How to Beat Bed Bugs

Bed bugs are nasty, but there's a relationship between bed bugs and heat in St. Louis that you can exploit to your advantage. Most of Missouri provides an ideal climate for these pests, mostly because they can survive all year and thrive during certain seasons. The answer is simple: use heat to kill them at all stages of their lifespan. Heat treatment is the ultimate method because it completely penetrates all the nooks and crannies these vermin like to utilize to live and spawn. How you use it depends on your current situation, the status of the infestation and many other factors. Here are a few ways that heat is most often used to control bed bug heat populations in the St. Louis area and other climates where the bugs are able to multiply.

Steam

Many small to medium size hospitality and residential rental businesses own some sort of steam cleaner. Most managers are at least familiar with such equipment. This fact, combined with steam's effectiveness in the destruction of eggs, makes the technology a common do-it-yourself solution for dealing with bed bug infestations. The downside of this method is that steam simply can't penetrate into the deeper reaches of objects like upholstered furniture or mattresses. These are the crevices where the bugs love to lay their eggs. When you're talking about bed bugs and heat in St. Louis, you need to make sure that whatever method you use has the power to heat an entire object or room. Otherwise, you're right back to where you started when the eggs start hatching again.

The Box

A hot box is a way to kill bed bugs in smaller items. This might be a good strategy for some people, especially if you know an item is infested or you're preemptively protecting your stock from an infestation in a retail or resale setting. These hot boxes raise the temperature of the item in question to a preset level that's calibrated to kill bugs and destroy eggs.

Heat Treatment

This is the treatment of choice for a thorough extermination of bed bugs. Full heat treatment is achieved by a high-powered heater that raises the temperature of an entire room up above the kill point for bed bugs. This process usually takes somewhere between six to ten hours, depending on the size of the area and the power of the heater. While there are many companies that own these heaters and operate them on a contract basis, it's usually a better long-term investment to purchase the equipment and learn how to use it yourself. Businesses can often take tax breaks or finance when making new machinery purchases, so ask your retailer for more information if you choose to go this route.

In conclusion, full heat treatment is the best option for decontaminating a large space. The connection between bed bugs and heat in St. Louis is simple: heat kills bugs at every stage of their life cycle. Steam does not penetrate effectively, and hot boxes can't get into woodwork and usually don't have the space for larger items. For more information about the different types of treatments available, check out this site.

Kevin Smith is a writer and an avid reader. He writes about business, marketing, health, pets, or relationships etc.