Anyone have experience with Sleep Sacks? « Got Bed Bugs? Bedbugger Forums

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Anyone have experience with Sleep Sacks?

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Aris

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Joined: Apr '08
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Posted 3 years ago
Sat Jul 11 2009 14:27:49
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Has anyone had any experience using a sleep sack? I think they are sold mostly as liners for sleeping bags to be used for warmth, but some of them are also advertised for use during travel. I've seen a couple of ads on amazon.com which claim they may protect you from bedbug bites.

I wonder if they might actually be useful for preventing bites while traveling, assuming a low-enough level of infestation where you are sleeping.
buggyinsocal

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Posted 3 years ago
Sat Jul 11 2009 15:30:27
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I travel a lot (as in I usually fly at least 25,000 miles a year, which is what happens when a person lives 3000 miles away from family members, I guess).

I don't use a sleep sack. I probably never would. Here's why:

Bed bugs, if hungry enough, will bite through clothes. That means that they'd also bite through the fabric of a sleep sack if hungry enough.

I think sleep sacks are made out of silk. Silk does not respond well to being washed in hot water and dried at very high temps.

Taking a sleep sack into whatever place you're staying in is exposing another fabric item that will have to be laundered to possible bed bugs. And since it can't be laundered the way that makes bed bugs dead, that seems foolish to me.

A thorough inspection of the places that you stay while you travel is a much more effective protection against bed bugs, and it has the benefit of being free.

Being bitten by bed bugs again would annoy me, but not nearly as much as accidentally bringing them home. My goal is to minimize the number of items that are hard to treat when I travel. A sleep sack to me seems like an item that would have limited effectiveness in preventing bites and would only be a liability for treatment upon arrival home. (Of course, if you had a Packtite, that problem is less so, but again, I know how exhausted I am after a cross country trip with a delayed connecting flight, often before I have to work on a day and don't arrive home until late at night in the time zone my body is still in. Having one more thing to worry about laundering and putting through the Packtite (since there are no washers and driers in my apt. complex) feels like making extra work for very little positive benefit (i.e. the possibility of reducing the number of bites slightly if the bugs aren't that hungry.)
jifjacob

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Posted 3 years ago
Tue Jul 14 2009 23:04:59
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I have a sleep sack that I use for travel in off-the-beaten-path places where I wouldn't trust the cleanliness of the bedding, let alone worrying about bugs. I carried a ziploc bag to pack it in, and had no trouble, but again, I was more concerned about nasty sheets rather than buggy beds.
Nobugsonme

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Posted 3 years ago
Tue Jul 14 2009 23:05:52
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I've never seen one that a bed bug could not simply crawl into.