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Help- very serious bed bug infestation.


skeeterbug
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I live on the other side of the world from my elderly parents.  I am visiting later this week because they are both going through some serious health issues.  I've just learned that they have a horrible bed bug infestation.  Horrible, as in they've had them for years.  I learned this through a concerned friend of the family.  They don't even know I know yet.  I was planning to stay with them but now I've got to figure out what to do, I won't be able to sleep there.

 

I need to know where to start.  I know the things are very hard to get rid of.  I'm assuming the worst, that they will have invaded every corner of the house.  They have heaps and heaps of books. 

 

I will be contacting an exterminator, of course.  Will we be able to save their furniture?  Couches, mattresses, etc.  Do they get into the carpet?  Can their books be saved?

 

To make it all worse, one of them is a bit of a hoarder and it will be hard to convince them to rid themselves of things.  I had high hopes of just cleaning up while I was there.  Now it's a different ball game.

 

Thanks for any advice.  And please, be kind.  I know this brings into question their mental state but I can't worry about that until we get them through their medical procedures and their house cleaned up.

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I live on the other side of the world from my elderly parents.  I am visiting later this week because they are both going through some serious health issues.  I've just learned that they have a horrible bed bug infestation.  Horrible, as in they've had them for years.  I learned this through a concerned friend of the family.  They don't even know I know yet.  I was planning to stay with them but now I've got to figure out what to do, I won't be able to sleep there.

 

I need to know where to start.  I know the things are very hard to get rid of.  I'm assuming the worst, that they will have invaded every corner of the house.  They have heaps and heaps of books. 

 

I will be contacting an exterminator, of course.  Will we be able to save their furniture?  Couches, mattresses, etc.  Do they get into the carpet?  Can their books be saved?

 

To make it all worse, one of them is a bit of a hoarder and it will be hard to convince them to rid themselves of things.  I had high hopes of just cleaning up while I was there.  Now it's a different ball game.

 

Thanks for any advice.  And please, be kind.  I know this brings into question their mental state but I can't worry about that until we get them through their medical procedures and their house cleaned up.

 

I am so sorry to hear this.  We went through an infestation when bed bugs were hardly known in the US.  They now have high heat treatments that may be able to salvage much of your parents stuff, but with a potential hording situation, I wouldn't feel comfortable trusting any cure.

 

Do not stay with them.  If you can take clothes you can throw away at the end of each day.  Step out of them in a bathroom (like a public bathroom or the like) or other room with tiles, not carpeting/wood.  Put them straight in a plastic bag, tie it up and throw them away.  Wash up afterwards. If you can leave/dispose the suitcase when you depart their home, it would be better.  Take nothing from their house.  Bed bugs are horrible.  Hugs.

Edited by YaelAldrich
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Definitely contact an exterminator.  The books CAN be save by treating them in a Packtite, really all of their belongings can be saved that way.  The whole house will probably need multiple treatments. I would seriously consider shelling out the money for a heat treatment.  Their furniture should be able to be saved also by treating and encasing them. 

 

I highly suggest talking to the professionals on the BedBugger forums also because a LOT of exterminators really don't know what they are doing.

 

Do NOT, and I repeat, do NOT use a bug bomb.  It drives them into the walls.

 

 

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No BTDT advice, but I know bed bugs can infest books besides fabric items.

 

Are they in a single family home or condo/apartment?

 

When our house was tented for termites a few years ago, the owner of the tenting company told us a local private school was being tented for an infestation of bed bugs. I'm assuming you could have your parent's house tented to eliminate the bed bugs, too. Not sure how the tenting would work with a hoarding situation. The gas used to treat termites needs to have cabinets, doors, closets, drawers, open to penetrate and kill them.

 

Good luck and hugs to you.

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BTDT

My FIL is in his mid-80's. He keeps EVERYTHING.

A couple years ago he had a terrible, terrible bed bug infestation - and we didn't know about it until we were there (sleeping there!) and being bit. We live 12 or so hours from him and only visit once or twice a year, so we had no clue.

 

I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It cost my FIL thousands to get rid of the bed bugs AND he had to replace the downstairs furniture (and buy covers for the bed mattresses). Things had to be gone through, some things had to be tossed. 

It may have cost as much as it did because of the size of the house. His home is a larger three-story row home (with a basement that had to be treated, too). A condo or an apartment may cost less.

 

Nightmare - but he DID get rid of the bugs.

