bed bugs are taking over

seems that bed bugs are on the rise.

there's even been an article in a national newspaper about someone's experience of trying to get rid of them. here's mine:

discovered that we had uninvited guests in the bedroom back in july. i dismantled the bed frame, cleaned everything and sprinkled around some diatomaceous earth, washed and tumble dried everything. mrs decided we needed professional help. the bed bug ladies turned up, treated two rooms with insecticide, we washed everything and tumbled dried everything again.

3 weeks later we still had bugs in our bedroom although the other room was bug free. BBLs came back and treated our room again. we washed and tumbled dried everything again.

we still had bugs.

mrs was so traumatised by this point that she started sleeping in the spare room - which then became home to a satellite population of bugs.

the BBLs stopped returning our calls. we contacted rentokill. guy came round and said it would be £2,600 to erect a heat pod in our bedroom into which we could put all potentially infested items to be heated to 62deg which would destroy all life cycle stages of bugs that were in the heat pod (what about the carpets etc though?). I pointed out that I could buy a new bed and mattress for that price, but promised to consider his generous offer and get back to him.

today i bought a steam cleaner, dismantled the bed, steamed everything including the carpet and mattress, washed and tumbled dried everything again, left the bed frame dismantled, put plastic sheets on the floor, sprinkled diatomaceous earth on the plastic sheets and put the mattress on top of that.

we live in hope, although not that much hope.

share your bed bug stories here.

got them a few years back can't remember if i had a cat at the time but it might have brought them in but also picked up a plant from the street someone had chucked out it may well have had a infestation

did what you did but got a wall paper steamer. unscrewed the big flat pad and just had a jet of steam coming out of the hose. did the bed the mattress the carpet a few times over the course of a month. the jet of steam gets in every nook and cranny and anything that survives that heat deserves a bit of my blood. they didn't come back

just need to cover a couple of breeding cycles to ensure any eggs that hatch, you zap the new born ones as well

Remember people saying diatomaceous earth worked well.

Can can confirm this stuff is very effective against cockroaches too.

Wall paper steamer is a good idea. I got a Karcher thing that seems to be reasonably effective.

It’s fossilised algae! So cool.

1 Attachment

mrs was so traumatised by this point that she started sleeping in the spare room - which then became home to a satellite population of bugs.

I think you've found who your Typhoid Mary is then...

Not bedbugs, but when we treat the house for fleas (because our cats are skanky vermin), we treat every room.

You may have bedbugs everywhere already, and while you're successful in cleaning out one room, they'll just migrate back in.

The Bed Bug Ladies sounds a bit shit if they're ghosting you.

The BBLs have just got back in touch, seemingly they have been away. So fair play to them.

I got told off for steam cleaning as it will have washed off the insectidice but after 6 weeks I'm not convinced it was working.

We've had fleas too.

From what I've seen, fleas are more mobile than bed bugs. Bed bugs tend to hang around by beds.

Bed bugs fucking suck. Lived in rental housing that had them, made a couple of attempts and getting rid of them (Rentokil guys, spraying everything with insecticide, had to move all the furniture away from the walls so they could get to the skirting board, massive ballache) but they came back both times. I suspect that the adjoining house had them, and there was a big crack in the wall between the houses in one of the bedrooms so I think they were migrating through there. Traumatic shit, altho I never got bitten and I never saw one in my room until the day I moved out. Had to quarantine all my shit after moving so as to not take them with me.

Didn’t see the fuckers again until I moved into my first house. Was supposed to be sold with vacant possession and empty of any items, but the cunt developer who sold it to us had been letting one of his workers sleep there, so we moved in to an unwanted double bed. Which, when sat on, was discovered to be crawling with bedbugs. We dumped the bed in the skip, tore up all the carpets in the house (this had been the plan, but the bed bug discover really expedited it) and then had Rentokil around to bomb the place with insecticide. We were lucky we still had our rental place to stay in whilst this bullshit went on. Scorched earth seemed to do the trick and we never saw the buggers again but I was super uneasy for the first few months we lived there.

