What to use for storage? « Got Bed Bugs? Bedbugger Forums

Got Bed Bugs? Bedbugger Forums » Reader questions (do not fit into other categories)

What to use for storage?

(9 posts)

Tags:

versatil

newbite
Joined: Jun '09
Posts: 12

Posted 4 months ago
Sat Jun 27 2009 2:58:21
#

Login to Send PM

(Didn't realize how lengthy this post got, just skip to the bottom for the question, sorry)

Originally I thought my bed bug infestation (started mid-march when I stayed at an apartment in NJ for a weekend, I live in NYC) was limited to my room (a converted garage). i didn't know anything about bed bugs until a few restless nights towards the end of May :(

I ordered a random DIY kit pretty early on, which is nice to have on hand but by no means a solution. I wound up here and even contacted KQ but it turns out we had an entomologist on his way (didn't even know he was an entomologist). He didn't do much but give some pointers on where bed bugs would be and once he saw I had the kit said there wasn't much of a point in hiring him as while I'm cleaning/storing stuff I could just vacuum, vacuum, use the pesticides I had, then apply DE.

While I opened up to this idea I soon realized I had no decent way to take things out of bookshelves, closet, filing drawers, etc. and... store them.

I'm now seriously considering getting a PackTite for obvious reasons but where would I put things after? Books, cables, electronic devices, video games, and so forth. What's the most economical/efficient thing to do? I went around Bed, Bath and Beyond and saw airtight containers (I figure airtight is important not so much for limited air but if air isn't getting out then bugs aren't getting in/out) but those could be pretty expensive considering I just want to use them to stash so everything is sitting inside something.

Further, tonight I just got bit by a bed bug upstairs for the first time. I had passed out on the couch, after an hour I reached out to a small sofa pillow thing just to hold onto it moments after which i had an itch on the crease of my ring finger. My paranoia wouldn't let that go and sure enough I found a bed bug on the fold of it (sprayed it and the first bug I bagged, took pics of the other few I found over the past few weeks).

If I'm a pack rat the rest of my family: aunt, mom, kid brother, are infinitely worse. I find working on my room daunting and the anxiety triggers fatigue pretty easily. I don't even want to think about the rest of the house but we have to do what we have to do.

Sorry about the long post, I have serious problems with brevity and we all know how emotional this stuff gets.

too long didn't read:
what can/should I use to store stuff?
can people list recommendations/preferences?

i don't have a packtite yet but am seriously considering it now if anything just for peace of mind, but again I'd need some place/stuff to put things...

thanks
buggyinsocal

oldtimer
Joined: Jun '08
Posts: 1,130

Posted 4 months ago
Sat Jun 27 2009 11:00:45
#

Login to Send PM

If the PCO you contacted suggested treating the place yourself, I would look for another PCO.

I know that with many pests, we're used to treating ourselves. However, over time most people on the boards who've been around a while strongly suggest hiring a good, licensed, qualified pest management professional with extensive experience dealing with bed bugs.

Why do so many of us push so hard for that?

Bed bugs are a particularly difficult pest to get rid of. They don't respond to chemical pesticides in the same way that many other common pests (like roaches and ants). For example, roaches groom themselves, so if a roach crosses a residual chemical and gets something on itself, it then cleans it off. In doing so, it ingests that chemical, killing itself. Ants can be baited. That is to say, pest controllers can mix chemical poison with something that the ants will eat, and then the ants consume the poison.

Bed bugs do not groom themselves. And the only thing that they consume is our blood, so we can't bait them without poisoning ourselves.

Of the chemical pesticides available for use on bed bugs, only one kills any of their eggs, and it does not reliably kill all their eggs. That's why most chemical treatments require multiple visits from the pest control pro. What happens is the PCO comes out and treats your residence then waits long enough for the eggs that have been laid to be hatched, then comes out and treats again.

In addition, to maximize the effect of the chemicals on the bugs, humans need to act as bait. Bed bugs are shaped such that very little of their body comes into contact with the residual pesticides. Once they've consumed a blood meal, more of them contacts the pesticides. So treating a place with chemicals and then not living there means that the bugs might lower their metabolisms and/or move to new hosts in adjacent places.

It sounds from your description like your family has a single family home.

That gives you a few, admittedly more expensive up front, options.

I want to talk briefly about your best, most cost efficient options for treatment, and then answer your question about bins.

1. Conventional chemical treatment from a PCO. As described above, chemical treatment involves a good PCO with experience with bed bugs coming out and inspecting and treating your place. A mix of chemicals will be applied. Most will be residuals which are chemicals that will continue to kill bugs after the PCO's visit. The PCO may also apply A PCO who knows his or her bed bugs will schedule at least one follow up visit a few weeks after the first to apply additional treatments to any bugs that have hatched from eggs that have been laid.

