How to get rid of bedbugs with soda: in an apartment, house, country house
Baking soda or sodium bicarbonate can be used not only to clean the room, but also to kill/repel insects. Several chemicals are used. This agent is used as a repellent if the parasites have not come into contact with it.
When, during spraying or application, it was possible to treat the nest where the insects were hiding, the pests will die in a short period. Turpentine and kerosene are combined with sodium hydrocarbonate.
Baking soda is used both to repel bedbugs and to clean the room after treatment
Initial actions
In cases where the number of bedbugs is large enough, it is not always possible to remove them using chemicals. To solve the problem, it is better to resort to professional disinfection. However, to make cleaning the room after treatment easier, you need to perform some steps before starting the procedure:
Remove all food and personal hygiene items from the premises
This precaution is due to the fact that splashes of chemical solutions can get on them, and then everything will have to be thrown away. Provide free access to the sleeping area, as it is processed first. The processing process itself will take a little time - about 1 hour
To avoid the effects of chemicals on the human body, you need to know what to do after treating the apartment. After disinfection, owners must leave their home for at least 2 hours. Upon returning home, you need to immediately open all the windows so that the apartment is properly ventilated. This will take 3 to 4 hours. Entering a room where chemicals have been treated is not very dangerous, but there will be a specific smell that must be gotten rid of. It is recommended to wash floors no earlier than every 3 days
The processing process itself will take a little time - about 1 hour. To avoid the effects of chemicals on the human body, you need to know what to do after treating the apartment. After disinfection, owners must leave their home for at least 2 hours. Upon returning home, you need to immediately open all the windows so that the apartment is properly ventilated. This will take 3 to 4 hours. Entering a room where chemicals have been treated is not very dangerous, but there will be a specific smell that must be gotten rid of. It is recommended to wash floors no earlier than every 3 days.
Then you should scoop up dead bedbugs, their eggs and larvae, pour them into a garbage bag, which you should immediately take to the trash can or burn. You can also collect insects using a vacuum cleaner. You can only collect with your hands while wearing rubber gloves, which must be thrown away after that.
Wet cleaning should be done as late as possible. Therefore, it is recommended to go somewhere - to relatives, friends or to the country. This is due to the fact that live insects may remain in the room, hiding in secluded places. If you do not do wet cleaning, then they will also die after some time, moving on the treated surfaces. I should return to the apartment in 2 weeks.
Preparing the room for baiting bedbugs with baking soda
Before spraying or applying a toxic substance, it is necessary to perform a number of actions that will increase the efficiency of treatment. Basic recommendations:
- the furniture is moved away from the walls, without the need to move it to the center of the room, it is enough to move it out 10-20 cm so that a hand or hand can squeeze through, a spray bottle to spray the product;
- it is necessary to restore the integrity of wall and floor coverings so that insects cannot find new places to hide;
- empty the furniture, this will allow it to be processed inside, and will also prevent the possibility of an unpleasant odor appearing on clothes - it is better to seal all things hermetically with polyethylene;
- the carpet should be removed if it is infected, the nests are filled with boiling water or the product is taken out into the cold (in the winter months);
- The aquarium (if installed) is moved from the room, since the object will be mothballed for 1 day.
Contaminated bedding and wardrobe items should be washed in a machine at high temperature.
It is not recommended to prepare upholstered furniture for disinsection using such a product, since it cannot be applied to woven materials, but it is permissible to treat small areas inside the frame of a sofa or bed.
This will repel new bed bugs. To open access to these places, a sofa or bed is partially dismantled or folded out.
Before treatment, you must move the furniture away from the walls.
What to do with upholstered furniture
Before ordering a disinfestation service, some clients are afraid that after spraying the solution will settle in the fabrics of the sofa or bed. There is concern that this will have a negative impact on well-being, causing headaches, insomnia, malaise, allergies, and chronic poisoning by chemical vapors.
Manufacturers of insect control products guarantee the safety of their products. During the first days, with poor ventilation, drops of the solution remain in the air, their concentration is negligible, and does not affect the human body. Once the fabric is saturated, the substances are not released back. If there are bedbugs left in the house, they will be active at night, approaching a sleeping person. When insects come into contact with dried insecticide on fabric, they will become infected and die.
