Horry County Bed Bug Exterminators

Our Three-Pronged Approach to Kill Bed Bugs

Some companies rely solely on heat treatments to kill bed bugs which is great when it works. To kill bed bugs and bed bug eggs, you must heat them to over 130 degrees for at least an hour. The downside to a heat only approach is if you do not heat the exact spot where a bed bug is hiding you won't kill them.

Some companies will just use chemicals for a bed bug treatment. You can use chemicals for bed bug pest control, but the best option is an integrated pest management system. A trained professional provides this system and we constantly train all our technicians in the best ways to rid your home of pests.

At Bug Busters Pest and Mosquito Control, we use a three-pronged approach to killing bed bugs in your home. Our initial visit will be an inspection to see if there is a bed bug infestation in your home in the first place. During our bed bug inspection we will look for live bed bugs, bed bug feces and other signs of bed bugs in your home. Bed bugs leave blood as a sign of where they bite you or when you kill them.

Carbon dioxide and heat is what attracts bed bugs. They frequently bite people while they are sleeping in bed or on a couch. Since you are not moving too often in your sleep, it is common to find multiple bites from one night.

Once we determine that there is a bed bug problem in your home, we will schedule a date and time to return to treat your home. We send you an email prior to your treatment that outlines everything you can do to make the treatment more effective.

You can read in depth about our three-pronged approach to killing bed bugs here.

The process begins with us using our pest control HEPA certified vacuum. We begin by vacuuming all beds, couches, dressers, drawers, baseboards and anywhere else a bed bug might be hiding or laying their eggs.

The second step is using our steamer in the same areas we cleaned. We want to kill any leftover bed bugs or eggs we might have missed with our vacuum using our high heat steamer. Our steamer reaches temperatures of 250 degrees that kill bed bugs and their eggs on contact.

The last step in the process is using different pesticides to kill any straggler bed bugs that come along. We treat the same areas we cleaned and steamed since bed bugs can travel to almost anywhere in your home. They love any cracks or crevices they can hide inside of or under.

Bed bugs can live in a number of areas in your home. Sometimes their hiding spots can be behind a picture frame, the back of your closets or in a carpet. Bed bugs can stay dormant for up to a year without a host. This is why treating every inch of a home is crucial to stopping a bed bug infestation.

We use various treatment options since as a pest management professional, we know that a one size fits all approach is useless.

How Much Is Pest Control For Bed Bugs?

The most common question we get is what does a bed bug exterminator cost? The price depends on the size of the home. Bed bugs travel throughout a home to find a host, which is why treating the entire home is the most effective treatment.

The price can range from a few hundred dollars, up to over a thousand if the home is large enough. Until we perform a full bed bug inspection, we cannot give an accurate cost.

A good estimate is $.75 per square foot of the home. For example, a 1200 square foot house might cost around $800 for a full treatment.

Preventing Bed Bug Infestations

Bed bugs can get into your home from a number of places. The most common is from staying at a hotel or friend's house where bed bugs are present. Bed bugs are very avid hitch hikers which makes the spread of them throughout an apartment or condo complex very common.

The best defense against a bed bug infestation is to make sure that you always check when sleeping somewhere new for signs of bed bugs. Upon leaving to return home, make sure to wash all of your clothes at the highest and longest settings in our washer and dryer.

Check your luggage and other items that you have brought back with you for signs of bed bugs. You must be extremely thorough due to the fact that bed bugs will hide in small crevices for almost a year without coming out to feed on a host.