All parts of the house must be inspected carefully. And people will need to sleep in the areas that have been treated after application of the pesticides. (Most pesticides today are pretty safe for people without preexisting health conditions if they are applied properly and proper precautions are followed. With most pesticides, that means being out of the house while the chemicals are applied unless you're wearing the right kinds of respirators and waiting until the chemicals dry until you return. Extra caution is advisable for people with underlying health conditions or smaller beings more likely to respond to a lower dose and more likely to ingest them in some way(Children and pets).

This option is often the one that requires the least amount of money going to the PCO up front, but you may have to spend a lot of money on the gear you'll need for treatment (like bins and laundry).

2. Thermal remediation. Pest control pros come in and set up heaters that will raise the temperature inside the structure to 140 degrees F and keep the temp there for at least 4 hours. Bed bugs die around 113 F, so the 140 point makes sure that temps, even inside closets and overstuffed furniture, all reach that point.

Thermal is art as much as science. Professionals must apply this treatment because there's a knack to raising the temps evenly and at the proper speed. As one thermal pro here put it to me, the bugs won't go elsewhere if you raise the temp gradually enough that the bugs will seek out cooler spots without realizing that the cooler spots will later get warm. When the temps in their cooler spots also get too hot, then the bugs flee their cooler "safe" spots into the higher heat and die.

Thermal is pretty much an all day one day affair. It does have a greater chance of damage of items that most other treatments. A good PCO will give you all the information you need to prepare. Any heat sensitive items like DVDs, CDs, candles, make up, and I think unframed photos will need to be removed during treatment. Electronic items must all not only be shut off but unplugged.

Thermal is much more expensive up front. Most of the increased cost is covering the increased labor and fuel. To raise temps, PCOs bring in giant heaters and pipe that heat into the structure through ducts that they assemble. The interior temp has to be carefully monitored. So you're talking about a few hours of set up, a few hours to get to the proper temp, four or so hours at that temp, a few hours to vent the heat and return tempt to normal, and some time to break the equipment down.

For my one bedroom apartment, a chemical treatment would have taken a good PCO a few hours. With thermal, I had three PCOs on site at 8 am. Chemical guy went to work first, doing I'm not sure exactly what, while the thermal guys set up their gear in the driveway. The two thermal PCOs were on site for pretty much the whole 8 to 4 day.

As a result, the chemical only quotes we got for my place were $150 per treatment but would have had to treat all adjacent apartments and mine (4 total) Plenty of people around here get quotes like $200 a room for chemical. I think our chemical guy may have lowballed the quote.

Anyway, thermal for my place was $850 for one treatment with a 6 month guarantee.

The biggest advantage for me is that they came out, treated the place, and the bugs were all gone in one go. No need to act as bait.

And while yes, I've had to launder everything in the house, my books didn't need to be removed from shelves, and the laundry didn't all have to be done at once. I could spread that labor out over time. Given that if I'd washed all the laundry and bagged it, I would have no where to put the bags in my small apartment, that was a selling point for me.

3. Vikane. Vikane is a gas fumigant used frequently in the south and southwest to treat drywood termites. Houses are "tented" with big swathes of some sort of gas proof fabric, and this gas is pumped in by a professional.

When the gas is used at 3x the concentration used for termites, it also kills bed bugs and their eggs.

When used on a structure, Vikane generally means completely vacating the property for a couple of days. No living creatures can be inside during treatment, so the people in the house would have to stay somewhere else while the place is being treated. However, like thermal, when it is done properly, it'll kill all the bed bugs in a single go.

Like thermal, it's more expensive. I can't give you a quote, but I can tell you that it seems to be more affordable in places where it's already regularly used for termites. Living in southern California, I probably see some random structure being tented for termites at least once a month, just driving to work and shop. So it's very common here. Depending on where you are, that may or may not be the case.

Unlike thermal, it can only be done on whole structures, so in my case, treating a single apartment was not an option.

4. Self-treatment. There have been a limited handful of people here who've studied up on bed bugs, who understand the basics (As far as we know them) of their life cycles, feeding habits, and physiology. Then, with a great deal of research and the purchase of a lot of safety gear to protect their health and the health of those around them, they have applied the proper mix of dusts, residual, contact pesticides, and heat to over time, kill the bed bugs in their infestation.

Of all the people I've seen on the boards, I've only seen under five who've safely and successfully self treated for bed bugs.

That's not to say that it can't be done. It can. But there's an awful lot of learning that has to be done to do it successfully.