There is no need to order upholstery dry cleaning. For the peace of mind of clients, it is recommended to cover upholstered furniture with sheets and covers before treatment. Then wash them in a machine. Before going to bed, you need to put clean bed linen on the bed. Treating cribs is also safe for the health of a small child.
Preparation of a solution based on baking soda
They are considering different options for funds. They are used for various purposes:
- Add 150 g of soda to warm water, when it dissolves, pour in kerosene (150 ml), turpentine (100 ml), after 1 hour it is recommended to add liquid soap (35 g), this product helps create unacceptable conditions for insects to live;
- second recipe: take 100 ml of turpentine, 30 g of naphthalene, when the components are mixed, add liquid (1 l), soda (100 g), you can use this product to treat surfaces against bedbugs after 1 hour.
Baking soda is also used to clean surfaces from insecticides.
No household chemicals (turpentine, kerosene) or naphthalene are added. An aqueous solution is prepared. Take soda (80 g), dissolve it in liquid (5 l), add a small amount of soap. When the solution is ready, it is used for its intended purpose.
The principle of application differs from the method of using a repellent based on turpentine, sodium bicarbonate and kerosene. In this case, all hard surfaces without exception are treated, and the aqueous solution for cleaning the room, on the contrary, is applied only to some areas.
The active component promotes the destruction of the insecticide.
To clean surfaces use a soda-based solution
What is included in the tidy after disinfestation?
Cleaning an apartment after treatment for bedbugs is divided into three components:
- Collection of large debris and dead insects.
- Surface treatment.
- Elimination of odors.
First of all, specialists need to remove all dead insects and their remains. This can be complicated by the fact that bedbugs can hide in hard-to-reach places behind tables, under furniture, or in crevices in baseboards. Even if the insects are not visible, the poison can only paralyze them, and after a few weeks a new generation will hatch that will be more resistant to insecticides. It is important to clean out all places where at least one parasite may remain.
In addition, poison accumulates in the bodies of insects, which can then harm you or pets who accidentally find a dead beetle in some corner. There are often cases when apartment cleaning after bedbug poisoning was done poorly, which caused allergies and even asthma.
Treatment methods that physically destroy even the smallest larvae include steaming.
Read more It not only effectively removes the “film” from chemicals, but also gives confidence that bedbugs will be completely destroyed.
Not every cleaning product can remove pesticide residues from the floor and walls. Fortunately, good cleaning companies use professional products that can neutralize and wash away any insecticide used. This does not cause any harm to furniture or flooring.
Eliminating odors is a difficult task to do on your own. Conventional ventilation is often ineffective. Specialists carry out deodorization and ozonation in order to eliminate all remaining hints of the use of chemicals.
Work order
- To begin with, all small things that for some reason remained in the room being treated are cleaned. All products in unclosed containers are disposed of, and dishes are washed using cleaning products.
- Next, the surfaces of furniture and walls are processed. A steamer is used for soft coverings, curtains and upholstery. It allows you to gently but at the same time reliably clean even delicate fabrics.
- Particular attention is paid to the little things: window sills, radiators, air conditioners and other places where dead insects may remain.
- Washing windows and doorways is also a very important part of cleaning an apartment after bedbug poisoning, since a lot of chemicals settle on large surfaces. Wiping with conventional means does not have an effect, so special preparations are used to neutralize the insecticide.
- After this, the floor is thoroughly washed, the baseboards and the lower part of the walls are wiped and treated.
- Finally, the room is ozonated and deodorized to remove even the most subtle odors. After these procedures, the air in your apartment will become fresh and pleasant.
Treating the premises with soap and soda solution after disinfestation
The main rule when applying such a product is uniform treatment so that not a single area is missed. However, separate recommendations are given for each stage. The room is treated in different ways:
- If the disinfestation has just ended, a period of “preservation” of the object has been maintained, upon return only certain areas should be treated - those that are often used, for example, door handles, armrests, shelves, chairs and tabletops; other surfaces cannot be cleaned until the recommended manufacturer 2-week period;
- after 14 days or later (decided taking into account the condition of the home), toxic substances must be removed from other surfaces (it is allowed to wash the floor, but not the baseboards, clean the furniture inside to remove the smell).