Edited by AimeeM
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Actually it may not bring into question their mental state.  Bed bugs do not bite everyone.  7 people in our house, only 2 of us were bitten.

 

Treatment is expensive.  IIRC, I read that nothing works to kill them anymore, chemical wise, that heat is the only guaranteed way.  (DDT used to be the treatment, I believe, and they've gotten out of hand due to that being banned and mild winters)

 

Almost exactly 2 years ago, we had to have the house we rented heat treated, the price was roughly $1 per sq foot.  Make sure you get a guarantee, our guy had to come back twice.

 

I know they're your parents, but there's no way I would be staying there with bed bugs. I'm not sure I would even go inside, honestly.  (I swear, I think I have bed bug PTSD, it was awful)

 

If you somehow convince them to have the treatment, and help them get ready for it...consider getting rid of any magazines, books, papers that aren't being used.  Bed bugs can fit in places tinier than your eyes can see.  Canned sweetened condensed milk turns into dulce de leche during heat treatment...if they happen to have any LOL.

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We had bedbugs this last November.

 

My husband used to do extensive traveling, as in gone about forty plus weeks out of the year.

 

Never a bedbug.

 

We went to Disney and stayed off property, came back and I had the most itchy bug bites ever. Woke up the next morning and I was COVERED with literally hundreds if bites, By the evening, I was covered in itchy burning hives! I am a very pale white. Like redhead with freckles pale and there was practically no pale skin left on my body. Just red angry burning itchy welts which were bleeding from my scratching. I ended up in ER and put on atarax and prednisone. 

 

The night we returned home, I did grab our toiletry bag and placed it on my bed. We left our other suitcases in the trunk. I did grab the dirty clothes (in a trash bag) and began washing them in the morning. Two weeks later, I had my bedbug attack. Luckily my daughter who was lying next to me was not touched at all.

 

I started washing everything in hot water and a hot dryer and we had an exterminator come out. It was just over five hundred to have our master bedroom done. We threw away our luggage and kept things sealed in bags. We had to buy a new mattress and tear up the other one. We also bought bed bug mattress covers.

 

It has been about five months and thankfully there are no problems.

 

Best of luck to you.

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Bedbugs can live lots of places, but they seem to prefer places that feel sheltered. So they'll cluster under the hem of the mattress, but they won't live in the middle of the underside of the bedframe. They'll hang out in the screws of office chairs, but they won't live in the drawers of the desk. (Usually.) Additionally, although they can travel thousands of feet to feed, they don't like to, and usually live close by wherever the humans in the house spend several hours a day immobile - so, you know, bed, but also the car, or the computer, or the television.

 

DE will help kill them, and I strongly suggest a generous application of insect growth regulator around all bedframes, baseboards, the couch, and anywhere you actually see a bedbug or the evidence they were there. IGR won't kill bugs, but it keeps them from reproducing.

 

Things can be saved, but you probably won't have the time or resources to save everything, especially if there's a hoarding issue.

 

Bedbugs can be handled, but it requires time and patience. It means daily putting out DE in trouble spots. It means vacuuming every day. It means storing all your extra things inside heavy duty ziplocks for several months until any little critters give up and die of starvation. It means washing clothes and bedding in HOT water with a HOT dryer at the end, every week. It frequently means giving up on possessions that are too far gone to be worth saving.

 

Honestly, if you don't get the buy-in from your mom to clean the house, and to keep it clean, you're not going to be able to make much headway here.

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Sigh, I typed up a whole response and lost it.  

 

The issue about the mental state is that they've apparently known about the bed bugs for several years and haven't done anything.  Too expensive, probably.  But that means they had them last time I visited.  But I didn't sleep there.

 

A family friend pulled the couch away from the wall and found dead bugs eveywhere.  So it sounds bad.  I'm hoping against hope that it's limited to upstairs since that's where they sleep and where the living room is.  Most of their books are downstairs.

 

Where can I purchase the zippered mattress covers?  Do they need to be special ordered or can I find them at Wal-Mart or BBB?

 

Thanks for all the info.  I haven't visited these boards in ages but I knew someone here would have experience with bed bugs.  Thanks heaps.

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Honestly, if you don't get the buy-in from your mom to clean the house, and to keep it clean, you're not going to be able to make much headway here.

 

Yup. You're going to have to decide how much to do. It's not a short project because a few will escape, and then you have to get them again.

