My personal opinion is it cannot hurt to be cautious and it can help.

You have to decide if you want to follow the PCO’s advice, which may be enough, or if you want to re-wash and bag all the stuff. You may decide not to for the next two weeks and see how it goes. Please keep getting treatment at two week intervals until you have no bites and no sightings of live bed bugs.

If you do bag again, as a general guideline I would not unpack until I had gone at least a month with ZERO bites. Maybe two months. (And I am not the most conservative voice in this — well-known NJ PCO Rick Cooper apparently recommends people do not declare themselves bed bug-free until 55 days after the last bug sighting or bed bug bite.)

Anyways, now I am nervous about the clothes in my closet. I contacted the PCO company on Monday. They said a dead bug is good news. They said that it takes a few days, maybe a couple of weeks to kill off the bugs. But, what about my clothes? Should I continue to be living out of plastic bags until they are gone for good? But when will that be? Another site advised that it’s safe to hang the clothes, but keep them away from the walls. But what about the shelves? I am so confused. Any advice you can offer would be great. thanks.

http://bedbugger.com/faqs

Also, look at the links; any number of university fact sheets can be copied and shown to your landlord citing the fact that poor hygiene, clutter, etc. do not cause bed bugs. (They may make them harder to treat once you have them, but they do not cause them.)

Look into the rights of tenants where you live. It may be the landlord is telling you tales, and you may be entitled to treatment at his expense.

Bed bug treatment is costly. No landlord would treat a BUILDING unless there WERE DEFINITELY bed bugs in the building. Most landlords won’t even treat an apartment without visual evidence in that apartment.

In most locations, it’s also illegal to treat as a precaution. My guess is that pest control may be working on the assumption that they spread to a lot of units. Or they may have seen that on the other side of your wall is a terrible infestation, likely to have reached you or to do so soon.

Your landlord must be facing significant bed bug infestations, and probably ones close to your apartment, likely to have spread, or s/he would not be doing this.

The bottom line is the landlord may be couching it in these terms to avoid everyone panicking, but I would assume s/he would not have YOUR unit treated unless you need it. (One Bedbugger said she knew someone whose landlord told them their building was being exterminated for “a new kind of roach.” Landlords can be very wary of admitting the problem is bed bugs, let alone being honest about the degree to which the problem has spread.)

Your roommate needs to understand how very difficult it can be to detect bed bugs at the earlier stages (and for quite a while, in fact). Many people do get bitten and don’t react to bites. He may already have bed bugs and not know it. I am not trying to be alarmist, but it happens all the time. Some people have serious infestations they don’t notice until they see bed bugs crawling everywhere by daylight–really serious levels.

Not only might you already have bed bugs and not see them, but if everyone else is treated and you’re not, then yes, there’s a chance they might spread to you.

Also, would not prepping make you liable for treatment of your unit and the building? I have no idea of the legality of this. However, I will tell you that tenants have been evicted for not cooperating with preparations for bed bug treatment. Having to pay for a building to be treated is much worse. I don’t know how big your building is, but this would cost a fortune.

The bottom line is your roomie needs to cooperate. Be glad you have no idea if you have bed bugs or not, and hope you don’t ever get them. It appears you are being threatened, and I don’t know what kind of law or muscle is behind it. I do know most landlords will do anything to avoid treating whole buildings. It costs a fortune. If they’re doing it, they probably HAVE to.

We are being told all the usual stuff: clean everything on hot and dry on hot, seal it in plastic bags, etc. My roommate feels that he is unjustly being told what to do and he doesn’t like to be bossed around. To make it worse, they included in the letter that the lease specifies that if we aren’t ready and the treatment to the building can’t be done, we are responsible for all costs for our building, and other buildings if it spreads. That makes my roommate feel like we are being threatened.

He is saying that he knows we don’t have bedbugs. He hasn’t seen them and he has seen no signs of them. He is also fixated on the letter stating the treatment is a “precaution”.

So, he is refusing to cooperate in any way. He will not do any drycleaning, he will not empty his closet, I’m not sure he’ll even do his laundry and seal it.

If bedbugs are in the building but possibly not in our unit, how much danger are we in of getting bedbugs in a building getting treated if my roommate doesn’t follow their instructions? I’m wondering if the building isn’t outright infected and the “precaution” talk is simply an attempt to control liability. If my roommate can’t be talked into cooperating (other than hiding his clothes so we aren’t responsible for the building’s treatment) how much danger am I in for getting bedbugs?

Thank you

Extreme indoor temps are unlikely to help. See this FAQ: http://bedbugger.com/2007/05/18/dryer/

Shoes are tricky. You can carefully inspect them, you can spritz them liberally with Kleen Free. (But remember not to seal up damp items in plastic.)

You can — and this is key– consider where they are. How serious is your infestation? Have you seen one bug, none, five?

Where were shoes stored? In or near the bed or other infested areas (beds, sofas, soft seating
and computer chairs are common problem areas). Did you wear them in the house?

Shoes stored where bed bugs are more likely to hang out would be in more danger.

You should ask the PCO what to do. They have different approaches.

They may ask you to bag them and then open them up for a subsequent treatment, with the idea that if bed bugs are hiding in them, they will come out, cross poison and die. For the cross poison part, you and the PCO need to be on the same page with this, so that’s why I suggest you ask their advice.