Heat treatments are frequently touted as an effective way to get rid of bed bugs, but they often fail to live up to the hype, as events at a Manhattan co-op so painfully illustrate. When a resident of a 22-unit NYC co-op discovered bed bugs, he arranged to have his unit heat treated. Afterwards, he reported his apartment to be bed bug-free. But the heat treatment hadn’t actually annihilated the bed bug infestation, it had just forced the insects to scurry next door or, in this case, upstairs into the apartment directly above his
As an exterminator told the upstairs neighbor who inherited the bed bug infestation, heat treatments aren’t usually effective at exterminating bed bugs in apartments or co-ops. “It rarely gets hot enough to kill them and they just travel up through the walls to another location.” Instead of ending the misery, ineffective or inexpertly applied bed bug treatments simply spread the misery. (Click to read Tom Soter’s first-person account of his co-op bed bug woes on Habitat.com.)
Bed bugs are good at hiding and when motivated they can move pretty fast. That’s why it’s so difficult to kill these pests in multi-unit buildings. Moving through air ducts, wall voids, electrical and plumbing conduits, bed bugs simply relocate to avoid heat or pesticides. Cryonite offers another option; one that exterminates bed bugs without spreading infestations. Cryonite is the perfect solution for NYC co-ops. Get the details on our website.
