Finding Your First Home

Posted on: 29 January 2016

Once bed bugs make their way into your home, it can be costly to get rid of them. Besides this, their choice meal is blood from humans. If they do find their way in, you will likely be bitten by them while you are sleeping. Not everyone has a reaction to the bed bug bites, but some people wake up with itchy red bumps. Below are some tips to prevent these annoying pests from getting in and biting you.

Don't Bring Them Home

If you go on vacation and stay in a hotel, you may bring bed bugs home with you and not even know it. When you arrive, inspect the room before you unpack. Use a flashlight to look for cast skins on the mattress making sure you look in the folds, crevices, and seams. Look at the box springs also. Remove the pillow cases for every pillow to check them, including around the seams.  You should also look under and behind the headboards.

If you find bed bugs, you should leave the room and either ask for a different room or find a different hotel.

For further protection, wash your travel clothes separate from your other dirty clothes, and wash them in warm water as soon as you get home. Vacuum every piece of luggage thoroughly, and then throw away the vacuum cleaner bag.

Defend Your Home's Perimeter

One of the easiest ways to prevent bed bugs from coming in is by sprinkling diatomaceous earth dust (DE) in potential places they may enter your home. Some of these places include crawl spaces, cracks and crevices in moldings and baseboards, and around radiators where the pipes come through. They can also come through any place in your home that has a service line that enters your home, such as cable, telephone, electric, and gas. They can also gain entry behind electrical outlets and switch plates.

Apply DE in a very fine dusting in these areas. There are dusting applicators that are designed to apply a thin dust. You can purchase these at a garden center or online. Protect yourself when using this product by wearing safety glasses, gloves, and a respirator mask.

When a bed bug crosses the DE, it will cut open the bugs' stomachs, as if they crossed over a razor wire. It this exposes them to dehydration and infection.

If you suspect you have bed bugs inside your home, the first thing you should do is to contact a pest control company to come to your home. They have ways they can find bed bugs much easier than you can. If they find them, they will spray your home with an insecticide to kill them. If you have a bad infestation, they may need to come to your home more than once to ensure the bugs are all gone. To learn more, speak with a business like Arab Termite and Pest Control.