PackTite for all my dry cleaning?!?! What to you think?

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PackTite for all my dry cleaning?!?! What to you think?

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Stacy

newbite
Joined: May '09
Posts: 3

Posted 10 months ago
Sun May 10 2009 10:25:30
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Hi,

I'm new to BBs--my first bite was May 5, 2009 and we started to prep for the exterminator who is going to be here May 14th! I'm SO allergic to everything so I'm hoping my crazy allergies have helped me for the first time in my life to catch this early:) I can't believe how much money we have already spent and I'm not sleeping due to BB and horror about our future dry cleaning bill. I have been scouring this site and was considering just ordering a PackTite to heat up all of our "clean" but potentially infested dry cleaning. It would be great to also treat a zillion other items, especially books and papers that our PCO has asked us to leave out of plastic. My plan would be to bag all of dry cleaning in zip locks in the apartment and then cook it in the zip lock bags. I know that you need to check the internal temps so I guess I would need to open the bag to make sure it had reached the correct temp and then cook for an additional hour. Is this a good idea? Should I forget this plan and just spend the money on dry cleaning? I read that people had success with PackTite and plastic bags so I thought it was worth asking before we spend what I expect to be thousands on dry cleaning. It would be a great incentive to get a PackTite to help manage the rest of the decontamination. Thanks for you help!

Stacy
buggyinsocal

oldtimer
Joined: Jun '08
Posts: 1,259

Posted 10 months ago
Sun May 10 2009 12:22:17
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I don't have a Packtite, and I didn't use a treatment that required dry cleaning/laundering of all my belongings before treatment. I am thinking seriously about buying one because I do so much travel. I mention those facts in the interest of full disclosure, so you know where my personal bias lies.

The obvious advantage of a Packtite is that once you've invested in it, you can reuse it over and over again. With dry cleaning, you pay for dry cleaning your items once, and then if you use or expose them, you must dry clean them again.

The one thing that I would be leery about using a Packtite for is dry cleaning any items that are very thick (like down comforters and pillows). Heat can be very effective on bed bugs. I should know. I had my apartment treated with thermal (which doesn't work for everyone. Mostly, it worked for me because I live in a building with relatively few units, and the other units were rigorously inspected to make sure I was the only one with bugs.)

As the PCOs around here who do thermal will tell you, thermal treatments of any kind are as much art as science. Packtite raises the temp fast enough to kill the bugs but slowly enough that they don't immediately flee. (Actually, the Packtite also seals tightly enough that they can't escape.) Even so, as the temp increases, the bugs will seek out cool spots.

So you don't want to overpack the Packtite because if it's so densely packed, you could end up with cold spots. In other words, make sure you use the packtite in accordance with its directions. (There was a very cool post recently where someone asked about the surface it needed to sit on, and the manufacturer commented in response that the surface didn't matter and explained that the reason the instructions said not to use it in a garage, for example, was that the air temp in the garage might be lower in cold weather. If the air temp was significantly lower, it might cause the temp inside to not reach the thermal death point.)

I'm telling you all this because there are some items that, since I don't have one, would be items I would normally dry clean that I'm not sure would be completely made bed bug free in the Packtite: down comforters and pillows, esp. big ones. Getting a king size down comforter into a Packtite would be a tight fit, and there's an awful lot of insulation in an esp. heavily filled one. Given that in that case, you're dealing with a lot of insulation, I'm not sure I'd be 100% confident that all bugs would have been gotten too.

I took the bed bug infestation as an opportunity to replace all my bedding--comforter, pillows, blankets--with non-down items that if I had to I could wash and dry at higher temps. I feel safer knowing that I can launder those items.

But I myself haven't used the unit, so I can't say anything about its actual performance other than that I'm impressed enough that I think it's worth the investment for me. In the future. When it's not the summer, which means that I'm broke again.

Hopefully we'll hear from some people who've used them.
Stacy

newbite
Joined: May '09
Posts: 3

Posted 10 months ago
Tue May 12 2009 8:09:17
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Thanks for the input! My PackTite is in the mail and today is (hopefully) the last day of massive laundry to prep for the exterminator!!! I'm so tired and sore from hauling laundry from the 4th floor. I will let everyone know how it work out for us.