Not with your method, which is opening the window using BTUs from the sun. Please provide a better method.

I realize that. Do you realize that house insulation is confined behind walls? And the gypsum board also provides some of the R-value? This keeps the heat between the walls and not inside the house. The bugs are inside the house though. Good luck heating the house and all its components to 140 degrees by opening a window using the heat from the sun.

Everything I've said about heating the house has been predicated on it being in Dallas now. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 108 degrees.

So you've gone from "I can get a house in Dallas to a mean radiant temperature of 140 degrees by opening a window and not having to turn on the heater" to "I can get it to 113 by using the heater and a bunch of other stuff that will add heat to the house".

So you agree with me that your first statement was utterly ******ed.

I'm not opening the window. You didn't know that you don't have to open the window to let in the sun? Glass is transparent.

The exterior walls are insulated. This will help you maintain a temperature difference between the inside and outside, which is what you want. Your starting point will be the outside temperature (which will be 108 degrees tomorrow) and you can get there just by opening your doors and windows.

Glass allows light in but has e-value which absorbs some of the heat. That's why people like windows.

You cannot "get there" by opening your doors and windows. Jesus you are dumb.

As a general FYI, here is a description of temperatures needed to kill bed bugs as summarized on the ThermaPure company's website (a company IIRC with a very good reputation in thermal treatments for houses with bed bug infestations).

http://www.thermapure.com/bedbugs.php

I think the problem is sustaining the temperature at a true 114 for up to an hour (the temperature and time needed to kill the eggs, the hardest part to exterminate) through an entire house.

I imagine houses that are not properly sealed with direct heat applied to truly raise the temp to a 114 in all the various hiding places of the bed bug (and the eggs) for the entire home ends up making DIY heating treatments potentially ineffective.

Edit - as an amendment to a prior post, I stated that temps of 180 are necessary to kill bed bug eggs - I really remember reading that on some academic institution's web site, I guess that's not the case. But I'd also assume there is some real margin of error, and the people doing Nez's treatment are going 140 to play it safe.

No, as you see in my last post, I was never opening the window. Just the curtains/blinds.

Also, I only ever said "might" get to 140 without help. I know it's possible. It depends on his house. About the 115 deg., I'm just saying that if that's the case it would be really easy.

Really, I thought your big problem was that you were thinking 140 was dangerously hot, not that it would be difficult to get there. If you had to hold me to doing it without using anything but the sun, still no problem if I could use some mirrors and/or some thermal mass absorbing the sunlight (you can get a solar over up to 350 degrees on a cold day). If I had to use only what was on hand at the house - maybe, maybe not. I just said "might" on that one anyway.

[I heat the office I work in with mirrors in the winter 15-20 degrees above the outside temp easy, which is all that you need here in socal.]

This does depend on the windows. If you have old windows they do very little to keep out the heat. If they are new argon filled double-paned windows, then getting solar energy in will be hard. But, it will make it much easier to hold the temperature in if you have to use a space heater or something.

I play 18 holes in Houston in 115 heat index. I've sat in saunas plenty of times. I don't park my car in the garage. I don't know what you mean by "dangerously hot" here, I guess.

It sounds like it's pretty difficult to get there (and stay there long enough to kill all the bugs) if people can charge $1,600 for it. Or that industry is young and just really inefficient right now and not enough providers yet.

But neither of these was my main beef. My main point was that I think if a homeowner is going to do this seriously they should use a professional who is insured for all possible damages. Because, most people are idiots who think they can do things that should be left to professionals. And the downside of trying to do this job appears to be "burning your entire house down". And I haven't read my insurance policy lately but I don't know if "trying to rid my house of bed bugs using my oven and 84 candles" will fly over too well when I try to get my insurance company to cut me a $150K check.

Then you came in and were like "meh, that's not that hot, just do it yourself", and using all this ridiculous crap as some kind of "evidence" of how easy it must be. "Attics, cars, and saunas get so hot!!"

