Not all bed bug heat treatments are what they seem
/By Keith Coddington
At Cimex K9 our goal is to leave our customers as educated as possible so they can make the best decision with their bed bug dilemma and choose the best bed bug treatment available. That being said there are a some companies in Arizona that are advertising bed bug heat treatments and thermal treatments while technically this may be true it is a vastly different process than what other companies offer. 
If you are going to hire a company to complete a bed bug thermal treatment there are a few things you should be aware of.
First of all, what exactly do they mean by “heat” or “thermal” treatment? Many companies are using spot treatment with steam or heat guns and consider this a thermal/heat treatment. In our opinion this is not a true thermal/heat treatment.
A true thermal or heat treatment consists of heating the entire affected area with heaters that are designed to bring the temperature in the entire area to a level that will kill bed bugs. The heat is administered long enough so it soaks the furniture, walls and other items in the room to a level that bed bugs can’t survive. The process takes several hours of constant heat at a minimum and the room temperature will reach at least 130 degrees for several hours which kills bed bugs within approximately 10 minutes.
The reason bed bugs are so difficult to kill is that they are cryptic and hide so well. It makes no sense to try and hunt out every single bed bug and egg with steam or a heat gun and it will obviously not be nearly as effective as simply heating everything in the room all at once. In our opinion a steam or heat gun process would need to be followed up by a traditional chemical pesticide treatment in order to be effective. In our opinion “heat” and “thermal” is simply being used as a marketing ploy in those cases in order to get your business, but when you compare apples to apples the type of treatment is nowhere near similar.
Chemical only treatments have some limitations however can be very effective if done properly, but not as effective as properly administered heat treatments. It can be very difficult to kill every bed bug and live egg on the first day of treatment with only chemicals.
There are several companies in Arizona that offer true heat or thermal treatments for bed bugs. Several of them have enough confidence in their treatment to have a third-party bed bug detection dog service such as our company inspect the treated area afterwards to make sure that everyone knows the bed bug issue is resolved.
Should you like more information about our services or the companies we work with please call Cimex K9 at 888-928-4364
