085:Bed Bug Heat Treatments Explained : The Full Process | Brad Harvey

0:00 hello and welcome to pest perspectives episode number 85 and apparently i've been recording for one minute 20 so if you want i will have to edit a bit of that i will um this week we have on brad harvey from trio pest control and also you may recognize him from tales held from the crawlspace 2.0 as well he has featured on this podcast a long time ago and the beauties and beasties as well but first up is our sponsor powered now if you'd like to check them out it's basically a job management software so you can do what your pest reports send your customers updates on when you come in and you can pay the bills on it too so yeah there'll be a link in the description so If you want to check them out, they are a great sponsor of ours.

0:55 They help pay for this software, the website and much more. So please check them out. And there is a new sponsor coming soon. I can't say when, but they're coming soon. And Brad knows, but he's not saying. So welcome, Brad. How are you doing? I'm doing great, Shani. Thanks for having me on. No, no, thanks for agreeing to come on. It's been a while. It has. It has. it has I think I was back it was glitch I'm sure it was the early days of the show it was when your podcast was in its infancy yes I think I was using Riverside at the time I didn't get on with it at all because they didn't you know the blurring on the back they had a lot of issues with it but I think now it's Riverside fine apparently it is it's um it's much better well well well sean um i'm glad to be here and i'm glad to see that um you've you've you're up to how many episodes 80 something 85 but apparently apparently according to the feed because i've also made podcasts where i've literally stuck clips out you know good clips apparently i've got 110 episodes apparently well that that that that shows that shows a good product So, you know, cheers to you and cheers to you and so many and many, many more.

2:22 Yeah. Thank you. So thanks for coming on. So for anyone who hasn't come across you before, tell us a bit about yourself and how you first got into pest control. OK, my journey into pest control was out of necessity. I was working a minimum wage job at a at a dental laboratory. I had a child that was in serious need of diapers and food. That's the thing with kids. If it's not food with them, it's water. So you got to do what's necessary. My wife was also working as well. But still, even with her income and my income together, we couldn't make ends meet.

3:09 And then all of a sudden, she was talking to me. She goes, she goes, uh, J.R. who was, um, her brother-in-law at the time. Um, his brother is the service manager at, um, Terminix and, um, would, would, you know, they're, they're needing people. So why don't you give them a call? So I did my, my experience with insects, um, up until then was when I was a child, uh, we would catch, um, insects and put them into an aquarium with each other and have a duel to the death. We would bet candy and stuff like that.

3:46 Whichever one, whoever bugged Reign Supreme would get to take. Also working in restaurants. I was a cook for 10 years in various different restaurants. I saw all kinds of different bugs there. Ants, roaches, gnats, things like that. Flies and whatnot. As a cook, they tend to annoy you on the line. But so, you know, I thought, you know, I wasn't thinking too much about it. And then so I did it. I interviewed. I went through the screening and everything. I ended up getting the job. And then once I got in that, I fell in love with it and then just basically progressed through it.

4:27 And that was 35 years ago, 34 years ago. and uh so yeah i've been i've been in it for a smoldering minute and um just fell in love with it from from the get-go that's nice because i imagine though you've seen um i'll bring this one up you over well where we go i got that wrong but so it's 34 years that's okay you said more than 30 years so you're still correct there you go so obviously i'm going to change this because not just obviously we're going to talk about heat treatments, but how much is bed bug control, but also pest control in general change?

5:08 Because I imagine you've seen it really change. It used to be all about the strongest gases and chemicals known to man. I'll answer the first sub-question or the last sub-question first. As far as the way pest control has changed, I would say, yeah, I mean, chemicals come and go. um you know the you know the government's going to get involved they're going to they're going to let you do this and then also not let you do this they're going to let you do this and then they're going to say okay you can still do this but you can only do this in this little box right here um you know and uh so but i would say that the thing that the thing that it's really changed most in the pest control industry and not only the pest control industry but the world is this right here.

5:56 This right here has been an absolute game changer. Back when I started, they would give me a handful of quarters and say, find the nearest payphone and check in every two hours. I couldn't close the glove box in my vehicle for all the maps I had in there.

6:20 Basically, you were the road warrior. You were on your own out there. you know, you know, unless you had a customer who had the kindness in their heart to let them use your phone, let or let that you use their phone. And, you know, and if it was long distance, forget about it, you know. And so I would say I would say the phone changed everything. The mobile phone changed everything, especially now with the smartphones. I mean, you know, we had paper tickets. We had we had, you know, paper invoicing.

6:53 We had, you know, we had to deal with maps. We had to call in every two hours on a pay phone or a merciful customer's phone. Yeah. That, that has been the biggest change in, in everything. Now we can do pretty much everything on it. We can do everything, but, but kill the bugs on this damn phone. You know what? I think you're right there. Cause I never, until you put it like that, because I'm useless when it comes to directions, I need the phone. So I would have really, you know, cause I was, cause the other day, I was in a charity shop and I showed my son that.

