Bedbugs

I'm going to document our war on bedbugs here in case it's of use to others.

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.

The Plan (updated)

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

Daily Status Reports

2020-05-30

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.

• 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.
• 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.)
• Living Room Couch: I checked the edges of the couch cushions and underneath them; no evidence of anything.

2020-05-31

• Left bedroom: no live bugs found before bombing. Steam-cleaned floor/wall/loft all around head of bed.
• 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.
• 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.