I wouldn't attempt surgery on myself because I don't have that skill set. I'm not mechanically inclined, so I'm not going to try to repair my own car. I'm going to hire a professional with the expertise to do a faster, more effective job to do those things for me, and while I'll gladly battle spiders on my own, having been through this, I would always hire a pro to deal with bed bugs.

The Packtite can be an excellent tool because it allows you to thermally treat items in small batches.

For storage, I used one of two things: ziplocks placed inside something my cat couldn't eat through. She chews on plastic bags, so I couldn't leave them in the open. Ziplocks come in L, XL, and XXL. The biggest size is big enough to safely enclose a roll aboard sized suitcase. If sealed properly, they are air tight.

I also used plastic rubbermaid bins for items I didn't need to access as often. I made them air tight by sealing the tops onto the bottoms with duct tape.

I hope that information helps in some way.
versatil

newbite
Joined: Jun '09
Posts: 12

Posted 4 months ago
Sat Jun 27 2009 13:38:55
#

Login to Send PM

Thanks!

Some more info on my house:
I live in an attached house. So there are houses on both sides. The 1st, ground floor has me in the garage and my tenants occupy the rest. My family resides on the 2nd, upper floor.

Yeah the more I think about the attitude of the entomologist that came in the more I wish I prep'd to have KQ come in even if it was, well, expensive.

Thermal sounds amazing and the less painful, time-consuming way to go. I wonder how much it would cost in NYC and if there are any recommendations?

Thanks for the tips on storage. I was thinking some sort of ziploc, too but I guess I wasn't looking hard enough. I guess I'll drop by the Container Store after work and see what they have available for ziplocs and bins. Didn't think of taping bins up.
buggyinsocal

oldtimer
Joined: Jun '08
Posts: 1,130

Posted 4 months ago
Sat Jun 27 2009 15:13:28
#

Login to Send PM

Obviously, the taping bins up part works best with items you don't actually need to get into very often. Esp. as it heats up, trust me, peeling all that duct tape off is kind of a pain.

I found the ziplocks at Target. At my store, they were in the aisle with other ziplocks, but they stored them way down on the bottom shelf. I don't know if stores back east store 'em in the same place or not, but I figured that letting you know that I found them not at a specialty store and with the other ziplocks might help you find them at the stores in your area.

I do know that someone is now providing thermal in the NY/NJ/somewhere else area, but I don't know if we've heard anything from people who've used that PCO. You might search for posts tagged thermal and/or posts tagged as NY PCO. If nothing turns up that way, you might try starting a new thread with NYC thermal PCO in the subject line.
bedbugsbad

junior member
Joined: Sep '08
Posts: 48

Posted 4 months ago
Sat Jun 27 2009 15:49:50
#

Login to Send PM

You can order the ziplocks online. Amazon is one place. You may even get a better price. Downside is you have to wait.

BBbad
versatil

newbite
Joined: Jun '09
Posts: 12

Posted 4 months ago
Mon Jun 29 2009 13:36:00
#

Login to Send PM

There are so many different ziploc bags. I'm assuming you guys meant the ziploc brand, too?

How durable/tough are they?

Also where's the best place to buy a packtite? I wouldn't mind if there was a referral link of some sort so this group can benefit even if just a bit.
lil_bit_obsessed

senior member
Joined: Dec '07
Posts: 495

Posted 4 months ago
Mon Jun 29 2009 15:29:00
#

Login to Send PM

i tried both the ziploc brand and a cheaper dollar-store type brand. the ziploc bags were sturdier out of the two, and sealed better, but both types would open eventually if they were bags that you were opening often. i used them for my clothes (the clean ones that i would wear outside of the house), and because i was opening the bags on a daily basis, after two weeks or so i would have to replace them when the seal would no longer work properly.

if sealing the ziploc bags up for the long term, perhaps you could tape them closed? (sorry if this was mentioned already).
stricken

junior member
Joined: Jun '09
Posts: 75

Posted 4 months ago
Tue Jun 30 2009 23:32:48
#

Login to Send PM

I bought a bunch of those soft, clear, vinyl, zip-up cubes from The Container Store so that I wouldn't have to root around black garbage bags for underwear. However I've read somewhere on here that babies can climb through the zipper teeth. And one PCO told me the containers must be airtight, which these aren't. Are they reasonably bedbug-proof, or did I just waste $150?
versatil

newbite
Joined: Jun '09
Posts: 12

Posted 4 months ago
Wed Jul 1 2009 14:35:23
#

Login to Send PM

i haven't dropped by Container Store yet since i've been arriving late, leaving later. maybe tonight.

i'm not the right person to ask about those things being "reasonably" bed bug proof. =\

but i guess it's also situational, if you have packtite, how paranoid you are, etc.