Bed Bug Removal Services in Grand Rapids

Mostly, it is the eggs. Female bed bugs lay as many as five eggs in a day, and they choose cracks and crevices to release them into. The eggs are about a millimeter long, milky white and grain-like, and where conditions are favorable the bulk of them hatch inside of six to nine days. A spray does not really touch an egg. So a chemical treatment can clear out every adult in the home and still fail, because the eggs that were missed hatch a week or two later and the whole problem begins over again. That is the cycle that keeps people paying for repeat treatments. Breaking it is a matter of reaching the eggs, and of reaching all of them at once, in every room, which whole-home heat is really the only way of doing.

Here is the part most people never hear about. When a company says it offers heat treatment, that can mean several very different things, and it is easy to mistake one setup with another. The cheapest arrangement is electric heaters. These are the units a lot of companies run because they cost somewhere in the region of $25,000-$30,000, but a single one puts out only 36,000 to 70,000 BTUs while drawing close to the entire power supply of a home. They are slow, as well. Getting a home up to a killing temperature can take over two hours with electric, and a slow rise gives the bugs time to sense the change and work themselves deeper into the walls, where the heat may never reach them at all. Propane units are stronger. The direct-fired sort can reach 900,000 BTUs, but they burn their fuel right in your living space, putting off carbon dioxide and humidity as they go, and heat that concentrated has been known to melt fridge handles, warp vinyl floors, and char wood furniture. The indirect-fired sort is cleaner to breathe around but much weaker, roughly 80,000 BTUs a unit, so a home really needs eight or more of them, along with a long row of propane tanks, and most companies only show up with three.

The system we use is called Heat Assault, and it works on a different principle. It is a sealed 660,000 BTU boiler that heats a food-grade glycol – a fluid rather than a flame – and pumps it out to as many as nine heaters placed through the home. Because the fluid is held at a set temperature, somewhere between 205°F and 100°F depending on the size and insulation of the house, the heat that arrives in each room is even, and there is nothing burning inside your home while it runs. Most homes are past 120°F within the first half hour and can be brought toward 140°F inside the hour. At those temperatures, the heat soaks into wall voids, mattresses, and furniture, the exact places sprays fall short, and it takes the eggs along with the adults. The equipment costs well over $100,000, which is most of the reason more companies do not carry it.

Bed bugs cannot fly, and they cannot jump either. They are carried from one place to the next by people, and it happens without anyone noticing. In Grand Rapids they have no shortage of chances. The student populations at Grand Valley State and Grand Rapids Community College turn over every year, usually with secondhand couches and mattresses along. The hotels downtown stay full through ArtPrize and the convention season, and any building where many different people sleep is a building where bed bugs can be introduced. This has been a furniture town for well over a century, and a fair amount of that furniture changes hands used. Once bed bugs are inside, they work along baseboards and through shared walls into the next unit, which is how a problem in one bedroom becomes a problem for the building. None of it has anything to do with how clean a home is kept.

We begin with an inspection, because the treatment is only as good as our understanding of where the bugs are hiding. After that, a perimeter spray goes down along the baseboards, the furniture, and the cracks, which helps keep the bugs where they are as the temperature comes up. Then the heaters run. You and your pets will need to be out of the home while it is held at temperature, which for most homes means the better part of a day, and you are back in that same evening. A small number of belongings do not do well in that kind of heat, certain houseplants, some medications, pressurized cans, and those get set aside beforehand. Whoever runs your treatment will go through the list with you before the day of.

The treatment is generally finished in a single day, rather than the string of follow-up visits chemical-only methods tend to need, and the work is covered by a sixty-day guarantee. Every home is different, and every infestation is different, so the price is different too. It follows from the size of the home and how far along the problem is. There is no charge for us to come out, look the place over, and give you a figure.