Bed bugs cause a lot of pain. They can appear in any apartment or house, and contrary to popular belief, lifestyle and social status do not in any way affect the possibility of bedbugs infesting a room. House bugs feed on human blood. They are nocturnal and hide during the day. The habitat can be all sorts of cracks and crevices in walls, floors, ceilings, and furniture. The best shelter is a sofa or bed. A person's sleeping place is the bedbug's eating place. He doesn't have to walk long to drink blood. And after satiation, you can quickly hide in the thickness of the sofa or mattress.
If there are bedbugs in the sofa, it will be difficult to get them out. Most likely, not only upholstered furniture is affected by insects, so after treatment they will appear again. Bedbug eggs are more resistant to external influences, so they can wait out unfavorable conditions, after which the larvae emerge, and the torment of the owners continues. The eggs may not be in the sofa, so treating just one piece of furniture will not lead to the desired result. How to get bedbugs out of a sofa? The fight must be waged on all fronts. Many people think that it is impossible to get rid of bedbugs in a sofa, and the furniture will only have to be thrown away. However, you can try to remove the parasites yourself.
Bedbug detection
The owners do not immediately find out that there are bedbugs in the house. At first, the colony may be small, and bedbug bites may be sporadic. An adult can come out to feed once every 4–7 days. In one bite, she drinks up to 7 ml of blood. Many people confuse bedbug bites with mosquito bites. But unlike the attacks of other insects, bedbugs can leave a trail of several punctures in the skin along the blood vessel. So, several red blisters with severe itching are the first sign of the presence of bedbugs. After this, it is necessary to immediately inspect the room to discover their habitats and egg laying.
Signs that your sofa has bedbugs:
- black dots on the sleeping area are insect excrement;
- crushed bedbugs - after being saturated with blood, they increase in size, the chitinous shell becomes too vulnerable and breaks at the slightest pressure, so a person can easily crush them simply by turning over in their sleep;
- characteristic smell - bedbugs have glands from which in case of danger they squirt a secret, the unpleasant smell of which is designed to scare away enemies.
If these signs are found, then you need to find other places where insects are concentrated. These can be baseboards, back walls of cabinet furniture, paintings, lampshades, pet beds.
When the enemy is discovered, it is necessary to begin the fight against bedbugs.
Bed bugs in the sofa: causes
Domestic bloodsuckers most often take a liking to the bed. It is from there that it is easier for them to attack a sleeping victim at night.
How do they get into furniture? The main reasons have nothing to do with the sanitary condition of the home. The main target is a person, because it is his blood that uninvited guests prefer to feast on.
Where do they come from:
- Along with used room furnishings, you can buy unwanted pets into the bargain. If an old sofa was previously transported in the car, some pests could survive and move to the new one.
- When night hunters experience a shortage of food, they go in search of new victims. They make their way through ventilation shafts, cracks in ceilings and walls, window and door openings. Their appearance is a serious cause for concern: as soon as the owners leave for a week or two, the arthropods will not hesitate to move to their neighbors.
- Bloodsuckers can enter with travel bags and brought clothes. You should inspect your luggage with special care if you had to spend the night in a house with old furniture and worn mattresses.
Once settled, the parasite begins to search for a nesting site. And it is found, as a rule, where a person sleeps.
Attention! Bloodsuckers multiply at a monstrous rate. A couple of months are enough for 2-3 individuals to turn into a whole population. You should not postpone baiting or try to exterminate insects yourself. As soon as signs of bedbugs appear in the sofa, contact a pest control service, and soon there will be no trace of them left.
Temperature method
The most effective option, since bedbugs cannot tolerate sudden changes in living conditions. And if bedbugs become immune to insecticides and other chemicals, they are powerless against freezing. It is most effective to lower the temperature in the room where the bedbug-infested sofa is located, to at least -10. In private homes, you can turn off the heating in winter and open the doors and windows wide for several hours or days. This is exactly how they fought bedbugs in the villages. However, in the modern world it is very difficult to arrange such a freeze. You can, of course, take the sofa outside, but bedbugs, their larvae and eggs will still remain in the apartment. In addition, after significant temperature changes, upholstered furniture can deteriorate. It must be dried well to prevent mold from forming. In short, this method is effective, but difficult to implement.
A comfortable temperature for bedbugs is 25 – 30 degrees. So you can use the temperature method to remove bedbugs, but do it at high temperatures. In hot summers, when the air temperature exceeds 30 degrees, you can take the sofa out into the sun. However, it is worth remembering that the temperature inside the sofa will be lower, which means there is a high probability that it will not be possible to completely “fry” the bedbugs.
Another way to get rid of bedbugs using high temperature is to treat the sofa with a steam generator. The steam will definitely kill all the bedbugs, but it is necessary to treat the furniture in all hard-to-reach places.
Mechanical method
Bedbugs can be collected. They don't move very fast, especially when they drink blood. In addition, they are clearly visible on light-colored upholstery. Of course, this is an unpleasant, ineffective method, but it can be used. You can collect them manually, but it is better to use a vacuum cleaner. If the vacuum cleaner has good power, then it can get bedbugs from under the upholstery. You can also use fly tape to catch some of the bugs as they move. Bedbugs collected by hand or with a vacuum cleaner do not die, so it is necessary to use insecticides against them or send them to the sewer.
Folk remedies
At home, you can remove bedbugs from your sofa using proven folk methods. Firstly, it is treating the sofa with strong-smelling substances, for example, turpentine or a concentrated solution of vinegar. These products do not kill bedbugs, but repel them. However, after such treatment it will be problematic to use upholstered furniture, since the smell will persist for a long time.
Another folk remedy for repelling bedbugs is essential oils with pungent odors. This could be lavender, peppermint, tea tree, clove. The furniture and floors next to it are washed with water and oils dissolved in it. You can also treat bed linen with essential oils. If a person tolerates such odors normally, then the oils really protect against the approach of bedbugs. But they don't destroy them.
Diatomite
Mineral based powder. This is a natural remedy that is not dangerous to humans and pets, but is harmful to bedbugs. Diatomite (also called kieselguhr) is applied to the elements of the sofa with a syringe and left for several days. After this, the powder is collected with a damp cloth. The only problem is that the powder affects parasites through direct contact, so there may be individuals left in the sofa that are not affected by this product. That is, the colony will reproduce again.
