Using Steam Cleaner to Remove Bed Bugs in the Home

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by Jason Neale

Bed bugs as Pests

Bed bugs one of the more common pests that invade homes. They have a knack at hiding, and since they are nocturnal, they can be a huge nuisance, bothering people in their sleep. Bed bug bites are itchy and can sometimes cause allergic reactions in some people. They can multiply so fast that one small area of upholstery or the bedding may be hosting hundreds of these little pests.

Life Cycle and Breeding

Bed bugs grow to as long as about 5 millimetres and enjoy sucking the blood of their hosts. Because of their ability to multiply by the hundreds, once bed bugs get in the house, they are likely to cause an infestation. One female bed bug is capable of laying eggs in batches of around 50, breeding up to 500 eggs in its lifetime. Bed bugs live long, up to one year if they have abundant supply of food. They are quite a challenge to control because they can hide from people’s presence most of the time, especially when they already had their blood feed.

Eradicating Bed Bugs

There have been many pesticides such as DDT that have been developed to eradicate pests like bed bugs. But these types of remedies are often harmful to the environment and even dangerous to human health. Still the best way of taking care of bed bug infestation is through the help of a reliable pest control company. There are various ways that pest control services can use to remove pests without having to use harmful solutions. One way is to employ a steam cleaning method.

Part of the solution to eradicating bed bugs the safe way is to wash linens with hot water. After which, steam cleaning can be used to remove bed bugs from the home. Bed bugs are easily killed with steam cleaning because they cannot stand exposure to extreme heat. With steam cleaning, the pests are also effectively sucked out of upholstery, carpets and beddings. To ensure the efficiency of the pest removal, it would be wise to choose a service that uses high powered extraction machines in their steam cleaning procedure.

The steam cleaning process should be thorough and not leave moisture in the treated items, or else the pests will just breed again. The process needs to be followed by a spraying of non-toxic solutions in cracks and crevices in the walls and floors to kill bed bugs hiding in those places. This would ensure that the pests do not come back for a long period of time.