If you read the post a little I think it's pretty clear that "get there" was referring to the 108 degree ambient temperature. That would be your starting point.

Windows that keep the heat from the sunlight getting into your house have a LOW e-value and they reflect the infrared. They don't absorb some of the heat. Glass with a high e-value which would either absorb and re-emit heat or let it pass through would do the opposite of what you're talking about.

Windows are sold with varying e-values because sometimes you want heat and sometimes you don't. Undoubtedly if they are new windows in Dallas, they will have low e-values. But, I always said it depends on the house and we don't know anything about the house (as far as I've read) except that it has bedbugs.

If you're in Dallas on a 108 degree day. How about sealing up the house. Turn the house heater on full. Rig ductwork/fan to take air from your attic and move it to the ground floor. I don't know if you'll hit 140 on the ground floor, but I bet it gets damn hot.

A 10 degree rise would be trivial. A 30 degree rise is in the realm of possible.

And you have basically a zero percent chance you burn your house down.

We're just talking past each other here. I think I misinterpreted your objection to start with.


When it's 108 outside, I don't think it would be that difficult. Trying to do it in the winter would be hard. I'm sure the company works in the winter too. Also, as a general and electrical building contractor, I know it's routine for services such as these to cost a lot. It's not necessarily that it's a ripoff, but I bet at least 1/2 that $1600 is going towards sales and marketing.

If you're going to try to heat the house with candles, then yeah. But, not everyone is lame.

Perhaps I should have just said, "I would try to heat it myself, but I'm sure you pussies will call me ******ed."

Hopefully Nez will be able to tell us more, but I believe exterminators like ThermaPure who perform thermal treatments also 1) superheat potential hotspots, or areas where they know bedbugs to be with direct heat and 2) leave behind some chemical with residual effects - to ensure you get them all.

Meaning, I believe the thermal treatment service has some additional measures - also you are guaranteed that your entire house hits 140 for a long period of time and is insured to an extent against any damages.

Don't think anyone is really advocating a DIY thermal treatment, but I can't see that really being worth it to go through the trouble and still be unclear on whether it was 100% effective.

Maybe saving $1600 for doing an experiment which would be fun? I'll take that one myself, but to each his own.

anybody know if these bastards are common in england?

Yeah I mis-spoke here. I meant windows allow light and absorb heat. Check the e-value, it's not what absorbs the heat but it will tell you how much heat the window absorbs then sends back into the room.

As a Texas licensed architect, I don't disagree with you. But as a contractor you should appreciate that customers are sacrificing value for utility, right? When you say you would do this on your own, I wouldn't equate "you" with the typical person. The typical person is not a contractor.

Awesome that you played the "I'm a contractor card" and the "pussy" card, though. You win, bro. All I can bring myself to play is the local architect card.

But seriously do you realize it takes an incredible amount of energy to go from 108 for a couple minutes to 140 for several hours? Do you know what thermal lag is? Stuff loses heat at a very fast rate. If the difference in outside temperature is 35 degrees (140-105) the insulation in the house will not be able to retain all that heat because it will want to emit to the much cooler outside air. Which isn't different from what normally happens which is that the difference in indoor air temperature and outdoor is so drastic that it takes a lot of A/C to keep a house cool during summer. Dallas will lose about 30 degrees of heat by 3am just because the sun is shining on the other half of the Earth. The hottest part of the day is after the sun is most direct, because it takes a while to re-heat the Earth up during each day. The hottest part of summer is like 6 weeks after the sun is at its most direct, because of the thermal lag in stored heat on that portion of the Earth. Same with winter. It's coldest about 6 weeks after the sun is at its weakest.

It is not easy to get a home in Dallas to 140 degrees for several hours. Whatever you keep saying is just basically "Hey I'm a contractor! I can do this! This is a fun challenge!" which is just silly.

When I come back from vacation my house is never more than like 85 degrees. When the outside temperature is 108 your house doesn't just get to 108. Not even close.

