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If you ever have your home infested with bed bugs, their eradication is simple. You need to have a bedframe with countable legs, a bug-proof plastic mattress co

by ipnon 2y ago

If you ever have your home infested with bed bugs, their eradication is simple. You need to have a bedframe with countable legs, a bug-proof plastic mattress cover, and a bag of diatomaceous earth. You simply zip the cover over your mattress, and put a 1cm layer of diatomaceous earth around the feet of your bedframe. The bed bugs naturally come out to feed on you at night, then find burrows to hide in during the day. Normally they'd hide in the crooks of your mattress, but we've already prevented this. They are forced to walk down your bedframe, and over the layer of diatomaceous earth, which causes fatal ruptures in their carapace. Bed bugs can only live about a month without feeding, and you should expect any small to medium sized infestation to resolve in this timeframe, certainly any infestation which might arise from picking up a few bed bugs from traveling.

mastazi 2y ago
This sounds like a very good solution but how about eggs? I would imagine that those can survive longer than a month. IIRC I once heard that the eggs would be usually on the underside of your mattress, so you should keep the plastic cover on until after the eggs have hatched and the bugs died. Is that correct?
dyauspitr 2y ago
Bed bugs can go up to 1 year without feeding. If you got something that fundamental wrong how can I trust the rest of it?
colanderman 2y ago
I'm very confused, if the bed bugs are in/on the mattress, and you enclose the mattress in a cover, how do the bed bugs get out of the cover?
- asielen 2y ago
  They don't. You leave the cover on until you are sure you got them all and then you throw away the mattress and get a new one. Also wash everything you own in hot and dry on hot. Or put it in an airtight box for at least a year. They can and will live anywhere within a few feet of where you spend a lot of your time. Couches, beds, chairs, carpets, etc. This person is downplaying how hard it can be to get rid of them.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Hotels get bed bugs all the time, and they don’t regularly throw away mattresses and furniture. Just call a professional terminator who uses the proper insecticides, and you can get rid of beg bugs. The downside is you usually cannot occupy the space for at least a few days. I know of no hotels that bother with diatomaceous earth, so I presume it either doesn’t work sufficiently often, or it takes too long to work.
    - grumple 2y ago
      Diatomaceous earth is very messy and slow. A quick search tells me hotels usually do heat treatment. It requires a professional (or in house set up). I suspect they also wrap the mattresses by default, but I'm not sure that's strictly a bed bug measure. Bed bugs are everywhere though. They will infest any public space with furniture, or any space like hotels where anybody can come in and out. They have infested my local movie theaters (at least the older ones). I bet there are a lot of airlines with this issue.
  - colanderman 2y ago
    Then what is the purpose of the diatomaceous earth? The GP's post implies some sort of causal relationship between placing the cover on the mattress and the bugs then being forced to crawl over the DE. I still do not see what the relationship is.
Izkata 2y ago
They'll nest in just about anything with nooks and crannies, and don't only feed at night - they adjust to your schedule. When I had them, they first got to my couch, not my bed, and would also go after my feet while sitting at my desk.
- ferfumarma 2y ago
  That sounds so awful to experience! How hard was it to finally get rid of them?
  - Izkata 2y ago
    It took months before I actually saw one and realized I wasn't just reacting to something else (I had just changed laundry detergents when it started, for example), but after that it was one single heat treatment - had to leave for around 7 hours while the pest company brought in heaters and raised my apartment to 140 degrees for 5+ hours. Took several more hours afterwards to get back down to a normal temperature. Prep involved moving anything heat-sensitive (like batteries) into the fridge and spreading out things like tightly-packed clothing drawers so the heat could penetrate more easily. Also the heat treatment isn't guaranteed to kill all of them, but it does damage them so they can't bite anymore. There were a few survivors I saw running around for months afterwards slowly starving since they couldn't feed. GGP saying they only survive a month is definitely wrong - the rule of thumb is 6 months, and I remember seeing a reference that they can feed on each other so a few would last longer.
nunez 2y ago
This is assuming they aren't hiding in your other clothes or fabrics, which they are very good at doing. There's a reason why "burn the house down" is a common retort to people asking about bed bugs. They are damn near impossible to get rid of.

by ipnon 2y ago

mastazi 2y ago

This sounds like a very good solution but how about eggs? I would imagine that those can survive longer than a month. IIRC I once heard that the eggs would be usually on the underside of your mattress, so you should keep the plastic cover on until after the eggs have hatched and the bugs died. Is that correct?

dyauspitr 2y ago

Bed bugs can go up to 1 year without feeding. If you got something that fundamental wrong how can I trust the rest of it?

colanderman 2y ago

I'm very confused, if the bed bugs are in/on the mattress, and you enclose the mattress in a cover, how do the bed bugs get out of the cover?

asielen 2y ago
They don't. You leave the cover on until you are sure you got them all and then you throw away the mattress and get a new one. Also wash everything you own in hot and dry on hot. Or put it in an airtight box for at least a year. They can and will live anywhere within a few feet of where you spend a lot of your time. Couches, beds, chairs, carpets, etc. This person is downplaying how hard it can be to get rid of them.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Hotels get bed bugs all the time, and they don’t regularly throw away mattresses and furniture. Just call a professional terminator who uses the proper insecticides, and you can get rid of beg bugs. The downside is you usually cannot occupy the space for at least a few days. I know of no hotels that bother with diatomaceous earth, so I presume it either doesn’t work sufficiently often, or it takes too long to work.
  - grumple 2y ago
    Diatomaceous earth is very messy and slow. A quick search tells me hotels usually do heat treatment. It requires a professional (or in house set up). I suspect they also wrap the mattresses by default, but I'm not sure that's strictly a bed bug measure. Bed bugs are everywhere though. They will infest any public space with furniture, or any space like hotels where anybody can come in and out. They have infested my local movie theaters (at least the older ones). I bet there are a lot of airlines with this issue.
- colanderman 2y ago
  Then what is the purpose of the diatomaceous earth? The GP's post implies some sort of causal relationship between placing the cover on the mattress and the bugs then being forced to crawl over the DE. I still do not see what the relationship is.

Izkata 2y ago

They'll nest in just about anything with nooks and crannies, and don't only feed at night - they adjust to your schedule. When I had them, they first got to my couch, not my bed, and would also go after my feet while sitting at my desk.

ferfumarma 2y ago
That sounds so awful to experience! How hard was it to finally get rid of them?
- Izkata 2y ago
  It took months before I actually saw one and realized I wasn't just reacting to something else (I had just changed laundry detergents when it started, for example), but after that it was one single heat treatment - had to leave for around 7 hours while the pest company brought in heaters and raised my apartment to 140 degrees for 5+ hours. Took several more hours afterwards to get back down to a normal temperature. Prep involved moving anything heat-sensitive (like batteries) into the fridge and spreading out things like tightly-packed clothing drawers so the heat could penetrate more easily. Also the heat treatment isn't guaranteed to kill all of them, but it does damage them so they can't bite anymore. There were a few survivors I saw running around for months afterwards slowly starving since they couldn't feed. GGP saying they only survive a month is definitely wrong - the rule of thumb is 6 months, and I remember seeing a reference that they can feed on each other so a few would last longer.

nunez 2y ago

This is assuming they aren't hiding in your other clothes or fabrics, which they are very good at doing. There's a reason why "burn the house down" is a common retort to people asking about bed bugs. They are damn near impossible to get rid of.