How to isolate your bed

Once you discover that you have bedbugs, the first thing to do is to isolate your bed. Bedbugs do come out during the day, but most of time they bite you in the night when you are sleeping. There are a few major benefits of isolating your bed:

1. As I mentioned before, this is the most effective way of controlling their population.

2. Bedbugs cause much more damage to our mental health than physical health. Keeping them away from your bed will ensure you better sleep, reduce your anxiety, and give you the energy needed to fight the war against them.

3. Without food and nutrition, they will be more vulnerable to insecticides.

There are some good web sites that offer great tips on how to isolate your bed. Here are a few:

• The bedbug war : step-by-step instruction and photos.
  
• The bedbug blog : one of the most popular sites, but isn't updated too often now.
  
• Bedbugger : another popular site, tons of useful and up-to-date information.
  
• Wikipedia: a free encyclopedia, relatively more reliable and scientific information.
  
• Yahoo Bedbugger Group: a support group including many experienced warriors and some entomologists and pest control experts.
  

I won't go through every detail but will rather provide some brief explanation and then add a few more points based on my own experience. A picture is worth a thousand words, for those of you who don't like to do all the readings, I made a picture that would give you a quick start. All the parts are actually 3D models. Feel free to use, modify or distribute it for non-commercial purpose.

click the image to enlarge

The basic idea of "isolating your bed" is to have as few contact points between the bed and adjacent objects as possible, and then create barriers at the contact points.

To have minimal contact points, you need to:

Pull the bed away from the walls so that your bed, pillow, blanket and sheet won't touch the walls.

Raise the bed with bed riser so that your blanket and sheet won't touch the floor. But I prefer to have a bigger bed instead.

Eliminate the clutter under the bed to ensure that nothing touches the bed.

Next, you need to create some kind of barriers on the bed legs. Here are a few options:

Place the bed legs in plastic or metal containers, than wrap carpet tape or sticky fly tape around the container. The advantage of doing this is that it won't cause any damage and mess to the bed legs.

Wrap carpet tape directly around the bed legs. I personally wouldn't recommend this, since once you have dust on the tape or accidentally kick the tape a few times, they won't be as sticky any more and need to be replaced. But it's very difficult to peel them off and will likely cause damage to the paint if you have metal frame. Carpet tape is the strongest that I could find. I wouldn't use masking tape or duct tape.

An alternative to the above is to use single sided carpet tape, with the sticky side out, then have scotch tape on both ends so that the bedbugs won't crawl under the carpet tape.

Coat the bed legs with Vaseline. This method was used in the old days and is my favorite since it won't cause any damage and is easy to clean up.

Then, you need to isolate the mattress, the box spring, the pillow, and the blanket:

Wash and dry the pillow and blanket on hot setting.

Use zippered cover for everything and tape the zipper, use light colored covers so that it's easier to spot the bedbugs, and leave the mattress cover on for at least one and a half years.

Vinyl mattress covers are difficult to grip and are not ideal place for the bed bugs to lay eggs, but are easy to tear/rip. I prefer fabric ones. Some people use both.

Treat the mattress and the box spring with chemical if necessary. The first instars are only 1mm long so it's easy to miss one or two.

One last thing that people don't pay much attention to and is rarely mentioned on any web site is caulking. Even if you have metal bed frame, there are still hiding places. You need to caulk all the joints of the bed frame and the slats if you have them, again remember the first instars are only 1mm long. Lie on your back on the floor or turn the bed frame upside down, bed bugs tend to go under than over. Use latex caulking instead of silicone if you need to disassemble the bed in the future, since silicone is difficult to remove. I'll write more on caulking in the future.

Also, if you are planning to replace your bed, get a metal frame. It's more difficult to climb and has less hiding places than wood frame. To quarantine a protected bed, make sure that no kids and pets are allowed in the bed during the day, and store clean clothes in the bed during the day and take a shower before entering the bed.

If after all these steps you still get bitten. It could be due to one of these reasons:

1. Barriers will prevent bedbugs from getting into your bed, but will not kill the ones that are already in your bed. You might have missed a few joints or didn't caulk correctly, or caulking might have shrunk, so double check and apply chemical if necessary.

2. Your pillow, blanket, or sheet touched the wall or the floor.

3. There was a tear in the mattress cover, the cover wasn't taped correctly or the tape peeled off.

4. The bedbugs crawled onto the ceiling and dropped to your bed.

The first three causes are easy to deal with. The most difficult one is the last one, I will write more on this next time. Thanks to nobugsonme, the author of Bedbugger for reminding me to add #3 cause.

Finally, Diatomaceous Earth (DE) can be dusted around the bed for extra safety, and along the baseboard so that any bedbugs that climb the walls will eventually die. Be sure to use food grade DE (amorphous silica) instead of swimming pool DE (crystalline silica) and do wear a mask. According to Wikipedia, crystalline silica poses inhalation hazard because it can cause silicosis. Amorphous silica can cause dusty lungs, but does not carry the same degree of risk as crystalline silica does since it contains very low percentages of crystalline silica.

(revised on Jan 20, 2007) Bedbugs do come out during the day, especially when they are hungry or after an insecticide is applied. The principle is the same for how to protect yourself during the day, so I won't have a separate post for that. They want to be as close to you as possible, so the next choice after the bed would be the chair and the desk (I wouldn't use upholstered furniture until the bedbugs are gone). Caulk the joints to make sure there's no hiding places for them, and then create barriers on the chair/desk legs with vaseline or tape. If the infestation is heavy, I wouldn't even set my feet on the floor while I am at the computer, but would rather put them on a stool, which is also protected by vaseline or tape.