Bed Bug FAQ

Bed bugs are some of the most patient pests around, and they can survive a long time without feeding, so starving them out or waiting them out simply does not work. The reliable way to kill bed bugs at every life stage, including the eggs that store-bought sprays and DIY methods miss, is our combination of Heat Assault heat and a residual spray. The heat kills the bugs and their eggs on contact, and the spray keeps working for weeks afterward to catch anything that survives. You can read the full process on our bed bug heat treatment page, or start with a bed bug inspection.

Bed bugs are not a sign that a home is dirty. Most of the time they arrive by hitching a ride, whether on luggage, on secondhand furniture, or in a guest’s bag, or they slip in through cracks and gaps from one unit to the next. What draws them to a person is body heat and the carbon dioxide we breathe out while we sleep, and not clutter, though clutter does give them more places to hide. Even spotless homes and brand-new builds can end up with them. There is more in our comprehensive guide to bed bugs.

The reliable way to kill bed bugs at every life stage, including the eggs that store-bought sprays tend to miss, is our combination treatment. We pair Heat Assault thermal heat, which kills the bugs on contact, with a residual spray that keeps working for weeks afterward to catch anything that survives. Bed bugs die at somewhere around 118°F held for about 90 minutes, and 122°F kills them almost instantly, which is well beyond anything you could reach by turning up the thermostat. You can see the temperatures that kill bed bugs in full.

While heat treatment will kill off bed bugs of all shapes and sizes, they are hardy creatures that can survive even in the natural Florida heat. Therefore, do not rely upon the warmth of a closed-up room: you need something that takes the heating level right up to wipe out the bugs and their eggs. That is what our professional Heat Assault equipment does, reaching into the cracks and voids where they hide.

Bed bug heat treatment starts at an $1,800 minimum and is priced by the size of your home, so most homes run somewhere between about $1,800 and $2,800. There are no per-room upcharges and no surprises, and we confirm your exact price over the phone before any work begins. Our bed bug treatment cost page has the full breakdown and a price calculator.

If you have tried the usual DIY treatments, you are likely only killing a small handful of the adult populace, leaving the younglings to take their place. This is why other non-heat treatments are so ineffective: the bugs recede from the danger zone, wait it out, and then return when you least expect it. A professional treatment that reaches every life stage in a single visit tends to cost less in the end than a long run of failed attempts.

They will not. The bed bug is an elusive creature that can easily move from one part of your home to the next and never stay in one place, and it can wait months between meals. Left alone, it simply has the time to spread to other rooms and, in an apartment, to the units next door.

Not at all. Even spotless, five-star hotels and brand-new homes can suffer from bed bugs. If they are brought in from another location, bed bugs will find a place to live in almost any property, clean or not. A tidy home does have fewer places for them to hide, but cleanliness on its own neither causes them nor keeps them away.

In most cases the whole job is finished in a single day. You and any pets do need to be out of the home while the heat runs, and for roughly two hours afterward while it cools, but there are no repeat visits to schedule the way chemical-only plans usually require.