Bed Bugs! Holy crap

Last December I received a call from a tenant who had moved in three months earlier. They said that their son started waking up in the morning with small bites on his body, and they were told by their doctor it was probably bed bugs. And so began my long and painful journey of discovering what an incredible nuisance bed bugs can be.

This apartment had never had bed bugs before. None of my apartments had. Of course, the tenant denied that there could be any possible way they introduced these things. The problem is, that once they are in, they are your problem whether you like it or not. When I didn't act fast enough, this lovely tenant decided to call the health dept, who then called me. By the health dept's own admission, most of the time these are introduced into apartments by tenants doing dumb things like taking in used mattresses. Unfortunately, even if that is the case it still falls to you to do something about it.

I learned very quickly that it's a long and expensive process to get rid of these things. I used Terminix, because they had done a pretty good job for me in the past when another dingbat tenant attracted roaches. But the price is wayyyy higher for bed bugs. The inspection and treatment turned out to be $1,200!!! Holy crap! And it's not like they come in, treat the place and then you are rid of the bugs. Oh no - bed bugs are very good at hiding all over the place, including clothes. So you need to bag up your clothing, and put the clothes in the drier on high setting for at least a half hour. Then the mattresses have to be encased in a giant plastic bag to ensure any that may survive treatment cannot escape.

If the tenant doesn't follow through on their part, it's almost like the treatment was a waste of time. The hidden bed bugs will just emerge later, and then start reproducing at a rapid rate. Which is pretty much what happened in my case. These people ignored what they were supposed to do, yet were so very surprised when the bugs came back. Terminix came back too, several times to treat again, but each time they also said that the tenant has so much junk around that that bugs are probably camping out in places they can't spray.

I then learned what an incredible foul mouth my tenant (a woman) truly had. Over the course of the next few months she would call to bitch me out, using every variation of the F word, including some I had never heard before. Again we would send Terminix back, again she would ignore the instructions. I had enough and told her that I would release her from her lease, and in fact I wanted her out. At first she was thankful, but then when she couldn't find a new place (probably because her credit was crap) she more or less refused to get out. This of course didn't stop her from calling me and bitching me out.

She's finally out, and I took it upon myself to get educated and rid this place of bugs once and for all. I learned some important things:

1) Dry vapor steam is a really effective way of killing these things, even in crevices. A steamer like this is pretty expensive - they start around $300 and go up. But the temp of the steam is over 200 degrees, which kills the bugs and their eggs on contact. I bought one and then proceeded to steam every surface in the apartment. The upside is that dry steam is also very effective at cleaning a variety of things, such as caked on grease (side note - when this tenant moved in I bought a brand new stove. When she left, it looked as if she had never cleaned it - there was at least 1/8 inch of grease along the whole cooktop)

2) Bed bugs are attracted by carbon dioxide, which is how they find you. You can create a very inexpensive bed bug trap using an upside down dog food bowl and dry ice in a cooler. Check out this link: http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/7_on_your_side&id=7212643

3) Bed bugs can't fly - they just crawl really fast. Which means that if they can't crawl to you, they can't get to you. One easy solution is to put these cup like things on the feet of the bed frame. The bugs climb over the side, but then can't get to the frame of the bed and so get stuck in the cup. You can also foil them by putting some talcum powder on the sides of the bowl - it will be too slippery for them to get out.

4) Diatomaceous earth is an effective residual way of killing bed bugs. It may sound like an exotic chemical, but if you ever owned a pool you probably have used it before. It is a powder used in pool filters to filter out impurities. If you spread it on the ground, and a bed bug walks over it, apparently it will tear open their underside, and then they soon die. Bed bug companies have been repackaging the stuff as bed bug killer and of course selling it at a premium. But you can go down to a pool supply store and buy a big bag of it.

A couple of other tips:

1) Never, ever, buy a used mattress or boxspring, or allow a tenant to do so. Even if the seller indicates that they never had bed bugs. They could either be lying or they never even noticed they were getting bit.

2) Bed bugs can travel. If you have one apartment that has bed bugs, don't let that person go walking into your other apartments, or move their stuff to other apartments. The bugs may go with them.