Sciencemadness Discussion Board - building a bedbug oven

building a bedbug oven

mnick12 - 18-10-2010 at 18:31

So Im sure some of you have heard about the bed bugs making a comeback.
From what I understand, bedbugs were almost eradicated with the use of DDT many years ago, but the evil hippies and their stinky henchmen got DDT banned. And as a result of this bedbugs have slowly been making a comeback munching on peoples skin while they sleep.

Now some of my family members are currently at college, and in dorm situation it is inevitable to avoid bedbug infestation. So my fathers concern is that when my brothers come back for the holidays they will bring the hungry little critters with them in their suitcases (a known bedbug hideout). Now bedbugs in all of their various life stages cant survive a temperature over 130F. So my father would like me to build an oven of sorts capable of toasting a suitcase at 130F for several hours. Now this is where I run into problems, I have constructed various furnaces and forges, but never anything this precise. Electric sounds like the only candidate, but how about insulation? Fiberglass sounds good but it often has various resins in it, and I doubt my brothers would appreciate little shards glass in their clothing. So would Kaowool work as insulation?

The idea is to keep it under $330.00, since we are trying to avoid buying a commercial unit.

thanks

Wizzard - 19-10-2010 at 06:32

Use a refrigerator with a few large light bulbs in it. Also, make sure the refrigerator is unplugged.

Panache - 19-10-2010 at 20:55

yeah the heaters in glove boxes 'manostats' are just an inefficient globe with a small fan running over it and it does 60C.
Thinking laterally maybe it would be easier to stem the problem at the source, ie remove your beds, i mean bed bugs are hardly going to bother you unless you're sleeping on a bed. For the amount of small fauna we have here in AUS that bites, stings or is just generally unpleasant we don't have bedbugs. We also don't have any predators, well not ones that a human would would ever worry about. Unless you're a disabled 9month old baby camping around Uluru, then you're fucked.

Vogelzang - 20-10-2010 at 15:41

How to Keep the Bedbugs from Biting
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_40/b41970404...

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/nov2007/sb20071...

Little Green Lies
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_44/b4056001....

I got some of this at Rite-Aid.
http://www.natureplex.com/sleeptight/

[Edited on 20-10-2010 by Vogelzang]

entropy51 - 20-10-2010 at 16:35

Quote: Originally posted by mnick12

So my fathers concern is that when my brothers come back for the holidays they will bring the hungry little critters with them in their suitcases (a known bedbug hideout).

When they come home have them open their suitcases outside and shake the clothes out in the yard. Immediately wash the clothes. The bedbugs will promptly drown. Keep the suitcases outside the house.

Magpie - 20-10-2010 at 18:12

Have them leave their suitcases and clothes at the school, except what they are wearing, of course. This will not only keep the bedbugs away but save your mother from having to do all their laundry.

franklyn - 21-10-2010 at 15:38

Organic poultry farming being devoid of insecticide usage have been
identified as a likely primary domestic source of dissemination.
Read outlined sections of excerpts from Encyclopedia of Entomology
in the PDF file here _ Attachment: Bed Bugs Encyclo of Entomology.pdf (124kB)
This file has been downloaded 580 times

Genetic typing has also linked the lineage from those sources.
Read of this ongoing work at the bottom here _
http://urbanentomology.tamu.edu/bedbugs/bedbugs.cfm

This coupled with the secondary source of overseas travelers unwittingly
transporting these passengers , has crossbred a fortified bedbug resistant
to the commonplace insecticides that is increasingly predominant , giving
rise to persistent infestation.

Other useful fact sheets _
http://extension.entm.purdue.edu/publichealth/insects/bedbug...
http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/housingandclothing...
http://www.entomology.wisc.edu/diaglab/labnotes/bedbug.pdf
Attachment: Bedbugs_Factsheet.pdf (317kB)
This file has been downloaded 592 times

.

food - 21-10-2010 at 19:37

Bedbugs have been doing very well for themselves around here (western Canada) as well.

Summer before last I was told, to my horror, that what I was showing off as particularly ticklish mosquito bites were actually bedbug bites. They're very ticklish and tend to appear in rows or groups. I went over my bed very carefully, found the f****r and dispatched him; found only one more, which was already dead. That was the last of it, but I slept on the couch for quite a while after that. My neighbour had a similar experience. I identified the bites then helped him look; we found one solitary creature.

