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Comment by klodolph | Hacker News Reader

Speaking of New York—everyone’s story with roaches is that they get them when a new neighbor moves in. You can’t get rid of roaches in your apartment as long as your neighbors contribute the steady stream of new roaches.

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Interesting, that makes sense. I lived in an apartment with 8 units back in my exterminator days, and my landlord was more than happy to let me in to all 8 of them to do a thorough spray.

It was much harder to spray apartment complexes with hundreds of units and treating for roaches in every single unit was prohibitively expensive (or my boss was a cheapskate, I don’t know), so we’d only do targeted treatment where we had seen roaches and surrounding units.

Single family homes were much easier to treat. I strongly suspect we got roaches in our single family house when a home care nurse brought them with her, along with a bed bug! I almost died when I saw that monstrosity, luckily we avoided an infestation, those are 10x worse than any cockroach. You do not want bed bugs.

I once had bed bugs, and can attest to how nasty they are and how difficult to get rid of. Eventually we learned that none of the bed bug repellent products work, and the only thing that actually works is diatomaceous earth.

We got bedbugs once at my old place. We think we just randomly picked them up at a Marriott we stayed at a few weeks prior to noticing them - crap luck.

We got rid of them by sealing the mattress for 6 months, and letting them starve. This was after taking a pass at them with sprays and such (the ones we could spot).

Did you ever notice most all hotel and motel rooms come with a chromed luggage stand? The chrome makes it impossible for bedbugs to climb up and into your luggage.

I learned that too late! But yes, this is an amazing piece of knowledge not well known.

Ivermectin actually works, as long as everyone in the household takes it for at least two weeks (length of the BB lifecycle).

Interesting that it works. Some quick googling shows that it only slows them down. For example: [1].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6901371/

There are multiple studies so far showing that it works; they can become paralyzed as well as prevented from maturing into adults, which effectively ends the reproductive cycle.

Isn't it safer to have control mechanisms that don't involve taking some drug ourselves?

Effective control methods include:

- Heat: improper heat treatment has caused house fires

- All sorts of poisons: poisoning not just the bugs

- Diatomaceous earth: Using the wrong kind, or using it improperly can cause diseases like silicosis

And all the creative yet incredibly stupid things people think of when they are desperate.

But done properly these techniques work with minimal risk. The same can be said of Ivermectin.

Don’t forget the use of organophosphate insecticides in the form of Nuvan Prostrips, which are chemically similar to nerve gas for humans.

BTW Cimexa is the current best practice for desiccating bed bugs upon contact, and, unlike diatomaceous earth, is approved for use in human living areas.

So it seems they discovered an anti-dote to roaches, but not to bed-bugs.

Is there any hope? C'mon science, do your thing!

Heat, Bedbugs die at 119-125 degrees fahrenheit after a few hours.

I put 6 propane gas blowers in an apartment, the kind that is used at construction sites. Let that run with thermostats and cameras for a few hours. Bedbug free. Have since done it at 2 other apartments after months of infestations, immediately fixed.

Source: personal experience, after trying lots of other methods.

https://www.orkin.com/pests/bed-bugs/does-heating-or-freezin...

Yes heat is an effective treatment. I've also seen 10kw Resistive load banks used in load testing of single or three-phase AC power systems utilized this way. They are essentially bed bug killers as they generate a tremendous amount of heat.

https://mosebachresistors.com/products/bed-bug-heaters

> their heat-resistant eggs require temperatures upwards of 125 degrees.

Achieving that temperature in a home would be nearly impossible unless you live in very hot summer area and likely cause substantial damage to a lot of things.

I've done it in Vermont USA in the summer with all windows closed.

Infrared saunas are 120-140f.

https://www.saunasociety.org/sauna-experience

A car reaches 120f on a 70f day in the sun in 90 minutes so I don't think that temperature would damage that many things.

https://www.scottsfortcollinsauto.com/how-hot-do-cars-get-in...

