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mite-killing bed

heat beds and kill nasties with them
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The user would cover the bed and press a button on this bed frame, which would slowly heat up to a temperature high enough to kill bedbugs and most mites, and then cool off again. To do so without risking fire or being uncomfortable may take a 24 hour period.
Voice, Jan 24 2015

How hot is hot enough? http://www.vdacs.vi...ffiles/bb-heat1.pdf
How hot and long is hot and long enough? [popbottle, Jan 24 2015]

[link]






       Do you have quantifiable data or is this just a burning passion of yours? How hot is hot enough? What is the flash point of your garden variety bed gear? And what about Naomi?
normzone, Jan 24 2015
  

       Naomi is alive and well and living in Pittsburgh, PA. (What do you Mean I wasn't sposta tell. )   

       "Interestingly, bed bug eggs must be exposed to 118°F for 90 minutes to reach 100% mortality. " from link
popbottle, Jan 24 2015
  

       That's not very hot at all... I've worked in old folks homes where the residents would have complained about the arctic chill at that temperature.
bs0u0155, Jan 24 2015
  

       Utterly predictably, Japan has a tradition of hanging the futon in direct sunlight for the day for this very reason.   

       So you can sleep soundly except for the earthquakes, typhoons, tsunami, landslides, volcano's...
not_morrison_rm, Jan 24 2015
  

       Godzilla...
Voice, Jan 24 2015
  

       Gamma radiation...
cudgel, Jan 24 2015
  

       I thought I read of a bedbug preventative entailing placement of the feet of the bed in dishes of soapy water. That would mean bugs are commuting in from the suburbs and bedcentric measures ineffective.   

       Let me see if I can find a link for those dishes of soapy water.
bungston, Jan 24 2015
  

       There seems to be a confusion here between bedbugs and mites. The soapy water might stop bedbugs (who may live in crevices near the bed, and climb up at night), but not mites which live permanently in matresses and pillows.   

       Bedbugs are quite rare (at least here in the UK), but mites are pretty much universal.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 24 2015
  

       From experience, if you keep getting bites and no real pattern to them, then break out the clippers, shave off all body hair, take a very long shower, repeat as necessary.   

       If it is bed-bugs, put a piglet in the bed, turn off lights, come back in an hour.   

       And/or cover yourself in lard for an hour or so, all the bugs will suffocate, then you can keep the lard to fry the aforementioned piglet at some time in the future.
not_morrison_rm, Jan 24 2015
  

       Bedbugs are back in the US, no question. I have read two things: one is that it is a different strain (asian?) that allowed it to re-establish and the other that bedbug numbers were suppressed by roach control efforts, and with use of aerogel baits for roach control bedbugs are no longer suppressed.   

       Perhaps better living habits / hygiene in the UK continue prevent bedbug establishment? Hammocks? Thick body powders? Liberal insecticide use? It would be good to know. Since the collapse of the Empire, we in the outlying provinces have been more or less adrift.
bungston, Jan 24 2015
  

       //Since the collapse of the Empire, we in the outlying provinces have been more or less adrift.// I'm not sure why we have fewer bedbugs here (they do exist, but they're not common as far as I know). I doubt that hygiene or living habits (as far as beds go) are much different from the US. It might be a climate thing.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 24 2015
  

       // It might be a climate thing.//   

       Well, you'd think a bug killed by very high/low temperatures would do better in the UK than Chicago, but no. It might be the wooden gap-filled duct connected nature of cheap US housing. Whereas in the UK, even the nasty houses are pretty well sealed.
bs0u0155, Jan 24 2015
  

       Yep, my money is on climate, as the Uk with a long, cold winter, with the emphasis on very few places that are heated 24/7.   

       I say 24/7 as the old Soviet apartments were totally cockroach ridden, despite the -30 degrees winters, because they never got cold.   

       Japan having a shortish, cold winter and long hot, humid summer so it is ideal bug breeding territory. Spider the size of my hand etc..
not_morrison_rm, Jan 24 2015
  

       Bed bugs are evil. The most evil of evil. (Next to spiders, of course.)
blissmiss, Jan 24 2015
  

       If they're next to a spider, the spider would probably eat the bed bug.   

