h a l f b a k e r yIt might be better to just get another gerbil.
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The user would cover the bed and press a button on this bed frame,
which would slowly heat up to a temperature high enough to kill
bedbugs and most mites, and then cool off again. To do so without
risking fire or being uncomfortable may take a 24 hour period.
How hot is hot enough?
http://www.vdacs.vi...ffiles/bb-heat1.pdf
How hot and long is hot and long enough? [popbottle, Jan 24 2015]
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Annotation:
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Do you have quantifiable data or is this just a burning passion of yours? How hot is hot enough? What is the flash point of your garden variety bed gear? And what about Naomi? |
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Naomi is alive and well and living in Pittsburgh, PA.
(What do you Mean I wasn't sposta tell. ) |
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"Interestingly, bed bug eggs must be exposed to 118°F for 90 minutes
to reach 100% mortality. " from link |
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That's not very hot at all... I've worked in old folks homes
where the residents would have complained about the
arctic chill at that temperature. |
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Utterly predictably, Japan has a tradition of hanging the futon in direct sunlight for the day for this very reason. |
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So you can sleep soundly except for the earthquakes, typhoons, tsunami, landslides, volcano's... |
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I thought I read of a bedbug preventative entailing
placement of the feet of the bed in dishes of soapy
water. That would mean bugs are commuting in
from the suburbs and bedcentric measures
ineffective. |
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Let me see if I can find a link for those dishes of
soapy water. |
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There seems to be a confusion here between bedbugs
and mites. The soapy water might stop bedbugs (who
may live in crevices near the bed, and climb up at
night), but not mites which live permanently in
matresses and pillows. |
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Bedbugs are quite rare (at least here in the UK), but
mites are pretty much universal. |
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From experience, if you keep getting bites and no real pattern to them, then break out the clippers, shave off all body hair, take a very long shower, repeat as necessary. |
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If it is bed-bugs, put a piglet in the bed, turn off lights, come back in an hour. |
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And/or cover yourself in lard for an hour or so, all the bugs will suffocate, then you can keep the lard to fry the aforementioned piglet at some time in the future. |
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Bedbugs are back in the US, no question. I have
read two things: one is that it is a different strain
(asian?) that allowed it to re-establish and the
other that bedbug numbers were suppressed by
roach control efforts, and with use of aerogel
baits for roach control bedbugs are no longer
suppressed. |
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Perhaps better living habits / hygiene in the UK
continue prevent bedbug establishment?
Hammocks? Thick body powders? Liberal
insecticide use? It would be good to know. Since
the collapse of the Empire, we in the outlying
provinces have been more or less adrift. |
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//Since the collapse of the Empire, we in the
outlying provinces have been more or less adrift.//
I'm not sure why we have fewer bedbugs here (they
do exist, but they're not common as far as I know). I
doubt that hygiene or living habits (as far as beds go)
are much different from the US. It might be a
climate thing. |
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// It might be a climate thing.// |
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Well, you'd think a bug killed by very high/low temperatures
would do better in the UK than Chicago, but no. It might be
the wooden gap-filled duct connected nature of cheap US
housing. Whereas in the UK, even the nasty houses are
pretty well sealed. |
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Yep, my money is on climate, as the Uk with a long, cold winter, with the emphasis on very few places that are heated 24/7. |
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I say 24/7 as the old Soviet apartments were totally cockroach ridden, despite the -30 degrees winters, because they never got cold. |
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Japan having a shortish, cold winter and long hot, humid summer so it is ideal bug breeding territory. Spider the size of my hand etc.. |
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Bed bugs are evil. The most evil of evil. (Next to spiders, of
course.) |
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If they're next to a spider, the spider would probably
eat the bed bug. |
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What we ought to do is to engineer some bedbugs to
produce luciferin/luciferase. Then breed and
distribute them intensively, until the vast majority of
bedbugs glow in the dark. Then they'd be easier to
spot. |
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hmm, wouldn't they just get selected out really fast? |
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Probably. But it would be cool/scary to see all those
glowing dots. |
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Maybe, instead, it would be possible to produce a
decoy which smelled and tasted like a human, but
was filled with a luminous bed-bug-likeable liquid.
Or indeed a bed-bug-icide. |
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The problem is that bedbugs have become
resistant to several of the major pesticides used
against them. |
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The fact that heat kills them does present some
interesting possibilities. For instance, right now in
the northeast US
there is almost no market or even charity donation
outlet for second hand mattresses, and an
extremely limited one for upholstered furniture,
specifically because of bedbugs. On the other
hand, it would be relatively easy to take a cargo
container, paint it black, maybe scatter a few
mirrors around, and get it up well above ~130F,
probably even during the winter on sunny days
(you might have to insulate the sides not in direct
sun). Simply place the stuff in there in the
morning and pull it out at night, certified bedbug
free. |
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What's a mite? In the idea he wants to kill them both, I think. |
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Mites are teeny tiny things. The ones that live in
matresses eat skin flakes, and generally don't do
much harm unless you're allergic to them. |
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I've had a few boyfriends that acted like that too! |
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A quick google finds that bedbugs do not glow
under UV. I had thought I read that blood glows
and so one might visualize sated bedbugs headed
home but one must add a second compound to
the blood to make it glow, and ingested blood
being within the bedbug this compound sprayed
about would not contact it. |
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I am pretty sure persons with porphyria have
glowing blood (probably under UV or blue) due to
the elevated free porphyrins. If bedbugs fed on
such a person they might also glow. That would
take some setting up. |
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I'm pretty sure there are some fluorescent dyes which
are very, very slightly non-toxic. It would be
interesting to shoot up on them. |
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As an alternative to heat, which may degrade the mattress: |
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Put mattress in plastic bag, seal, hook up to machine which flows gas through it - carbon monoxide or maybe nitrogen - on a controlled cycle. Once everything has suffocated, purge with air. |
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//Put mattress in plastic bag, seal, hook up to machine
which flows gas through it - carbon monoxide or maybe
nitrogen - on a controlled cycle. Once everything has
suffocated, purge with air.// |
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You're looking at months to a year or more. Eggs don't
suffocate, and they can hang around quite a while until
the
conditions are right. |
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That and 110 or 120F, dry heat, isn't going to significantly
degrade anything over a few hours. It's not even hot
enough to scald you. |
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Dubious utility: suggest revising title to "Might-killing bed". |
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Put a plastic cover over the piece(s) of furniture and pipe in H2 underneath (from a simple plug-in electrolyser). The Hydrogen fills the cover from below, displacing the air. After it's full, keep it flowing on Low, enough to account for diffusion through the cover and random air currents. |
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Pretty sure that'd kill anything, including eggs, that steeped in it for a couple days: |
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//How would h2 kill eggs?// |
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Not efficiently, and given that H2 will explode at almost any concentration with even the tiniest of static electricity discharges, probably not worth messing with in this context. |
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That's known as "extermination with extreme prejudice." |
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