I tried to be civil as long as possible, despite the fact that your first post to me was calling me ******ed. I meant to control myself the whole time, but was too weak.

The thermal lag is a good point, so you might want to start in the morning (probably over 100 degrees already by 10am or so tomorrow) by just opening doors and windows and running some fans. He could also run his heat that night and the house would not start at 85 degrees in the morning.

Some houses run hot, some cold, so again, how well this works is going to depend on the house.

I only played the contractor card once. I didn't keep playing it. And the point I was trying to support by that was that $1600 isn't necessarily what it costs to do the job. I don't know specifically for this business, but I would expect this to be a very high markup item. (I don't begrudge these guys charging a lot. They probably have to advertise/market a lot for every job.)

I'm not saying I was any good at being civil as there was more than just calling you a pussy. But, I could have argued all day long without the slightest insult if you hadn't started - especially with "******ed".

Im pretty sure my roommate has bed bugs. He sleeps on a futon thing with a big wooden frame with under bed storage areas. He has been getting bites all over his body, usually in small rows, for 1 week now.

And they are at least two small exoskeleton things in the storage area, that kinda resemble ticks

Colorado has a "Warranty of Habitability" which means the landlord has to fix it. yea buddy

This morning I woke up to a sharp pain on my arm. I lazily took a look at it because I assumed it was just one of those things where you are sleeping on it in a weird position and get a weird pain, but instead of seeing my nude arm I saw a medium-sized black bug on it biting the crap out of me. I swatted at it, possibly wounding or killing it, and don't know where it went.

Not a "bed bug", but something pretty nasty and scary. Usually when something wants to suck your blood you barely notice. This thing just tore into me.

THIS is the main point

We could try about 8 billion things to get rid of the bed bugs, but we won't freaking know they are seriously dead and gone from our house forever. We went three months without seeing a live one and we thought we were scot-free, only to see the live ones come back on our sticky pads

So, a big part of this is absolutely peace of mind. We will never ever feel comfortable putting any furniture, people, whatever in our room again until we have this treatment done.

We are looking at the contract tonight, I may upload it so y'all can see what it looks like, but they do quote a 1.02% retreat rate (meaning that they have only had the bed bugs survive 1.02% of the time).

DIY treatment:

Buy a large amount of fairly transparent plastic tarps.

Sew/etc them all together.

Drape product over house during a hot, clear summer day.

Let physics do the rest.

i would certainly try this myself, provided mother nature helped me out with a hot day.

$1600 will buy me a lot of remote thermometers to play with. ideally my house would have gas heat that i could blast; it might be really hard with only electricity. maybe i could get some heavy duty extension cords and buy some of my neighbors power?

also, burning natural gas or propane correctly only puts out CO2 and water. that's it. but i wonder how efficient modern burners are, and how much carbon and CO a simple gas heater would put off. and i bet i could find a heater with a combustion vent that i could then attach a dryer hose to and run it outside. maybe just use vented propane burners with all the electricity going to power fans that blow on them to get the heat into the house (since a lot will be going out the vents).

i think i could do it for sure in 108 weather with an insulated house. and the better the insulation, the lower the outside temp could be, i would just need more time.

bump for bed bugs found in my apartment

they were a pretty big pain in the ass ime. i did all of that except the biospot and it would seem like they were gone but then they would be back in force a couple weeks later. also both the frontline and the flea collar i bought didn't do ****. i treated my cat with the frontline and the next day she was still covered with fleas. a month later i tried a flea collar with the same result.

what finally worked was tons of repeated bug bombings (i'll probably get cancer down the line) and using a flea comb until there were no more fleas on my cat (it usually took 30 minutes to an hour to get them all) every day. i'd dip the flea comb in rubbing alcohol after every pass to kill the fleas that were on it. i kept vacuuming everything and washing both my and my cat's bedding but i stopped applying poison to my cat because it didn't seem to do a damn thing. it took like 6 months to finally get rid of them.

bed bugs sound like an even bigger pain though.