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| I came up with a plan for fighting the problem in the middle bedroom the morning of May 27, 2020. That same morning, we became aware that the problem had escalated to the right bedroom. I posted the plan in our household Discord on 5/29. | | I came up with a plan for fighting the problem in the middle bedroom the morning of May 27, 2020. That same morning, we became aware that the problem had escalated to the right bedroom. I posted the plan in our household Discord on 5/29. |
| ==<s>Daily</s> Status Reports== | | ==<s>Daily</s> Status Reports== |
| ===2020-05-30===
| | * [[/2020]] |
| It was somehow easier for me today just to do these checks than to ask @everyone else to do them -- but either way, we need daily checks of sleeping areas if we're going to keep ahead of this thing.
| | * [[/2022]] |
| * '''Left Bedroom''': Harena & I each have bites. Did not find any bugs when I checked the bed. | |
| * '''Middle Bedroom''': still being eaten alive and seeing active infestations. I am expecting that to change after the bombing Sunday, though obviously that's not a complete solution.
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| * '''Right Bedroom''': Found one small bedbug at the foot of top mattress. I'm guessing it was hiding in the bedframe -- which just underscores the need to keep checking actual sleeping areas even when we have traps in place. (It had apparently just eaten -- squished red, but no stains.)
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| * '''Living Room Couch''': I checked the edges of the couch cushions and underneath them; no evidence of anything.
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| ===2020-05-31===
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| * '''Left bedroom''': no live bugs found before bombing. Steam-cleaned floor/wall/loft all around head of bed.
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| * '''Right bedroom''': steam-cleaning of the loft frame flushed out a couple dozen live bedbugs and some dead ones (probably killed by the steam). Prior to that, I found several live ones, various sizes, on the upper mattress.
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| * '''Living Room Couch''': B vacuumed it, with help from others. No definite bugs seen; 2 stains which didn't quite match the profile of bedbug stains were found. ''Probably'' not from bedbugs.
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| ===2020-06-01===
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| Taking a break from doing a proper bug report.
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| * Left bedroom: had probably several bites between us, nothing unusual, seems less than previous nights.
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| * Middle bedroom reported finding several arm-bites before going to bed.
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| * Right bedroom reported several bugs of different sizes on both beds. Nothing on sticky-traps. | |
| ===2020-07-18===
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| As expected, after that I lost the energy for making regular reports. I ''have'' been heat-treating our bed daily (at first, twice daily -- once in the morning and once right before bedtime), but the morning treatment didn't seem to make any difference.
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| We also were getting bites from sitting the [[CoA]] (and occasionally actually finding bugs), so doing something about that became a priority. After a couple of heat-treatments, I got to the point where it was possible to remove the giant sheet from the bed (it was helping some but also providing more hiding places; net effect seemed more cost than benefit) and trying it on the CoA -- that had to be early July, just before the Smith Family Reunion. It barely fits over the arms, but this seems to be sufficient: we haven't been getting bites from sitting on the CoA since then, and the one time we took it off for cleaning I found a bug crawling across my shirt (presumably having been trapped by the sheet the whole time and now desperate to feed).
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| The Couch of TV, where B sleeps, also needs heat-treatment, because he has been getting bites; I haven't had the energy to push on that.
| |
The infestation started in the middle bedroom upstairs, some time in mid-2019. The occupant of that room had been experiencing mysterious skin irritation and itchyness for some weeks before identifying the problem as bedbug bites, at which point the rest of the household was immediately informed. The occupant immediately threw out or bagged many items from their room.
Not long after that, Harena and I found evidence of infestation in our mattress (in the left bedroom) -- which we immediately quarantined in a disused car, and swapped in a spare (and very uncomfortable) mattress for several months.
We have several times since found isolated bedbugs in the left bedroom, and one time an apparent cluster of recently-hatched bugs, but no ongoing infestation. The bedroom on the right did not seem to be a problem for some reason.
We did two bombing runs over the next 9 months or so -- each one being a short-term success but not getting rid of the problem.
The whole-house heat-treatment which is apparently the gold standard for eliminating bedbug infestations did not seem to be an option, both because of the expense and because of the sheer quantity of meltable things that would need to be removed from the house.
I came up with a plan for fighting the problem in the middle bedroom the morning of May 27, 2020. That same morning, we became aware that the problem had escalated to the right bedroom. I posted the plan in our household Discord on 5/29.
Daily Status Reports