(Note: As an Amazon Associate, this site earns from qualifying purchases. This article may contain affiliate links. If you purchase anything after clicking an affiliate link, we may receive compensation.)
(Updated March 16, 2020)
What should you expect if you opt for professional bed bug heat treatment? With heat remediation, your war with bed bugs can be over in a matter of hours vs your DIY efforts, which promise to last weeks. So is it worth making your entire home so hot that all living things inside need to leave for hours? Just what's involved? This article gives some insight into what's involved when pest management professionals bring the big heaters and their know-how to the battleground.
Do Bed Bugs Like the Heat?
Nope. Watch what happened when the professionals brought the heat treatment to a couch infested with multiple generations of bed bugs.
Kind of warms the heart, doesn't it? Bed bugs can't survive heat treatments when done right. Intense heat applied long enough and directed in all bed bug harborages will kill them.
What Temperature Kills Bed Bugs?
The lethal, or thermal death, temperature for bed bugs is 113°F. Bed bug eggs are a bit heartier. Test show that it takes at least 118°F applied long enough to kill them. The professionals apply heat, usually ranging from 125° to 145° throughout your entire home. It is recommended that the temperature achieve at least 130° for a minimum of three hours or 140° for two hours. Companies vary in the temperatures they apply. Some set their heating units for a maximum of 135° to avoid damage to customers' belongings, such as electronics. It's important to talk to your exterminator about what kind of temperature settings they intend to use throughout your home.
How Does an Exterminator Get Rid of Bed Bugs with Heat?
Cranking up the heat inside your home to extreme temperatures can kill bed bugs. However, this is a job for the professionals. There are now two approved bed bug heat treatment systems on the market that kill by ratcheting up the heat inside your home to temperatures of 135°F and above: the ThermaPureHeat® and the Temp-Air Heat Remediation System®.
ThermaPureHeat uses propane heaters, and Temp-Air Heat uses electric heaters. Both fill rooms with intense heat that kills all generations of the bed bug. It's the one treatment that has been effective without repeated treatments. According to ThermaPure, once the temperature in a room reaches 113°F (45°C), bed bugs begin to die within 15 minutes. The treatment continues for at least 60 minutes to ensure that all bed bugs, larvae, and eggs have been destroyed.
The heat needs to permeate everything: walls, floors, ceilings, closets, inside drawers, beneath mattresses and box springs. This takes powerful heating units backed up by fans that disseminate the heat to pockets throughout the entire house. Professionals focus on ensuring that cold pockets, in which temperatures fail to reach the minimum they set for treatment, are eliminated.
Watch as the owner of Global Pest Solutions in Riverside, California, does a walkthrough of a home while administering a heat treatment. He checks carefully to ensure the heat is reaching the necessary temperature throughout the home, and that there are no cold spots. California providers and in many other states must be licensed and bonded to perform this service.
Exterminators turn over bedding, open drawers, spread out clothing in closets, and anything else they see to ensure the heat reaches everywhere.
The heat penetrates all potential hiding places, including your electronics equipment, without damaging your belongings. Obviously, you, your pets, including fish, must leave the area and remain out until it has cooled down.
Advantages of Heat Remediation Treatments
You don't have to bag your belongings to isolate and contain bed bugs. Exterminators want you to leave most of your belongings in place to ensure that everything that could harbor a bed bug or an egg is exposed to the heat.
No chemicals are used. This is especially helpful to people with allergies or who simply dislike the application of chemicals in their home.
It kills all stages of bed bugs, including eggs.
Re-treatment, usually, isn't necessary.
Disadvantages of Bed Bug Heat Treatment by a Professional
The treatment is not cheap. Depending on where you live, costs could range from $300 to $5,000.
You will need to leave your home with your pets, including fish, for several hours.
Because propane may be used in some of the treatments, thermal heat applications are not approved in all states. They also may not be effective in some older homes.
Heat remediation treatments do not have residual effects. They kill everything that is living at the time of treatment. It does not kill bed bugs who move in after the treatment.
Bed Bug Heat Treatment Equipment
Bed bug heat treatment equipment consists of five main necessities:
- 1Professional heaters (electric or gas powered)
- 2Air movers or fans
- 3Infrared temperature monitoring devices
- 4Huge air ducts that force air from the trucks where the operation initiates into vents throughout the home
- 5Heavy-duty extension cords for electric heaters
These are not your local hardware store heaters. It takes powerful (14,000 to 400,000 btu) heaters to force that level of heat throughout your home and maintain it consistently. High ceilings and concrete walls or floors make it more difficult to reach necessary temperatures and maintain them. The power requirements for these units are immense, which is why professionals run them from external power sources in their trucks.
Bed Bug Heat Extermination Costs
According to HomeAdvisor, an online site that matches homeowners and home service providers, you should expect to pay somewhere between $300 and $5000. The average is $1000 to $2500. The size of the area to be treated and the level of the infestation are the deciding factors in cost. Expect to pay $1 to $3 per square foot. More rooms, more bed bugs, cost more money.
