your area. For example, the Pest World website provides a list of licensed practitioners with the National Pest Management Association.
The guys at www.custombedbug.com say that the best way to get rid of bed bugs from your home is through an experienced bed bug exterminator. Professionals like the ones at Olathe pest control can help confirm infestation in your house. They will inspect the location and possibly neighboring areas within your compound or your neighbors’ homes.
These professionals will use non-chemical control and environmentally friendly insecticides to get rid of the bed bugs and their eggs. They’ll also review the treatment to check that it’s successful. Once done, they will advise preventive measures to avoid future re-infestation cases in your home.
Steam and Clean Your Home
Bed bugs love hiding in all sorts of tight spaces in your home – from furniture to wood cracks, ceiling, books, and edges of carpets. One of the ways to reduce their hiding places in your home is by reducing clutter.
You should neatly arrange books, clothes, and other personal belongings. Remove these items from the floor to eliminate spaces where the bed bugs can hide. In infested areas, they should be steamed for at least 45 minutes, then stored in another bedbug-free room in crates or boxes based on their priority. Doing this will help avoid contaminating other areas of your home.
Next, vacuum and steam the hotspots where bed bugs love to hang out in your home. These include cracks in walls, furniture, sofas, and carpets. You should store the items you cannot treat in sealed treated boxes. Store these away from your commonly used areas in your home.
Apply Sprays and Powder on Cracks and Crevices
Even after a whole day steaming your house, you may not manage to kill 100% of the bed bugs. This is where you step up your attack on them by forming a long-term defense strategy.
Apply bed bug sprays and powders on cracks and crevices. Using contact, residual sprays, and remaining powders will kill the bed bugs and eggs. Talk about killing two birds with one stone!
Contact sprays will kill the bed bugs quickly upon contact and evaporate shortly after. While this is so, however, the contact sprays do not offer long-lasting protection. Luckily, a solution is available: residual sprays and powders!
Residual sprays will offer protection from new bed bugs and their eggs. This is ideal for application in cracks and crevices throughout the room.
Apply remaining powders to areas where they will not be sat on, touched, or walked on. Doing this ensures efficiency and longevity. Residual bed bug powders and sprays are designed to be effective in the spaces bed bugs love to hide.
It is recommended to reapply the residual spray and powder after two weeks. This is to prevent any hatching of new eggs or new bed bugs from setting up shop in your home.
Set Traps
Setting up moat-style traps can isolate the bed and intercept the bed bugs beforehand. Such interceptors can be purchased online and also made at home. Scientists from the University of Florida have produced a video that shows you how to make a homemade moat-style trap at your house.
Bed Bug Infestation at Home
Bed bug infestation is one of the worst nightmares for a homeowner. These hideous creatures can wreak havoc in your life. While they’re not known to cause diseases directly, the wounds from the bites and scratching can lead to infection.
The best thing is that controlling bed bug infestation in your home doesn’t have to turn your life upside down. The above steps on controlling bed bug infestation at home are what you need to keep these blood-sucking pests away for good.
