Bedbugs/plan

The Plan

We can't afford to move out for the length of time it would take for the bugs to die off. It would be expensive and difficult to get the house heat-treated. It's possible that consulting with an exterminator will come up with something, but I'm feeling like that's a shot in the dark.

What we can do, though, is make it very difficult for the bugs to get to us -- for an indefinite length of time.

By isolating ourselves indefinitely from places where the bugs can hide, and making it easier to inspect places where the bugs could hide close to us, we can keep them from getting enough food to lay eggs, and they will eventually die out (after 6-12 months max) -- plus we will then be in a good position to fight off any future infestations (which is apparently a common thing now in Durham / US / worldwide).

Routine

• Bug-bomb every 2 weeks for the time being.
• Use the steam-cleaner to kill and/or flush out bedbugs from cracks in furniture and walls.
  • This idea somehow didn't occur to anyone until 5/31, the day of the first bombing.

Left Bedroom

Part 1: put an impermeable sheet of some kind (I was originally thinking a tarpaulin) between our mattress and the bed frame, large enough to reach the floor on all sides.

What this accomplishes:

1. The bed frame is the hardest part to inspect (especially underneath it). This would make it much more difficult for undetected bugs living under there to get to the top of the bed where the food is.

2. Any satiated bugs which didn't bother crawling all the way back around the tarp-edge to the underside of the bed would be much more visible on the surface of the tarp.

Part 2: it occurred to me that an inexpensive white sheet should work well -- or two twin-size sheets sewn together, as it turned out (one king-size not being quite big enough to provide the necessary borders so the sheet could touch the floor on all 4 sides). Added advantages:

4. (big) can actually wash a sheet, to ensure bugs aren't hiding in the seams.

5. easier to see bugs against a flat white surface (most tarps are somewhat dark and have textured surfaces)

6. (maybe) could sew weighted rods (ocelot) into the edges, to ensure good contact with the floor and possibly make it even more difficult for bugs to get between below & above

Middle Bedroom

(The occupant of this room has been sleeping without a mattress since the bedbugs were originally discovered -- which has the advantage of making it easier to clean all bedding, but the disadvantage of providing more proximity to a large number of places for bedbugs to hide: floorboard cracks, walls, boxes, etc.)

I will build a loft like the one over our bed (about 6 feet high).

(This would have been my preferred solution for us as well except that it would be dangerous for H.)

What this accomplishes:

1. Simply being high off the ground seems to act as sufficient deterrent, given that Z had not been encountering the bugs until two days ago.

2. In the event that hungry bugs get desperate enough to crawl up the legs (which is now obviously a thing):

2a. Provides easy human access to the underside of the bed, to inspect for (and remove) bugs.

2b. I've thought of at least two kinds of bug-traps we could put on the legs: moats of soapy water, with sticky-tape traps on the humanward side

The important thing is that the parts of the bed that are off the ground must not touch any walls or other places where bugs might be hiding; this seems doable.

Right Bedroom

The current status of this room is that one occupant has been sleeping on a couch downstairs and so far has not been "bugged", while the other has been sleeping on the top bunk and was not apparently "bugged" until recently -- though inspection sometime between 5/27 and 5/29 found several nests on the upper bunk, so it must have been going on for some time before anyone noticed. The mattresses were thoroughly vacuumed and bug-proof protector sleeves were obtained from Target on 5/30 and put around both mattresses.

So the overall mitigation plan for this bedroom is now:

1. Mattress protectors

2. sticky-tape wrapped around posts

3. regular steam-cleanings

4. regular bombings