I give abandoned furniture etc a wide berth now. Although I had already adopted this policy before my little guest, so I don't know how it got in.

Apparently an effective but costly treatment uses some kind of mobile unit that will heat up an entire living space, cook em dead.

Maybe steam is an option for a diy bb-nuker? Good luck. I like the idea of the stuff being left in the contaminated zone; that's an elegant solution. And don't worry, no more bedbugs over here, so you may read my posts with impunity.

[Edited on 22-10-2010 by food]

Contrabasso - 30-10-2010 at 10:33

Get a large zip up canvas bag, and a steam generator (Kettle or the like!) bring a bag of goodies up to temperature in the steam and hold there using a thermostat/thermocouple.

This technique has also been used to counter infestations in soft toys for children (often a carrier for asthma sensitisers) However not all items will stand hot steam without melting or morphing.

peach - 31-10-2010 at 03:27

Quote: Originally posted by Magpie

Have them leave their suitcases and clothes at the school, except what they are wearing, of course. This will not only keep the bedbugs away but save your mother from having to do all their laundry.

I like the fridge idea, but I would first go with the entropy suggestion and advance on it. Check that they actually ARE washing their bed clothes. Use white linen and wash it on a hot wash at 90C or something similar with BLEACH, it's extremely good at killing things but also surprisingly safe for humans. Anything that can take the higher temperatures (white shirts etc), wash it at those high temperatures. This is standard stuff in hospitals and nursing homes where the linen needs to be biologically clean - 90C washes for it all.

You wouldn't believe the number of people I met at university who were still having their mum do their washing for them.

One guy took it to the extreme and literally didn't shower for entire terms. I can only assume his mum made him get a bath when he got home. He'd just wear the same set of clothes for two or three months, then take them home.

He was a very odd character though. I tried being friendly when I first met him, saying he could use my computer to play his new games on, but then he went entirely reclusive. He NEVER spoke to any of us and would actually check to see the hall was empty before legging it to the bathroom.

His mum filled his cupboard with things to make dinner with. I swear, the things had literally not even been touched by the end of the year, once.

I, stupidly, volunteered to deal with all the bills since I moved in first and spoke to all the electric / rent / gas / water people as they turned up. I figured, these guys are grown up now, this shouldn't be a problem...

WRONG! The amount of trouble that ended up happening over just collecting together the money was crazy. I had pint glasses full of change and notes and final notices with "Debt reclamation" highlighted with orange marker stuck to the front door to constantly remind them I needed it SOON.

Another example would be cooking oil in the fridge, on it's way to solidifying, because they didn't realize it didn't need refrigerating.

When I first moved into uni, the lamp over my mirror was blown. I went the porters office to ask if they had some spare bulbs.

"The maintenance guy will have to swap that"

I thought, that's ridiculous. But now I understand why.

I also remember looking at my wore out, springless mattress and thinking... I wonder how much jizz is absorbed into this.

[Edited on 31-10-2010 by peach]

Magpie - 31-10-2010 at 09:15

Quote: Originally posted by peach

I also remember looking at my wore out, springless mattress and thinking... I wonder how much jizz is absorbed into this.

That's disgusting...but funny.

When a freshman in college there was a guy across the hall from me who wouldn't shower or wash his clothes. It got so bad that we eventually sprayed his clothes and bed down with lavender air freshener.

Re bedbugs, here's a quote from Jac. Berzelius by J. Erik Jorpes, M.D. It seems Berzelius and Wohler were on the island of Uto in Sweden looking for minerals. On the way back Wohler writes: "After an abundant dinner at the foreman's place, we had quite a rough sailing to Dalaro, where we spent a restless night because of bedbugs and the loud snoring of Berzelius."

peach - 31-10-2010 at 21:52

This guy I used to live with, I could seriously smell where he'd walked in the house, because he left a trail of stench hanging in the air behind him. At one point, I saw inside his room and he was walled into a corner by bin bags full of pizza boxes and unwashed clothes. Genuinely walled in.

Things got bad with him. He, and the physics student, never did a single bit of tidying. They did the opposite actually.

