Do you remember the old adage of boiling a frog? That same principle is applied to killing bed bugs. The story is told, if you throw a frog in boiling water it will immediately jump out of the pot. However, if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and gradually increase the water temperature,
the frog will get comfortable and eventually succumb to his death. That’s exactly how we kill bed bugs – gradually apply heat and they will die.
The thermal death point for a bed bug is between 111 to 114 degrees. (depending upon the research you reference.)
The larva and eggs die at 117 degrees.
Our bed bug heater will raise the temperature in the room to 140 degrees. This temperature will not harm electronics, furniture, pictures, or wallpaper. You will need to remove items such as: cosmetics, candles, food, medication, explosives, etc.
We recommend running our heating machine until the cracks and crevices reach a temperature of 121 degrees. Depending on the size of the room and building & wall construction, that should take between 3 to 4 hours to get to temperature. This is by design; we do not want to heat the room too quickly.
Once the cracks & crevices reach 121 degrees, we recommend that the temperature be held there for between 3 to 4 hours.
After that waiting period – the bed bugs are dead. There is no retreatment needed, there is no resistance, all bed bugs will be dead at that temperature. There are no allergy concerns nor dust or spray residuals. At this point, we recommend using a vacuum cleaner to simply sweep up the dead bed bugs.