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I'm so sorry.  Do you have (or can you get) a windsuit to wear over your clothes while you are there?  Tuck your pant legs into your socks.  Consider wearing crocs (or something like them) if you have them, so that they can't burrow into your shoes.  I'd probably spray my shoes and lower pant legs with DEET, just in case it might help.  If you must sit, sit only on hard chairs with no upholstery of any kind.

 

If you have a hoarding situation, find out about doing heat treatments.  I think it's the only thing that would work without emptying (or nearly) the house.  I don't think you can deal with the hoarding quickly enough to be effective for bedbug treatment, and this would allow you to skip over the hoarding problem for now.

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I'm so sorry.  Do you have (or can you get) a windsuit to wear over your clothes while you are there?  Tuck your pant legs into your socks.  Consider wearing crocs (or something like them) if you have them, so that they can't burrow into your shoes.  I'd probably spray my shoes and lower pant legs with DEET, just in case it might help.  If you must sit, sit only on hard chairs with no upholstery of any kind.

 

If you have a hoarding situation, find out about doing heat treatments.  I think it's the only thing that would work without emptying (or nearly) the house.  I don't think you can deal with the hoarding quickly enough to be effective for bedbug treatment, and this would allow you to skip over the hoarding problem for now.

 

Depending on how bad the hoarding is, the heat treatment won't be effective.  If the bugs can burrow into stuff to get away from the heat, they'll just come out again when it's cooler.  We had boxes of books we hadn't unpacked yet from moving, and the guy that treated our house made us unpack them (they were large computer tower boxes, so not overly big or thick) because he said the bugs would hide in them.

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Depending on how bad the hoarding is, the heat treatment won't be effective.  If the bugs can burrow into stuff to get away from the heat, they'll just come out again when it's cooler.  We had boxes of books we hadn't unpacked yet from moving, and the guy that treated our house made us unpack them (they were large computer tower boxes, so not overly big or thick) because he said the bugs would hide in them.

 

 

This.  We had bedbugs.  The bedbug guy said that hot and cold treatments are iffy, unless there's nowhere for the bugs to burrow into to get away from the hot/cold. 

 

In a house stuffed with things, the bugs will possibly/probably find somewhere to burrow into where it's not so hot. 

 

We had bedbugs, but we did not have a reaction from the bites.  We could see they were biting us (because of the spots of blood left on the bed), but we didn't react. Are your parents reacting to the bites? 

 

If not, then I wonder how big of an issue this is. Well, actually, it's an issue because they're probably taking little bugs with them when they go out and about during their day and could be spreading them to other people.  But for themselves, if they're not having a reaction to the bites, I wonder if it's a big deal.  Do bed bugs spread disease? 

 

Have you talked with them about it?  Have you told them they're being covered by bugs all night long?  Will that be enough to make them be willing to treat?  The treatment is to bag up EVERYTHING and leave the rooms completely cleared to be sprayed.  You have to leave your stuff in bags for months.  It's a tremendous pain to deal with.  I'm not giving you much hope, am I?  I'm sorry.  It's just not an easy problem. 

 

What's their reaction been when they've been told about the bugs and the treatments?  You can't force them to do anything and if they're not being affected by the bugs, they probably don't care.  I'm just saddened for the bugs they might be spreading around to other people.  When they sit in a movie theater or at a restaurant, are little buggies hopping off their clothes or purse and going home with other people? 

 

This also makes me wary of thrift shops.  You never know what critters might have lived in the homes of the donors.  When I get clothes at a thrift shop I pop them in the washer/dryer at the laundromat on HOT before letting them into the house.

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Can anyone give me an idea how much the heat treatment would cost?  Ballpark of course, I know it will vary, pm me if you'd like.

 

They seem to think it is only a problem in their bedroom now.  I'm not sure what they've done to treat it, they make think that vacuuming is enough and not be aware what is needed. But I will arrange for an inspection and we'll go from there.

 

They'll both be recovering from heart procedures.  One of them is not very hygenic.  They could be spreading them like crazy.  I'm afraid to get in their car, but I certainly can't afford to rent one for the five weeks I'm there.  I've booked a hotel for the first week and see how far we get.

 

It's just heartbreaking for me to be on the other side of the world from them, and find out they've been dealing with this.  Plus the hoarding and the general uncleanliness of their house.  But in five weeks we should be able to do a lot to get their house in shape.  In between surgeries and hospital visits. I'm going without kids, so I'll actually be able to get things done!!!   :hurray: (while missing my kids and husband like crazy)   :crying:

 

 

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