Bed bug steam generator — efficiency and how to use

Every­one who at least once in their life has been in a room that was occu­pied by bed­bugs will nev­er for­get their impres­sions. Par­a­sites may not even be visu­al­ly vis­i­ble, but a ter­ri­ble smell betrays their pres­ence with a head. It is gen­er­al­ly accept­ed that the pres­ence of bed­bugs in a res­i­den­tial area is a sign of trou­ble. But this is absolute­ly not the case, trou­ble can hap­pen to any­one, even quite respectable peo­ple. These insects feel equal­ly good both in an old rur­al house and in a mod­ern apart­ment with Euro­pean-style ren­o­va­tion. Par­a­sites, unlike many oth­er unwant­ed insects, do not feed on human waste, but on blood. There­fore, they take root equal­ly well in almost any premis­es, regard­less of their san­i­tary con­di­tion. The par­a­sites don’t care if it’s clean, the room is clean or not, there are food crumbs or organ­ic food left­overs from the garbage can, they don’t care where they breed — in an untidy bar­racks or an elite mul­ti-storey build­ing. And get­ting rid of them is extreme­ly dif­fi­cult.

To stop this unpleas­ant neigh­bor­hood for good, you need to destroy the nests of bed­bugs, adult par­a­sites, their lar­vae and eggs. Bed­bugs mul­ti­ply incred­i­bly quick­ly, restor­ing the pop­u­la­tion. If sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als or egg lay­ing are skipped dur­ing the pro­cess­ing of the premis­es, after a few months the insects will re-occu­py your house.

What are dangerous bed bugs in a residential area

If you sus­pect that you have bed bugs in your apart­ment or house, do not put off solv­ing the prob­lem “on the back burn­er”. The pres­ence of such neigh­bors can harm health, both phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal. Why are they dan­ger­ous and what dam­age can they cause:

1. In the process of life, the bugs emit a ter­ri­ble smell, it is very unpleas­ant to be in the room.

2. Where bed­bugs live, there is no ques­tion of com­pli­ance with san­i­tary stan­dards. If the par­a­sites move to your neigh­bors (which hap­pens soon­er or lat­er if the vic­tims live in an apart­ment build­ing), there will be prob­lems with the san­i­tary and epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sta­tion.

3. Bed­bug bites are very painful, and the itch­ing is just crazy. Since the par­a­sites are active at night, peo­ple in the room have trou­ble sleep­ing, in some cas­es the num­ber of bites in an infest­ed room reach­es 500 per night. In a short time, this neg­a­tive­ly affects the gen­er­al state of health, the func­tion­ing of the ner­vous sys­tem, work­ing capac­i­ty, men­tal and psy­cho­log­i­cal state.

4. Bed­bugs are not offi­cial­ly con­sid­ered car­ri­ers of any dis­eases. But at the same time, through the bite of this insect, you can become infect­ed with hepati­tis B and plague, get a ter­ri­ble skin rash and aller­gies. Doc­tors also do not exclude the pos­si­bil­i­ty of human infec­tion with microor­gan­isms that cause tularemia, bru­cel­losis, typhoid fever, anthrax, small­pox and tuber­cu­lo­sis.

5. Thanks to their sense of smell, par­a­sites eas­i­ly detect a per­son­’s every­day clothes and hide in them. You can infect with these insects all the places you vis­it.

Also, do not for­get that par­a­sites cause dam­age to prop­er­ty. Where bed­bugs orga­nize their nests, fur­ni­ture and things, books, house­hold appli­ances become unus­able. Par­a­sites hide in them dur­ing the day and pol­lute them with their feces thrown off by chiti­nous shells.

Bedbug habitats

To get rid of all bed­bugs with a steam gen­er­a­tor, you need to know where they live. Usu­al­ly they set­tle in dark, dry and warm places, seclud­ed cor­ners clos­er to the “food”, that is, to the sleep­ing place of a per­son. Chiti­nous shells shed dur­ing the molt­ing process, black dots from excre­ment, a char­ac­ter­is­tic unpleas­ant odor clear­ly indi­cate where the bugs live. As a rule, they can be found:

1. In the joints of fur­ni­ture, between sofa cush­ions, at the bot­tom of sofas, beds, arm­chairs, in wardrobes.

2. In clothes.

3. On the book­shelves.

4. In pic­ture frames.

5. Behind skirt­ing boards and in cracks in the floor.

6. In out­lets.

7. Under wall­pa­per.

8. Under mat­tress­es and pil­low­cas­es, duvet cov­ers.

9. In the cages of birds, domes­tic ani­mals.

Most of these areas can be treat­ed with a steam gen­er­a­tor.

Is a bed bug steamer effective?

The steam gen­er­a­tor is unique­ly effec­tive in the fight against bed­bugs, as it pro­duces high-tem­per­a­ture steam. And although these par­a­sites are quite ther­mophilic, if the ambi­ent tem­per­a­ture ris­es above 45 degrees, they become uncom­fort­able and can only live for 45 min­utes. And by adding anoth­er 5 degrees, bed­bugs at any stage of devel­op­ment can be killed almost instant­ly. If you use steam at 90–150 degrees where pos­si­ble, you will be able to dis­in­fect sur­faces and things.

The advantages of a steam generator from bedbugs, comparison with other methods

We list the advan­tages of a steam gen­er­a­tor as a device for get­ting rid of bed­bugs:

1. In 100% of cas­es, high tem­per­a­ture steam kills insects that it comes into con­tact with.

2. Par­a­sites do not devel­op immu­ni­ty to this type of expo­sure, unlike chem­i­cals. Some drugs do not kill insects at all, but only scare them away for a short time. But chem­istry in most cas­es is harm­ful to humans, espe­cial­ly for such vul­ner­a­ble groups of peo­ple as chil­dren, the elder­ly, preg­nant women, and aller­gy suf­fer­ers.

