What to do about Bed Bugs?
How to inspect your hotel room for Bed Bugs?
Bed bug problems have unfortunately become more common throughout Atlanta. It’s quite easy to pick up a bed bug while travelling on business or vacation (click for travel tips). Once inside your home, they will quickly find a host to feed on and will begin to reproduce.
In addition to our other pest control services, Arbor Pest Management also provides reliable and effective bed bug inspections and extermination. We are skilled and experienced to assist you with any and all bed bug problems you are experiencing. We will remove adult bed bugs and stifle their reproduction cycle to eradicate them and keep them from spreading. You can get a good night’s rest knowing that our expert bedbug team is on the job! We provide a level of service that cannot be beat.
If you think you might have bed bugs, call us today. We will perform a complete inspection for $250. If we find that you have bed bugs we will put together a plan that fits your needs. 100% of the inspection fee will be deducted from the price of the treatment.
Heat Treatments
Whole room heat treatments involve us bringing in specially designed equipment to raise the temperature in your home to kill the bed bugs. Bed bugs and eggs die within 90 minutes at 118°F (48°C) or immediately at 122°F (50°C). During a heat treatment, the air temperature in the room is typically between 135°F (57.2°C) and 145°F (62.7 °C).
We will place remote thermometers throughout the room/home, to make sure the right temperatures are reached. We will monitor the rooms closely to ensure that it gets hot enough to kill bed bugs. A heat treatment typically takes between six and eight hours, depending on the condition of the area being treated.
During the heat treatment pets and any heat sensitive items that may melt or be damaged at temperatures up to 150°F degrees should be removed from the area being treated. Make sure you discuss this with us as anything not treated with heat will need to be treated in another way.
Often, a residual insecticide will be applied to the border of the home/room being treated for bed bugs as a prevention step.
Chemical Treatments
Insecticide treatments that are conducted thoroughly and correctly by Arbor Pest can be a very effective way of controlling bed bugs. Three different types of insecticides will be used in order to achieve the best result.
- A fast-acting, contact insecticide for use on surfaces that humans frequently touch, i.e. sofas.
- A residual insecticide for inside furniture, cracks and crevices and the underside of surfaces we touch.
- A dust insecticide for cracks, crevices and voids, such as electrical outlets and baseboards.
A thorough insecticide treatment will involve 2-3 visits, as it is unlikely all the bed bugs will be killed in the initial treatment. An insecticide treatment typically takes about 30 minutes to 2 hours per room depending on size and condition of the room. Once the treatment is complete you should wait until all the insecticides have dried before reentering your home, or until we say it is safe to re-enter.
Before any treatment we will provide you with a detailed list of instructions for how to prepare your home. It is very important to follow these directions closely as properly preparing the home is a very important step in any treatment process. Improper preparation is one of the main reasons that treatment for bed bugs fail.
We strongly recommend against trying to conduct an insecticide treatment for bed bugs by yourself. Controlling bed bugs with insecticides is a challenging and time consuming process which requires expertise and in many states a license is required to apply the insecticides which kill bed bugs. The insecticides that can be purchased in a hardware store, such as foggers, are not effective in controlling bed bugs and we strongly recommend against their use.
