Why choose a heat treatment to kill bed bugs?
January 11, 2019
There are several treatment methods commonly used by the pest control industry to kill and get rid of bed bugs. Each treatment has varying success against these blood-sucking insects... and many do-it-yourself treatments are not very effective at all! When choosing a treatment method, we consider things like the level of infestation, your patience level (how long do you want to share your bed with the bed bugs), the environment being treated (neat and organized, or cluttered), and of course your budget.
There are several compelling reasons to choose Thermal Remediation — a professional bed bug heat treatment — when you ask yourself how to kill bed bugs.
- Choosing heat provides the fastest knock down of the entire infestation throughout your home.
- A heat treatment kills all stages of bed bug life in just one treatment. From unhatched eggs to mature adults, they’re all dead.
- No other treatment can treat your whole house in one day.
- Do you know where every egg or adult bed bug is? It doesn’t matter: the heat gets to them and kills every bed bug.
- A heat treatment flushes the air in your home with aggressively-heated and convected air and often reduces odors and allergens.
Having said that, the success of any treatment is determined by the training, knowledge, experience, and the protocol used by the technicians. We utilize a methodology created and perfected by Dr. Michael Linford that dates back to 1987 for killing termites wherever they may infest a structure. Dr. Linford and his team were the first to bring heat to the commercial pest control market. University studies have repeatedly proven thermal remediation as the only treatment that will kill all life stages of all insects throughout the entirety of a structure. As Dr. Linford says, if heat can kill an entire colony of termites in a 4x12 beam, heat will kill all the bed bugs in your home. Heat also penetrates wood faster than fumigants.
Almost all of the national pest control companies have acquired heat equipment in recent years. They have done this because heat works. Many big exterminating companies have a large percentage of employee turnover — and often their employees with better training and skills move to jobs with other companies. This means many of the big companies do not have technicians with the training, experience, and history like we have at Armor & Shield.
Beware: not all heat treatments are equal! The pest control technicians at Armor & Shield are specifically trained and certified in heat. We are trained to get your bed bug heat extermination job done in one day without damaging your personal belongings.
So, you’re probably wondering just what the heck is a heat treatment? Here is a condensed list of things that take place.
- Our technicians walk through your home with you to look for items you may have missed that need to be removed prior to heat.
- Bed bug technicians will carry several fans into your home and set up duct work that the heat will flow through.
- Technicians turn on our heaters. We strategically place wireless temperature monitors throughout your home and monitor temperatures in real-time from outside.
- Once the heat in your home reaches 135°F we start moving furniture and items around to expose everything to the heat.
- We go in the house every 15 minutes to move personal items and manage the heat, ensuring that bugs everywhere have no cool place to hide.
Feel free to review our work on our bed bug photos and videos page and see how bed bugs react in lethal heat.
We do our best to leave your house the way we found it but our main focus is killing the bed bugs. After at least three hours of 135°F heat we turn the heater off and load the equipment back into the trailer. Anybody can kill bed bugs. We kill the eggs. Problem solved. If you think you see bed bugs call Armor & Shield at 405-698-6090.
Don’t take our word for it
I fought bed beds for over a couple of years trying everything I could find and no luck. I came across an ad for Armor & Shields. They responded very quickly. After one day and they are gone. There was no smell. I recommend them to anyone who is tired of these pests. My home is now my home.
Pattie Farmer
5 Stars: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
May 13, 2021