3. Steam is envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, does not have an unpleas­ant odor, it does not stain clothes and fur­ni­ture. In gen­er­al, steam does not cause any harm to health and prop­er­ty, if used cor­rect­ly. There­fore, at the time of pro­cess­ing, res­i­dents, includ­ing chil­dren, ani­mals, do not need to move to anoth­er room.

4. Using a steam gen­er­a­tor, you can dis­in­fect sur­faces, destroy path­o­gen­ic microflo­ra.

5. Pos­si­bil­i­ty of pro­cess­ing hard-to-reach places, such as cracks and joints.

Also, the advan­tage of the steam gen­er­a­tor is that it can be trans­port­ed with­out prob­lems to where bed­bugs or oth­er par­a­sites have start­ed, for exam­ple, to the coun­try house.

Now let’s talk about the dis­ad­van­tages of fight­ing bed­bugs with a steam gen­er­a­tor:

1. The high cost of the device. But this is a rel­a­tive minus, since the steam gen­er­a­tor is mul­ti­func­tion­al, it is pur­chased for years, so such a pur­chase will def­i­nite­ly pay off. And if you already have it, then the cost does not mat­ter at all.

2. You need to choose a mod­el that comes with a noz­zle with a nar­row spout.

3. It is nec­es­sary to strict­ly fol­low the instruc­tions for pro­cess­ing sur­faces and things. First, each zone must be exposed to steam for at least 15 sec­onds. Sec­ond­ly, a strong jet of steam direct­ed at the lay­ing of eggs can sim­ply blow them away. The off­spring of bed­bugs in this case will sur­vive, every­thing will start all over again.

4. High tem­per­a­ture steam can dam­age wall­pa­per, fur­ni­ture, books, and should not be direct­ed to a pow­er out­let or elec­tri­cal appli­ances.

5. Work­ing with high tem­per­a­ture steam is a risk of ther­mal burns.

Also, despite the high effi­cien­cy of the steam gen­er­a­tor in the fight against bed­bugs, it still does not give a 100% guar­an­tee of get­ting rid of par­a­sites. There is a high prob­a­bil­i­ty that you will not be able to care­ful­ly process all the places where insects are (live or tem­porar­i­ly hide). Steam treat­ment, unlike chem­i­cals, does not pro­duce a resid­ual effect. Hav­ing missed a cou­ple of indi­vid­u­als, you will be forced to re-treat, and maybe more than once. Is there an alter­na­tive? Yes, for exam­ple, if you invite a pest con­trol, he can treat the entire room, even the entire apart­ment, with a spe­cial gas that will pen­e­trate absolute­ly all habi­tats of bed­bugs, soak all things, fill all the cracks, leav­ing no chance for par­a­sites. But this method of influ­ence has its draw­backs, for exam­ple, you need to pre­pare the premis­es, evict the ten­ants for a while, then clean up, etc. There­fore, before buy­ing a steam gen­er­a­tor or order­ing a pest con­trol ser­vice, weigh the pros and cons.

How to use a bed bug steamer

First you need to pre­pare the room — take fresh flow­ers out of it and every­thing that can­not be steamed, take ani­mals out, ask peo­ple to leave. Then you need to move all the fur­ni­ture away from the walls. Turn tables, chairs, beds, bed­side tables and oth­er small items upside down. The con­tents of all draw­ers are removed, the draw­ers are pulled out. Cur­tains can be removed and boiled if the mate­r­i­al allows. Pre­pare an exten­sion cord, as you will need to process every cor­ner of the room. After that, you can start to poi­son the bugs with steam. The rec­om­mend­ed tem­per­a­ture is not low­er than 50 degrees, prefer­ably high­er. The tip of the steam gen­er­a­tor should not come clos­er than 25 cm to objects that may be affect­ed by steam. If it is too wide, you can pull a piece of cloth over the tip itself so that the jet dis­si­pates and does not knock down par­a­site eggs, but kill them. It is nec­es­sary to process all sur­faces and hard-to-reach places. Pay spe­cial atten­tion to the seams and cor­ners of bed linen, clothes, mat­tress­es, in which bed bugs often lay their eggs. Car­pets, all tex­tiles in the room must also be processed. Be sure to wear gloves before start­ing the pro­ce­dure to reduce the risk of steam burns. After treat­ment, ven­ti­late the room to reduce the lev­el of humid­i­ty.

Remem­ber, if no chem­i­cals are used, there is no guar­an­tee that absolute­ly all insects will be destroyed using a steam gen­er­a­tor. It is rec­om­mend­ed to car­ry out a sim­i­lar pro­ce­dure sev­er­al more times, tak­ing breaks for a week. Some users advise fill­ing the device with a mix­ture of water and vine­gar, bleach, ammo­nia, so that in addi­tion to ther­mal burns, bed bugs receive severe chem­i­cal burns. But in this case, you need to under­stand whether these sub­stances can be used when refu­el­ing an exist­ing device, and also whether such a solu­tion will harm the prop­er­ty.

How to choose the right bed bug steamer

The main cri­te­ria for choos­ing a steam gen­er­a­tor are the pow­er and tem­per­a­ture to which it heats the steam. If a house­hold clothes steam­er can pro­duce steam of 50 degrees or more, and also if it has a spe­cial nar­row noz­zle, then it is quite suit­able for such a pur­pose as killing bed­bugs. But still, it is bet­ter to opt for home clean­ing devices (steam clean­er, steam­er) with a pow­er of 1500 watts or more. The devices of the man­u­fac­tur­ers Karcher and Philips, Lau­ra Star, Bork, Bosch, Kit­fort have proven them­selves excel­lent­ly.