This does not include providing any residual chemicals to take care of survivors or newly introduced bed bugs that arrive after the treatment.
Can I Kill Bed Bugs with Heat Myself?
If you can find a place that will rent the equipment to you, you can do a heat treatment yourself. (Buying the equipment cost more than paying the professionals to do it.) Here's why you probably shouldn't do it yourself:
- 1Heaters are either electric- or gas-powered. Professionals normally use gas-powered heaters. They are experts at handling these diesel or propane heaters to achieve and maintain extreme heat over several hours. The risk of creating a fire danger if you don't know what you're doing is substantial.
- 2Electic-powered heaters are more likely to be used by the DIY homeowner. Still, these units create huge power demands, more than the typical household is accustomed to drawing. This can be especially problematic with older homes that have older electrical systems. Professionals normally bring their power source with them. It's easy to fry your home system if you don't know what you're doing.
- 3The success of professional bed bug heat treatments lies in maintaining the necessary temperatures long enough to kill all the bugs, all the larvae, and all the eggs. Overlooking one cold spot where bed bugs have raced to hide can doom the success of the entire treatment. In fact, cold spots are the biggest reasons heat treatments fail. Bed bugs hide in areas that fail to get up to required temperatures and stay there. They simply hide in these cold pockets until the treatment is over. Then, it's business as usual, and they go on reproducing and biting. Professionals are trained to sniff out cold pockets, such as behind walls and ceilings, with heat-monitoring equipment. They redirect the heat flow to cold spots to bring them up to temperature. Bringing a professional's experience to this hunt makes it more likely the treatment will succeed.
What about Portable Heat Chambers?
They work well as part of a DIY bed bug treatment program, but they are no substitute for treating the whole house with thermal heat. That's not their purpose. Portable heat chambers are ideal for treating large items that you don't want to spray or dust. They are also great for treating luggage after traveling.
We'll review portable heat chambers in a later article.
How to Prepare for a Heat Treatment
Your exterminator will give you a checklist of actions you need to take before they come in to perform the work. They probably will ask you not to move things around, and definitely not move things to other rooms. This is to ensure they have the best chance of killing bed bugs where they are hiding now.
Some items won't stand up well in heat and should be removed by you or the pest management professional. Collect these items and isolate them in a container that can be removed from the house. Let the exterminator decide how to handle these items. This might include:
Also, expect to treat the clothing you're wearing on treatment day. After you return home, these will be the only items that weren't subjected to the heat, so treat them like they are suspect. Bag them and get them into hot water and a dryer as soon as possible to avoid reinfesting the house. Remember, heat leaves no residual effect. If you introduce new bed bugs after the heat treatment, they will not die from the treatment.
Watch this video of Plunkett's Pest Control in Minneapolis. It's older, but it does a great job of demonstrating how to prepare for the treatment.
Different professionals have their own approach to how they like residents to prepare the home for them. It's important to get clear instructions on how to prepare for the treatment and to follow them.
What Is the Effectiveness of Heat Treatment for Bed Bugs?
Professional bed bug heat treatments are the most effective way of getting rid of them fast. But the treatment doesn't always work?
Why?
The chief reasons, normally, have to do with clutter, which provides hiding places for bed bugs. Another reason is the failure to identify cold spots. Bed bugs flee to these areas and wait out the treatment. It's the exterminator's job to identify these areas and ensure they are heated to the kill temperature. That's what you're paying for.
Sometimes, the treatment did work, but, after a period, you're seeing more bed bugs. Chances are, they are newcomers. They hitched a ride home with you from somewhere or mosied over from your neighbor's home after they sprayed something. If they arrive after the treatment, there is nothing to kill them unless you have also applied a residual insecticide killer. A bed bugs powder, like CineXma is ideal for this. Some exterminators do recommend that an insecticide be applied at the time of the heat treatment to create a residual barrier.
How to Hire a Bed Bugs Heat Treatment Exterminator
OK. So you've decided to investigate hiring a professional. Where do you start?
Google. (Feel free to use Bing or your favorite search engine.) Type in search terms like:
Start with the ads at the top of the page results after each search. Also, scroll down the page to find other listings not featured in ads. Make a list and contact 3 to 5 companies with questions.
Here's what you want to know:
Now, take the two companies that impressed you the most and do your due diligence. (If they are not licensed, cross them off your list. This is specialized work, and you want trained professionals to do it.)
Check out their website. Do they have one? Does it try to answer customers' questions?
Go to Yelp, Google reviews, their Facebook page, or HomeAdvisor and see what past customers say about them.
No reviews? Ask them to give you the names of one or two customers you can contact for a reference.
Remember, you're turning over your home to these professionals and you will be paying them a lot of money. It's your job to take reasonable precautions to protect your investment.
It's not cheap, but professional bed bug heat treatments can be the fastest way to return your home, sweet home to you and your family.
Did You Miss Any Steps in the DIY Bed Bugs Treatment Guide?
In case you missed it, click to read previous steps:
(Note: This article may contain affiliate links. If you purchase anything after clicking an affiliate link, we may receive compensation.)