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Comment by wincy | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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