This company selling electric bed bug heaters says 7 minutes at 115f.

https://convectex.com/pages/bed-bugs

> It was much harder to spray apartment complexes with hundreds of units and treating for roaches in every single unit was prohibitively expensive (or my boss was a cheapskate, I don’t know)

I lived in an apartment with ~300 units and they sprayed in the units at least once a year. Not sure what they were spraying (they said it was pet safe).

But if you’re the exterminator, why would your boss being a cheapskate have to do with it? Wouldn’t they be the one being paid?

Yes, we’re being paid but also underbid to get the contract, and using more chemical than strictly necessary will cut into the profit for the job. So we mixed the chemicals the same, but wouldn’t spray growth regulator in every apartment (more expensive) and we wouldn’t put roach bait down in every unit only ones with roach issues and ones surrounding that one.

You want to keep the bugs down but not totally eliminate them, otherwise why would they need you? My boss never said that explicitly but we’d just use the minimum chemical mixtures in our tanks unless we were treating some specific infestation.

It wasn’t a scam exactly but it was definitely a “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” sort of thing. One person would pay $80 and get an outdoor treatment only. Another person would get a 2 hour intense complex spraying and attic dusting, extremely thorough, with follow up visits for the exact same price. Like any sort of service job, really.

That sounds like a very shady business…

I think he meant the landlord was being a cheapskate here

Cockroaches can be imported by a person? How on earth does that happen.

Coffee makers. I once picked up a nice, high-end Keuring machine for free from a neighbor. Later than evening, I noticed something moving around it. It was full of roaches. I put it in a trash bag and ran to put it in the garbage outside. The exterminator and landlord both said the warmth and moisture of coffee machines is a magnet for roaches and coffee is their favorite snack.

One more reason to ditch the kcups for the real thing using a french press or pour over. Use a percolator if you must but ditch those kcup machines. They make tiny single serve french presses.

Coffee grounds, cardboard, paper, compost, all favorites of the American cockroach.

It probably doesn't help much against a roach infestation, but fully automatic espresso machines make a good cup and keep the convenience. Ours was $1500 and has already paid for itself buying whole beans instead of k-cups.

I would imagine the broiler would probably be just as much a target as a keurig machine. Same with drip. Anything where it’s an appliance that just sits in its grime on the counter while producing humidity.

Can also support this the only thing better than a super automatic coffee machine is a better super automatic coffee machine or an aeropress

Can support this statement. Ours has a nicer version available today for $799 (Philips) and it’s freaking amazing.

OMG......

I once had found a nest of ants inside a laptop.

The laptop was on a table in the middle of a 40'x40' room but one day I came in, turned it on and for the next 15 minutes ant pieces flew out of the fan exhaust.

Your life may be morphing into a Blumhouse movie

All it takes is one pregnant cockroach in a box somewhere. They will often hide in electronic devices.

Sprint sent me a magic box some years ago (It's like a cellphone repeater). UPS helpfully threw the box out in the snow where it was discovered a few days later. We installed it and bits of bug I'd never seen before started coming out. Turns out it was full of dead German cockroaches that presumably froze to death.

I live in a pretty rural area so the only ones I see sometimes in the summer that have hitched rides before are the virginia woods cockroaches that fly. But I've never seen them infest a house, they just seem to be attracted to the lights.

Corrugated cardboard (boxes) can be a vector for cockroach eggs. I once crewed on a yacht whose captain forbid any cardboard boxes to be brought aboard for this reason.

Step on one, eggs stick to the shoe and voila.

I lived in a large building that developed a roach problem. They were able to identify the original culprit. It turned out that when they mapped the complaints about roaches in units, it was radiating outwards over time from a single unit.

Not that that made life any easier once the buggers took over the building, but hey

It is also unfortunately rather common that the person living in the source apartment never complains about having roach problems, never admits to having a roach problem, and certainly don't want to let people in to check or fix it. Which leaves everyone else angry and in a perpetual loop of infestations.

