Heat and K-9s, A New Method To Fight Bed Bugs

Utica, NY (WIBX) - There's a new weapon to fight bed bugs! According to Michael Morin with Northeast Heat Treatment LLC, 140-degree heat and K-9's are proving to be a successful method to kill the bugs that are causing havoc across the country, including right here in Oneida County.

Morin says the heat method can also safe a homeowner money because they won't have to throw away some of their household items. "One thing that we continually heard while we were doing inspections for bedbugs is that people were throwing out very good assets because they had infestation in them, and what we're saying is 'Stop' don't throw out those expensive costly items, there's an alternative to that--and we have that alternative with a truck that can take those assets, separate them from the house, treat them, put them back in that day with no chemical treatment, no pesticides, no insecticides put in them, and you're back in business that day, and you don't have to invest hundreds and hundreds of  dollars in repurchasing assets that could be saved," Morin said.

The truck Morin is referring to is a specially designed vehicle with 1400 cubic feet of space that can hold household items like, sofas, mattresses, tables, clothing and other furniture for the heat treatment. Morin says the truck has a standard residential oil-fired warm air heating furnace, which has duct work going into the back of the truck that also houses electronic tools equipped with digital reading equipment that allows workers to control the heat. He says the desired and effective temperature is 140-degrees for a 1 to 1.5  hour treatment span. He says workers will put the treated items back into a home or office, bedbug free.

Morin says the K-9's are used to sniff out the hidden bedbugs. Bedbugs Finders LLC, a company that he also owns in Strattford, CT, supplies the 4 trained K-9's that gets from K-9 companies across the Southwest. "We have four dogs, one came from Kansas, another came from Clearwater, Florida, and two came from Vincent, Alabama." Morin goes onto say,  "That's going to be our signaling devices as people want to utilize that service, we'll be using the K-9's as a source to give us some direction as to how many assets have to be treated." He says it could take up to a full work day to treat a 3 bedroom home.

He says they take the truck to work in NYC, all of New England and Connecticut and says they'll travel just about anywhere in the Northeast to try and eradicate the bedbugs. "If we have a request in Upstate, NY and they need our services for multiple days we'll be glad to perform. We'll go where the work is but we would like to have multiple days of work," Morin said. He added that his company has a meeting planned for later this month with a "very large municipality" in CT, (he declined to name the city pending a contractual agreement) with many housing projects and says he hopes they reach a work agreement so they can stay ahead of the bedbug epidemic.

The downfall is that some items, such as electronic equipments, aresol cans or hazardous material, can not be treated due to the threat fires. "We go through an underwriting process with a client to make sure that there's an understanding of what we can and can not do," Morin said. He added that about 70-percent of bedbug infestations are found in bedding areas, another 15-percent are found in sofas and chairs, and another 15-percent of bedbugs are found in the rest of a home or office. You can find out more information about Northeast Heat Treatment, LLC at, northeastheat@sbcglobal.net or by calling the group at (203) 378-HEAT (4328).