Hate bedbugs.

Yeah they are proper twats.

The first treatment was all of the upstairs rooms inc stairs too.

No bed bugs here, but currently living with a family of book lice (not just contains to the bookshelf). Apparently they like damp conditions, and yet they remained all through summer despite me trying to get rid of the lot.

Two neighbours of ours years ago had bed bugs. They still have actual ptsd from it: both wake up at night and feel the urge to check the bed, he can’t wear woolly or other itchy clothing, a whole list of reasons for why bedbugs should be exterminated with extreme prejudice.

this morning there were a decent number of large adult bugs roaming around on the plastic sheet at the head of the mattress. a couple had made it onto the mattress too.

there is some good news in that much fewer had got onto the mattress and therefore onto us, and the ones which were on the plastic sheet were picking up diatomaceous earth quite nicely.

the bad news is that they are clearly emerging from the floorboards and the gap beneath the skirting board - as there's a large cavity area under the boards, there isn't an effective way to steam them in there so now i'm a worried that me steaming plan isn't going to be as effective as i thought.

Is it time to have a word with your neighbours?

Made my life a misery when I used to live Brighton. Council sprayed twice but didn’t do owt (councils can only use biodegradable pesticides which dont work) - the good stuff was too expensive for us.

At its worst, I would go to bed with hoody tucked into joggers, gloves and socks and the hood drawn to leave a small circle on my face. I used it go into college with loads of bites on that small area. Used to get called fleabag.

My flat mates were never affected even though they had loads of the little buggers in their rooms. Bites apparently only affect people who are allergic to the anticoagulant they inject you with before they suck.

And they really fucking suck

Jeez, that's horrific.

Some mornings I have bite marks but they fade away over the day. At the start of this, the bites didn't show at all.

Problem is also that pesticides tend to be ineffective against them at the best of times. Resistant strains exist and due to them retreating to cracks and crevices where they aggregate you often fail to reach where they spend most of there time.

Used to work in a company where we kept them for research purposes, and had to work with them from time to time. Paranoia from that and being bitten on holiday means i always keep an eye out when I travel. The mental aspect is horrible and worst bit about them though as thankfully at least they aren’t known to spread disease.

Came across this blog a while back, when I was helping a friend with them which seemed to offer decent practical advice for self treating infestations:

https://citybugs.tamu.edu/factsheets/biting-stinging/others/ent-3012/

Mattress encasement, treating bed with heat gun/steam cleaner, sheets in hot wash, and then talc traps on legs at least gives you a safe space to sleep and methodically deal with infestation

Have a booking in a hotel room in Amsterdam in October. Lots of reviews fairly recently saying the room(s? ) have Bed Bugs.

Are they likely to be less active in October than in Summer?

I have a bottle of Life Sytems Permethrin I bought to tackle Ticks whilst wild camping, I may take that (the liquids in carry on thing has been stopped now right?)

Cancel immediately and book something else.

ADE is on, the place is booked solid, I struggled to get this place

Prob this. Central heating means they’re active all year round. Although reviews saying bed bugs doesn’t always mean that, people might be getting bitten to crap from mosquitos - and not every room necessarily is infested.

If you have to stay there make sure to bung everything including bag in a hot wash (60c min) when you get home.

We were in a hotel in Rome with bed bugs, left after the first night, washed everything at a laundromat at 60 degrees, kept doing that during the whole trip. At home all the luggage went into the bin and everything got washed again at high temperature and I vacuum packed all the electronic stuff for month. Obviously lots of clothes got ruined and went into the bin too.
Enjoy your trip.

ADE is on

That looks amazing, never heard of it before.

Yeah! DAVE CLARKE PRESENTS: BRITISH MURDER BOYS / DASHA RUSH / OSCAR MULERO E.A. on the Friday and STOOR live with Speedy J, Karenn, Surgeon and JakoJako on Sat night