This guy was worse because he seemed to be shedding pubes and skin flakes all the time. Eventually, another house mate left a note stuck to the wall beside the toilet roll holder with his name written on it, and it concertinaed out when the tag was pulled to read "Clean up your pubes!".

When he finally did, another appeared, "Thanks!".

At one point, something looking suspiciously like a little lump of poo appeared in the bath.

Then weevils suddenly appeared from nowhere in the kitchen, all over the counter and floor, within 24h. They were all dead as well. They kept appearing for a few days until notes where put up featuring a weevil with a red line through it. They then stopped appearing.

Hmmmmm, curious.

That place was nasty. When I moved in, I could smell the damp, there was mould all over the walls (which they insisted we had to clean up) and then weird, disgusting beetles crawling around in the carpet. I found handfuls of them in the light fittings. I told the housing people about it, no reply. So I went down to tell them in person, and took a ziplock bag full of the crawling beasties with me and handed them to the girl in the office.

A mandatory course at university should be "How to look after yourself and your home". Lecture 1; Washing the dishes and doing the hovering.

[Edited on 1-11-2010 by peach]

Magpie - 1-11-2010 at 07:53

Peach, I'm just astounded by all the bizarre situations life brings your way. I can see where control of vermin would be much more of a problem in a perpetually damp climate like the UK. I live in a dry climate and these little critters are much less of a problem than most everywhere else, it seems. Like parts of Texas seem to have a huge ant problem, etc.

But I have a problem with waiting until university before teaching young people all about housekeeping, balancing checkbooks, managing money, ad infinitum. These are things shown to you by your parents - it's their responsibility to teach and the youths' responsibility to learn.

Does "hovering" mean Hoovering, as in vacuum cleaners?

peach - 1-11-2010 at 09:41

It does, but it's going to be Dysons next big hit and it's not out yet (he hasn't seen this post... yet), a hoover that uses a Fly Mow style hovering head.

He can steal that idea now too. <--- I don't like Mr Dyson, at all.

Some of these guys were international students and had come from places where they had actual servants and guards around the houses. The guards being required since getting an AK47 around those areas for $10 wasn't a problem. So sorting the cooking oil wasn't a problem either, at home.

But the UK students were just as bad. In fact, a lot worse. If I ever went into the computer rooms or library, it was always those dirty slant eyed Chinese / Indian / Japanese students doing all the revising and stealing our jobs. <---- sarcasm. The place would be bare of white faces, because they'd all be out becoming shit faces on booze. You have to appreciate, the area I was in (York) had BNP flyers coming through the door on a frequent basis, and people voting for them. The BNP is essentially the KKK of the UK.

But on the subject of bugs, the UK and Europe is way better than the US and other regions, since basically nothing here can seriously injure or kill you from a bite.

Unless it's that's spider the NHS let go in the car park, the one that runs at you waving it's legs and then bites.

{interesting fact}Did you know Hoover lost their rights to that trademark because the brand became so popular everyone began calling it 'The hoovering up', so it fell into general use and was blocked as a trademark? Or at least that's the last I heard about it. Success is a bitch hey? Especially when Dyson starts stealing the Hoover market with his stolen ideas and barely legal patents.

[Edited on 1-11-2010 by peach]

Mr. Wizard - 1-11-2010 at 20:17

Lice were a similar problem in the past centuries, and they could carry typhus. Typhus was a real killer. Steam and chemicals were used to disinfect. I'll let anyone interested search out the details. I never knew anyone who had typhus, but I've had typhus shots to prevent it. They are, or were, instantly painful, as if somebody had punched your arm as hard as they could. I often developed an intense fever following the shots. I'm not sure it was the typhus injection, because I often got many at once.

So while we chat about bedbugs we can also imagine a situation where this might be compounded with disease carrying lice. Maybe we should review DDT preparations?

peacefulobserver - 6-11-2010 at 09:58

would a steam cleaner work????

Sedit - 11-11-2010 at 10:00

Sooo... I had a fun weekend visiting relatives.. Oh yeh did they forget to mention they had bed bugs.... silly them tee hee musta slipped there minds...

So now I look as though someone shot me up with a BB gun thousands of times and I wish death to all these little bastered in the world. Never had a bug bite that feels more like a chemical burn like these do.