Hidden areas (under the sofa, other furniture, on the back surfaces of cabinets) are not recommended to be cleaned - remove the insecticide with a solution based on sodium bicarbonate.
This measure will help protect your home from insects even after cleaning, since the poison retains its properties.
The floor must be washed thoroughly, preferably by hand.
When and how to clean the apartment after exterminating bedbugs
The longer the insecticide remains on the floor and furniture, the higher the effectiveness of the treatment procedures performed.
If you carry out general cleaning right away, the poison will lose its properties. It will not be possible to get rid of bedbugs after this, because the larvae, when emerging from the eggs, will continue to develop and will not come into contact with the poison. In this case, bedbugs continue to bite people and multiply. This means that improperly performed cleaning after disinfestation can reduce all efforts to zero.
It is recommended to wait until the parasites have completely disappeared. After getting rid of the parasites, you can clean all surfaces of the poison. But it is also important to take into account the properties of the drug used. For example, only some products retain their properties for 3-6 months. Most of them last for several weeks (from 2 to 4).
When using such preparations, cleaning can be done after the specified interval: 14-28 days. The reason is the loss of properties due to natural reasons (the substance breaks down in open space), so there is no need to remove it forcibly.
It is not recommended to clean immediately after disinfection
Advantages of professional cleaning after disinfestation
If you want to be sure that your stay in the apartment is safe after disinfestation of bedbugs or cockroaches, order a cleaning service. This service is offered by companies that provide treatment against cockroaches and other harmful insects.
Why is it beneficial to use the services of professionals:
- knowledge of the cleaning algorithm after applying an insecticide is a guarantee of safety;
- compliance with precautions when working with hazardous substances - avoiding poisoning;
- availability of all personal protective equipment - no need to additionally buy rubber gloves, rags, detergents;
- quickly bringing the apartment into habitable condition - saving time;
- modern cleaning technologies - efficiency, quality, availability of necessary equipment, detergents;
- guarantee for the work performed - quality control system.
If necessary, you can use additional services - neutralizing unpleasant odors, cleaning from limescale, rust, water stone, mold. For this purpose, innovative equipment and techniques are used - steam cleaner, dry fog. Also order help around the house - washing, ironing curtains, bedspreads, carpets, tablecloths, removing dust from office equipment.
What to do immediately after treatment
The main task upon return is to reduce the concentration of poison in the air. To do this you need to open the windows and doors. Many manufacturers recommend spraying the poison under the same conditions. However, the effectiveness of this method is lower than that of spraying an insecticide indoors, but a higher level of safety is noted, which is important for allergy sufferers, children, and pregnant women.
If you do not plan to return to the apartment after disinfestation, in this case no other actions need be performed.
An insecticide applied in a layer on the surface will ensure the destruction of bedbugs. You can return home in a few days. If it is not possible to leave the home for a long time, partial cleaning is performed upon arrival. They consider only one reason explaining why it is permissible to carry out general cleaning earlier - allergy sufferers, children, pregnant women live at home, and it is not possible to spend the night in other places.
In this case, it is necessary to carry out disinfestation again - after 10-14 days.
Upon returning home, you are allowed to rinse food that is hermetically sealed, wash things, and partially put them back in their places. It is necessary to use the treated room as little as possible during the day, at least for several days after disinfestation. But it should be remembered that hungry parasites can move to another room where the owner temporarily spends the night.
Many people believe that it is better to spend the night in a treated room on the first day after spraying the poison, then the bedbugs will certainly receive a dose of poison, crawling along the treated surfaces on the way to the bed.
To avoid poisoning, immediately after treatment you need to open all windows and doors.
Contact a reliable service
Not only professionals work in the sanitation services market. Unfortunately, there are plenty of hacks and amateurs. If the apartment continues to be attacked by bedbugs after disinfestation, it is possible:
- Employees of the company that took over the processing saved the drug or diluted it incorrectly.
- Inaccurate calculations of the area of the room were made (the intensity of the impact depends on this).
- Disinfectors left certain areas of the apartment untreated.
It is important to know: repeated treatment against bedbugs is possible no earlier than after 3 weeks. Contacting the SES “Pest Control Service” is a guarantee of a professional approach and effective results.