My own memory of New York is that if noticed an absence of roaches in your apartment, that meant you had mice, and the mice were eating the roaches. I told a friend that (she had happily commented about not having roaches) and she looked rather alarmed. I should have kept quiet.

There is a secret third option, which is to have a cat in the apartment :3

Because it’s new york, sometimes the cats lose to the rats. https://youtube.com/shorts/g-PXxTkPQ3c?si=02VGLetMiroJz_FP

You have absolutely no idea what a cat actually fighting or trying to kill something looks like.

That cat isn't losing, it's playing. It's toying with the rat and the "loss" was it repositioning to stalk it (the pressed to the ground body pose.)

Cats will fuck up all manner of wildlife an order of magnitude or two their weight.

A friend's parents used to have a maine-coon-esque cat who once brought home a lamb it had discovered in a nearby field. Would have had to get this thing over at least two fences but somehow managed.

Our cats have discovered that dead mice aren't any fun to play with, so they'll go to great lengths not to kill them. They'll pounce and stun them for a bit, then the mouse recovers and tries to scurry off - and the cycle repeats. Eventually the mouse finds a safe haven where a cat can't get to it.

Rats ≠ mice. Rats are a public nuisance that hang around because there’s always trash outside. Mice are the ones that invade your apartment.

I’m sure rats do invade some apartments, but that’s gotta be crazy rare.

And when the cats get out of control introduce a bear? Or is it an alligator? ;)

No, just butcher all but one of the female cats to make *cat meat roasts*, and stick the spare in a cage. (Keep the males for vermin control.) See also [0].

0: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Catsplosion

I will have to ask the old lady who swallowed the fly.

I don't think NY has a native bear population (well, it does, but it's the wrong kind of bear), but you could get the alligator from the sewer.

You need to eventually make this ecology circular.

Just ate our apartment cat—-thanks for that advice.

Wait now I need a new one

You huff glue, eat cat food, and chug some beer.

Think Tank afficionado and Always Sunny fan? Quite the man of culture.

IASIP was a fairly popular show among my cohort of staffers.

Reassuring to know IASIP is upstream of US policy. We’re going to make it.

But comptrollers get paid shit.

Alligator. When winter comes they freeze to death.

Its... wildly accurate.

Neighbors decided they were tired of tenants and roach problems so they removed the kitchen from their rented apartment.

Roach problem went away for them and me.

I will randomly get a few waterbugs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_cockroach) which are alarming but it's usually when temps are dramatically changing.

These are one of the favorite hunting conquests for my two cats. They are fast and change directions quickly and can fly. They are tough to catch to throw back outside, but not as fun as a cicada that is flying around and your cat(s) are jumping off of the furniture trying to catch them again. There are times where the cat and I are trying to catch the waterbug before it gets somewhere hard to get, but for very different reasons.

I lived in an apartment that had the kitchen redone. Once that happened no more roaches.

Now whenever I move into a new apartment I use space filler foam and silicon to seal around all the possible entrencences bugs could use to enter my apartment internally. So far so good.

Yep. Prolonged vacancy is bad too. Usually pest problems are highest when moving in, and then keeping a place clean and occupied is the best way to maintain pest-free apartment.

Every month or so, my apartment building sends someone to knock on every door of the (admittedly small) building to offer to spray a few places (like behind the stove) to keep out pests. I hadn't thought of it from this perspective before, but it makes sense from the perspective of trying to solve the problem you mention; the only way to keep them out is to handle it uniformly across all the units, and having someone come around to offer it every so often makes sure that new people moving in get it treated and no one will forget due to having to remember on their own.

It's the activity of the move that disturbs them. Same thing with mice/rats. Happens when nearby buildings are under construction, as well.

this is why bombing a house doesn't work, the roaches flee to the neighbors, they then bomb and they flee back to your house (or migrate back over time).

I absolutely refuse to live in houses with roaches, too many horror stories. I once moved out of a house and left everything I owned in it due to the roaches.

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