       What we ought to do is to engineer some bedbugs to produce luciferin/luciferase. Then breed and distribute them intensively, until the vast majority of bedbugs glow in the dark. Then they'd be easier to spot.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 24 2015
  

       hmm, wouldn't they just get selected out really fast?
bs0u0155, Jan 24 2015
  

       Probably. But it would be cool/scary to see all those glowing dots.   

       Maybe, instead, it would be possible to produce a decoy which smelled and tasted like a human, but was filled with a luminous bed-bug-likeable liquid. Or indeed a bed-bug-icide.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 24 2015
  

       The problem is that bedbugs have become resistant to several of the major pesticides used against them.   

       The fact that heat kills them does present some interesting possibilities. For instance, right now in the northeast US there is almost no market or even charity donation outlet for second hand mattresses, and an extremely limited one for upholstered furniture, specifically because of bedbugs. On the other hand, it would be relatively easy to take a cargo container, paint it black, maybe scatter a few mirrors around, and get it up well above ~130F, probably even during the winter on sunny days (you might have to insulate the sides not in direct sun). Simply place the stuff in there in the morning and pull it out at night, certified bedbug free.
MechE, Jan 24 2015
  

       What's a mite? In the idea he wants to kill them both, I think.
blissmiss, Jan 24 2015
  

       Mites are teeny tiny things. The ones that live in matresses eat skin flakes, and generally don't do much harm unless you're allergic to them.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 24 2015
  

       I've had a few boyfriends that acted like that too!
blissmiss, Jan 24 2015
  

       A quick google finds that bedbugs do not glow under UV. I had thought I read that blood glows and so one might visualize sated bedbugs headed home but one must add a second compound to the blood to make it glow, and ingested blood being within the bedbug this compound sprayed about would not contact it.   

       I am pretty sure persons with porphyria have glowing blood (probably under UV or blue) due to the elevated free porphyrins. If bedbugs fed on such a person they might also glow. That would take some setting up.
bungston, Jan 25 2015
  

       I'm pretty sure there are some fluorescent dyes which are very, very slightly non-toxic. It would be interesting to shoot up on them.
MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 25 2015
  

       As an alternative to heat, which may degrade the mattress:   

       Put mattress in plastic bag, seal, hook up to machine which flows gas through it - carbon monoxide or maybe nitrogen - on a controlled cycle. Once everything has suffocated, purge with air.
david_scothern, Jan 26 2015
  

       //Put mattress in plastic bag, seal, hook up to machine which flows gas through it - carbon monoxide or maybe nitrogen - on a controlled cycle. Once everything has suffocated, purge with air.//   

       You're looking at months to a year or more. Eggs don't suffocate, and they can hang around quite a while until the conditions are right.   

       That and 110 or 120F, dry heat, isn't going to significantly degrade anything over a few hours. It's not even hot enough to scald you.
MechE, Jan 26 2015
  

       Dubious utility: suggest revising title to "Might-killing bed".
the porpoise, Jan 27 2015
  

       Put a plastic cover over the piece(s) of furniture and pipe in H2 underneath (from a simple plug-in electrolyser). The Hydrogen fills the cover from below, displacing the air. After it's full, keep it flowing on Low, enough to account for diffusion through the cover and random air currents.   

       Pretty sure that'd kill anything, including eggs, that steeped in it for a couple days:   

       "bug bomb".
FlyingToaster, Jan 27 2015
  

       How would h2 kill eggs?
Voice, Oct 25 2023
  

       //How would h2 kill eggs?//   

       Not efficiently, and given that H2 will explode at almost any concentration with even the tiniest of static electricity discharges, probably not worth messing with in this context.
bs0u0155, Oct 25 2023
  

       // /How would h2 kill eggs? //   

       /// H2 will explode //   

       Asked and answered. Moving on.
a1, Oct 25 2023
  

       That's known as "extermination with extreme prejudice."
Loris, Oct 25 2023
  
      
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