Ventilation of the apartment. Removing the smell
The cause must be eliminated. The main factor is the insecticide in the woven material, on the coverings. Considering that general cleaning is not carried out soon, the smell can be removed only by actions that have an indirect effect:
- through ventilation: it is recommended to leave windows and doors open for 2-3 hours every day in winter or around the clock (if pest control is carried out in summer);
- cleaning products made from woven materials, they can also be left outside (if their dimensions allow them to be carried through a doorway);
- coatings and things will continue to smell until general cleaning is done, but the intensity of the odor will significantly decrease.
You can use a fragrance, this will allow you to wait until the end of the insecticide's period of action. If the smell remains even after general cleaning, it is recommended to order a cleaning service from a cleaning company.
Fragrances to remove odor after treatment
Cleaning the apartment after bedbug poisoning
You can completely wash the entire apartment a few weeks after treatment. At the same time, all surfaces are cleaned:
- floors;
- frame furniture;
- back walls of cabinets, interior surfaces of the sofa;
- interior items;
- areas under large furniture;
- internal surfaces of cabinets, chests of drawers, bedside tables.
It is important to understand what to do after disinfestation against bedbugs: prepare an aqueous solution of soda, apply it with a rag, carefully wiping the surface. Stains of parasite excrement should also be removed. Small items can be washed in a machine; you can pre-soak them with detergent. Large items (for example, a sofa) are cleaned superficially, while paying attention to areas with obvious dirt.
Frame furniture must be thoroughly washed
Procedure
After the visit of the sanitary service employees, the owners must :
- Close windows, doors, ventilation ducts.
- Leave the room for 3-6 hours (depending on the type of drug). At this time, bedbugs will crawl out of secluded places and come into contact with the insecticide. If the treatment was carried out in the evening, it is better to spend the night in another place.
- Open the windows and provide air flow into the room. Make a draft. Airing should last for an hour (at least).
- Hard surfaces that people and pets are forced to come into contact with must be treated with an aqueous solution of soda (100 grams) and laundry soap (30 grams). Take 1 liter of water.
- Wet cleaning is possible only after a week. Within 7 days, single insects that did not die immediately will move around the apartment. If the insecticide is dried but not wiped off, it will continue to work.
- General cleaning with thorough washing of baseboards and other surfaces in hard-to-reach places is carried out after 20 days. All this time, the insecticide will act and will not allow new bugs to appear from larvae.
If you doubt what can and cannot be done after disinfection, it is better to call the specialists.
Is it possible to sleep on treated beds and sofas?
Many insecticides that are used today belong to hazard class 2. It is not recommended to come into close contact with them. You can sleep on a sofa or bed treated with such a drug after a few days, when the toxic substance has evaporated and been partially washed off.
Most other products (hazard classes 3 and 4) are considered conditionally safe; contact with skin is acceptable, but it should not be short-lived if the outer skin is not damaged. However, even in this case, it is recommended to first perform cleaning after disinfestation. When the poison disappears, its concentration decreases, then you can sleep on the sofa.
The exception is strong-smelling insecticides. In this case, the smell may disappear for several weeks.
You can sleep on a treated sofa or bed only after a few days
Is it possible to spend the night in an apartment immediately after treatment?
It’s not possible, but it’s necessary! On the first night after treatment, it is extremely important to stay indoors and sleep on a sofa or bed in case some isolated bedbugs survive here. These parasites will look for a person in order to feed, and in their search they will run along surfaces on which the fresh, most active drug is located. If there are no people in the housing on the first night, such surviving bugs will limit themselves to short forays and return to their shelters. The next day, the drug will already begin to erode, “fizzle out,” and even while actively wandering around the apartment, the bugs will have less and less contact with it, and its effect on them will be less and less effective. Therefore, the first night is the most effective for their destruction, and at least one person needs to be in the apartment during it.
If after treatment the apartment is cleaned as indicated above, it is absolutely safe to spend the night in it. It is enough to make the bed with clean linens, and in the rooms in which people sleep, leave the windows, or at least the vents, open.
On a note
Our practice shows that on the first night, single bedbugs can remain in apartments after our sanitary treatments in 24-25% of cases. In half of them, these single individuals die on the first night, crawling out of their shelters and crawling along a layer of dried liquid. A live person indoors stimulates their activity, increases the distance they run, and increases the likelihood of their death.