I don't see an oven being effective and aside from these stoners finilly comming to the point where they get an exterminator what can be done in the mean time. Extermination may not be effective because they live in half of a double and odds of them comming back are just to great.

I was thinking Mothballs. What are the risk associated with trying a shitload of PDCB mothballs. They have pets, cats and dogs, as well as teenage kids.

@Mr Wizard I already reviewed some DDT synthesis and it does not seem very hard however there are strains of bedbugs now imune to the action of DDT meaning when all was said and done we would accomplish nothing but having a hyperagressive strain of bedbugs left immune to our strongest weapons.

[Edited on 11-11-2010 by Sedit]

mnick12 - 11-11-2010 at 11:08

On the subject of DDT, what makes DDT such an effective weapon against insects is not its toxicity, but its repellent qualities. I read something a while ago that said for the average mosquito to die from DDT poisoning it needs to be on a DDT treated surface for at least 20 mins. So why is DDT so effective? Because DDT is a very potent repellent as well.

Sedit - 11-11-2010 at 12:30

Thats whats got me thinking about moth balls. Not so much the fact that they kill many arthropods but there ability to repell them as well. I looked into it and it appears yes mothballs are being used to kill them and it is said to keep anything you fear might be contaminated in a plastic bag with them for a couple days so in essence theres your oven for you. Just a bag with mothballs will handle these little buggers effectively but then there is toxicity of PDCB you have to worry about and I dont know the level of danger present with this compound.

I see how bad these things are fucking them up and seeing as they can't help themselfs I feel the need to do it for them. How do we get them out of ones house completely? DDT and Permethrins are not as effective as they use to be so understanding the biochemistry involved in there effectiveness is essential to erradicating these lil beast.

Mr. Wizard - 11-11-2010 at 12:56

I wonder if putting effected bedding and clothing in a big plastic bag, and removing air as much as a good vacuum cleaner can, would pull enough air to kill a bed bug? Don't underestimate the pressure this will put on a container inside the bag, so only use flexible materials. The follow up procedure would be to then purge the remaining air with N2 or CO2, and repeat the vacuum cleaner to lower the O2 partial pressure to insecticidal levels.

I have no idea how long a bug can exist without O2 (oxygen), so this may not work. I pulled a dozen tomato worms from my garden a month ago, and put them in a bucket of water to drown. In a few minutes they appeared lifeless, and an hour later I threw them on the mulch pile. The next day all were alive and moving around. The next time I tried it they got a full 24 hour soak and they died.

This would be a good science fair project for somebody. How I suffocated the bed bugs, by "Little Johnny".

Lowering the pressure on a bag full of items will save on the amount of purging gas, and lower the partial pressure of O2 available. Putting mothballs in with it would help spread the high volatility material around. By mothballs, are we talking about the older naphthalene or the newer paradichlorobenzene?

Sedit - 11-11-2010 at 13:03

The purge would have to be done with CO2 since somehow these bugs are able to live in a pure N2 enviroment appearently unphased. Sorry I dont have the resource for this Iv just been skimming the web the past few days picking up random information on them.

They are attracted to CO2 yet long exposure kills them so there are traps that people can get that run off of dry ice to attact then kill them.

Iv been thinking pDCB mothballs but napthalene ones should work. Im also looking into camphor as a temporary solution.

[Edited]
Iv attached a pretty good reference for the study of the little creatures and methods to dispose of them.

[Edited on 11-11-2010 by Sedit]

Attachment: bed bug biology.pdf (326kB)
This file has been downloaded 631 times

DDT alternatives?

mnick12 - 11-11-2010 at 18:30

Now DDT is quite illegal and getting caught with any would probably get a mob of hippies throwing their dookies at you, and a fine. So I have not looked very deep into but how about some DDT analogues? There was one I cam across called methoxychlor and it seems about as bening as sedated sloth, but it is structurally similar to DDT so BAN IT BAN IT BAN IT, and they did. Now my thought is how about replacing the methoxy group with some other alkoxy group like ethoxy or allyloxy? This would require experimenting but I'm sure there are limitless numbers of effective DDT type pesticides.

Any thoughts?

Here's what I am thinking, the top two are banned.

idea1.jpg - 13kB