Traces of bedbug activity in the filling of the sofa
If one of the residents in the apartment is panicky afraid of bedbug bites, then the legs of his bed should be wrapped at night with adhesive tape, which is hung to catch flies, and the bed itself should be moved away from the walls and other furniture so that bedbugs from -behind the baseboards, or from under the parquet, they could only climb onto the bed using the legs. Trying to do this, they will stick to the tape and die even faster than they would die from the action of a dry insecticide.
As a rule, SanMariDez disinfectors treat sofas and bedbugs with special care, and therefore no living insects are ever left on them. If bedbugs can survive somewhere, then these are places in the room where it is very difficult to blow out the drug - cracks under parquet, or under a wooden floor in a private house, sockets, gaps behind wardrobes. And if there are no bedbugs on the bed and it is reliably protected from bedbugs with adhesive tapes, then even in such rooms no one will bite a sleeping person.
Practical experience
In practice, we have had cases when, during treatment, a sofa or bed had to be thrown away, and the owners slept on mattresses directly on the floor for the first few nights after treatment. It has never happened that any of them were bitten by bedbugs, since all the parasites were destroyed by a disinfectant, but for complete protection from bites, the mattresses in this case can be surrounded with the same adhesive tape on the floor, and the bedbugs will stick to it.
What to do with clothes, children's toys and dishes
Personal and children's belongings must be cleaned of insecticide as thoroughly as possible, since they are constantly in contact with the skin. It is better to take them into a room that is further away from the bedroom where disinfestation is carried out during treatment. This will help avoid the need to decide how to get rid of the smell after baiting bedbugs. In other cases, items are washed in a machine at high temperatures (if the properties of the fabrics allow).
This makes it possible to destroy the clutch of eggs and also remove the smell. Dishes must be cleaned using detergent.
After cleaning, you need to wash all items at high temperature.
If signs of poisoning appear. First aid
If you inhale an insecticide, seek professional help. In this case, the poison penetrates directly into the respiratory tract. An insecticide that enters the body through the digestive tract contributes to the development of poisoning, symptoms appear:
- salivation increases;
- there is abdominal pain;
- dizziness;
- general weakness;
- vomiting and nausea;
- diarrhea;
- abnormal heart rate.
These signs disappear with first aid:
- it is necessary to induce vomiting;
- the patient is given a lot of water without additives;
- you should take the sorbent.
At the first symptoms of poisoning, you may experience nausea and vomiting.
Signs of poisoning appear: what to do
The risk of poisoning from insecticides intended for residential premises is minimal. However, the manifestation of intoxication in people with severe chronic diseases of the kidneys, heart, immunity, and metabolic disorders cannot be ruled out. The trigger is poor ventilation of the living space and failure to follow cleaning recommendations.
Symptoms of general poisoning:
- sharp deterioration in condition;
- headaches, dizziness;
- nausea, unpleasant taste in the mouth;
- sore throat, dry cough that does not bring relief;
- irritation of the mucous membranes of the throat, nose, eyes;
- runny nose, watery eyes, drooling;
- redness of the conjunctiva.
If one or more symptoms appear, you need to leave the room for fresh air. Within 15-20 minutes the condition will improve. If signs of intoxication increase or your health worsens, consult a doctor. If you have difficulty breathing, immediately call an ambulance. Methods such as taking activated carbon and other sorbents are not effective. Since the substance entered the body not through the digestive tract, but through the organs of the respiratory system.
Small pets - hamsters, chinchillas, domestic rats, mice, turtles, chameleons - may be sensitive to the drug. After treatment, these animals are brought into an apartment in cages or a terrarium and are not released for several days. You can pick it up, but do not put it on the floor. Such animals can be released around the apartment only after general cleaning (no earlier than 3 weeks).
Insecticides do not pose a threat to cats, dogs, and rabbits. Even if an animal licks a small amount of dry drug, this will not affect its well-being. For a cat to get poisoned, it needs to lick 4-5 m2 of the treated surface, which is impossible in reality.
Preventive measures using baking soda
Sodium bicarbonate itself is not used to kill insects; insects do not die upon contact with it. In addition to the fact that soda eliminates odor after disinfestation, it also helps preserve the properties of plants that are used to repel bedbugs. Recommendations:
- plants (geranium, wormwood, tansy) must be slightly withered, first tied into bunches;
- prepare a solution: 60 g of soda, 300 ml of water;
- Plants are dipped into the liquid (cuts must be immersed).
Then it remains to dry the plants to remove excess moisture. They will repel bedbugs for 3 months. This will make it much less likely to update the grass under the mattress, inside the sofa and other furniture.
Reviews on the use of soda solutions against bed parasites
Marina, 32 years old, Perm
I try to avoid using chemicals. But soda has already helped twice. With it I prepared a solution with the addition of turpentine and kerosene. The smell disappears in 2-3 days, after which the substance is still effective.
Anna, 39 years old, Moscow
Baking soda helped me repel bed bugs. I accidentally saw one at night - crawling on the bed. In the morning I prepared a soda-based solution, collected wormwood from a nearby planting, and soaked it in the product. After I placed these bunches inside the furniture, there were no more parasites or bites.
Oleg, 35 years old, Kirov
I decided to poison the bedbugs with improvised means: I took mothballs, turpentine and soda. Apply it to baseboards and corners of furniture. The smell was strong even for me, but the bedbugs did not go away: at first they reduced their activity, but soon began to bite again. Then I already used insecticides. The smell was strong, but the effect was better.
Sofa covers are also treated
What to do if the bedbugs do not disappear after treatment?
Sometimes, after treatment with SES, residents again discover new bedbug bites and traces of parasites. In most cases, there is no need to panic - most likely, after two weeks the attacks of bloodsuckers will stop.
If after a month the bugs continue to bite, then there is a possibility that the measures to destroy the bloodsuckers were carried out with errors. Moreover, non-compliance with the technology is possible both on the part of the pest control service and the residents themselves.
Possible reasons why bedbugs remain after treating the apartment:
- Poor preparation of the premises. A large pile of things prevents the spread of the bedbug treatment. You need to remove unnecessary items from the apartment, put clothes in the closet, food in the refrigerator, and move furniture away from the walls. Beds and sleeping sofas must be unfolded and all drawers opened.
- Error when choosing a drug. If the bugs do not go away after the first treatment, there is a possibility that the ectoparasites are already immune to the poison used. To prevent such a situation, disinfectants must be given full information about previous attempts at independent control and the names of applicable repellents.
- Incorrect actions after weeding bedbugs. The most likely reason is the haste of general cleaning. The process of death of the bedbug population is delayed for a couple of weeks, so the insecticide should still remain in the room during this time.
- Psychological factor. Sensitive people, even after high-quality disinfection, continue to feel that the bedbugs do not disappear and bite even harder. This is a consequence of nervous tension suffered earlier. In some cases, bedbug bites do not go away for a long time; inflamed wounds cause discomfort and add to the “illusion” of the presence of parasites.
Important! To expel bed bugs, the Sanitary and Epidemiological Station uses moderately toxic agents of the third or fourth hazard class. Aggressive pesticides are replaced with microencapsulated preparations of prolonged action - the components are active for up to two months
If after 1.5-2 months the pests continue to crawl, you should contact the disinfection service for clarification. Specialists will ask about the actions of the apartment owners after the refurbishment and find out the reason why the bedbugs remained after the treatment.
Perhaps new individuals migrated from neighbors or were introduced from outside. In these situations, repeated treatment will be necessary - it is advisable to disinfect adjacent apartments.
Expert advice
Evgenia Vitalievna Marinina, entomologist specialist, 16 years of work experience:
Marinina Evgenia Vitalievna
Entomologist, researcher. Work experience 16 years.
Ask a Question
• when ordering a bed bug extermination service, you should clarify that it is disinfestation that needs to be performed, and not disinfection or deratization (in the first case, viruses, bacteria, fungi are destroyed, and in the second, rodents), this is already half the success, because in each different means are used from case to case; • soda is a universal method, it helps to clean surfaces after treatment with any insecticides, such substances are destroyed in an alkaline environment, an alternative is the use of soap, but it is permissible to combine them; • to reduce the risk of poisoning, it is better not to treat the upholstery of upholstered furniture with poison; it is recommended to apply the drug to the frame of a bed, sofa and other hard surfaces.
If people do not live in the apartment, then you can postpone cleaning for 1-2 weeks