7:26 I mean, he's like, what's that, daddy? I says, people, believe it or not, used to have to read these maps to find out where they were going. And he was like, really? And apparently, apparently his mate said, he said that next year at school, they'll show you about maps. But apparently he couldn't believe it. Oh, yeah, it's incredible. You should, oh, yeah, I mean, I'm, you know, this is the baby boomer coming out right now. But you should you should there's two things you need to learn in life. One is how to balance a checkbook and the other is how to read a map, you know, because one of these days the battery is going to die on this.

8:04 There's going to be, you know, you know, the Internet's going to have an outage or whatever. And you need to you need to be able to rely on your abilities to actually read something off a piece of paper in order to get the job done. I do not have a map. Yeah, you do not have a map. I don't have a map either, brother. But damn it, if my phone goes out, I'm going to fucking find one. But I don't even know. Do shops still sell maps? Is it a thing? You know, I have seen maps in gas stations and whatnot throughout my journeys.

8:38 But they are few and far between. But that said, another thing I would do is if you're on a route situation you're visiting the same customers every month in commercial, every quarter in residential, you kind of learn the roads and you just kind of figure out your way. And you don't even have to look at your, at your, at your, at your stuff. That's true. The only time I look at it on a lot of the regulars that I do is when I want to know, okay, well, how long is it going to take me to get there this time?

9:11 Because traffic, traffic situations change and whatnot. And this thing will actually calculate for shit traffic and all that. So that's really the only time I use it on my regulars. Anything new, yeah, I'm popping on that. I'm all over it. Yeah, but it's always a bugger when sometimes it hasn't been updated and there's a road closure. I've had it before, and you ask the guys there, not got a bloody clue how to get around that. Right, exactly. They're put there for that reason. Absolutely. Absolutely.

9:43 But to answer the first part of that sub-question, how much has bed bug control changed since I first started? I'll just say this. When I first started, bed bug biology control and all that other stuff was in none of the training manuals. And the reason being is because the United States didn't have a bed bug issue. you know it started you know that all started that all came about after I was I was in the industry you know got in the industry actually it was it was quite a few years after I got in the industry you know a lot of people went around thinking bedbugs were just a myth or you know the old saying good night sleep tight don't let the bedbugs bite us it's like okay whatever you But no, when we found out bedbugs were actually a thing, and I'm not going to profess on how they actually got over here.

10:44 There's so many different theories on that. Yeah, it's trouble. It's trouble, isn't it? Yeah, the world got smaller. The Berlin Wall came down. The Gulf War. I mean, these are all theories about how they came about. all I know is we didn't have a damn thing to kill them with. So we, you know, we didn't, we didn't, you know, we didn't have industry experts that knew exactly what to do to deal with it. We didn't have the products that were labeled for them. We didn't have, we didn't have jack shit over here.

11:17 We were caught with our pants down. So, but, but, but, you know, you know, to, to everyone's credit, we mobilized, you know, the industry mobilized, we, we figured out a way. so the best way to get rid of them was chemicals so yeah chemicals yeah we'll spray this and then they'll kill every damn one of them and and so then so then that worked that worked for a while then we found out that you know these things can adapt pretty easily um so yeah you know recently one thing i found out recently uh dr richard naylor on and he's like the bloody he's guru in is like in bed books sure phd in bed books yes and he said that as well um you know the actual beds how they're made you know the wood in them they're already treated with pirate pyreferens already pre-treated so that's also helping with the resistance issues exactly he said they all make the beds the same way all of them do so that's not helping either right yeah that makes that makes perfect sense so they build up this resistance so so then we're going to go you know okay so chemicals aren't working let's come up with another chemical now they did that in a few cycles and it's like oh wait a minute steam will kill these things and then ice will kill these things i when i was working at um oh when i oh when i was dry ice when i was working at um terminex the um you know a method that they they they tried to do is um this it was

12:52 this gun right it looked like it looked like something out of a you know out of a sci-fi movie um that was hooked up to a a co2 tank that shot carbon dioxide into this it froze and came out as snow basically so we were like freezing it was called rapid freeze and we were getting in there and we were going through all the little cracks and get toughs and stuff like that. And it was supposed to cause rapid cellular disruption, so they couldn't adapt to the cold. Most insects, if they're gradually cooled down, their bodies will adapt to it.

13:31 They will produce something like a glycol that will help keep them. Anybody that stuck a bug in the freezer to try to kill it and pulled it out will know what I'm talking about Because, you know, about an hour later, they're like, they start kicking around a little bit. And the next thing you know, they're back in action. This disrupts that, freezes them instantly, and they die. A great theory. But one of the issues with that is you can't get everywhere they can be with something like that. And so, you know, that came and went.

14:08 And then it's like, okay, well, let's do steam. So steam came around and we were steaming everything. And steam is a very popular treatment technique to this day. But again, you can't get everywhere with this.

14:25 Try as you may, you are going to probably miss an area where you have some eggs that are waiting to hatch. Or you have a nymph that is just hiding in a screw hole somewhere. um just just you're gonna pass it by concentrating on on all the black fecal spots and stuff and you know where you actually see lives and stuff you can't treat you know you I mean you can if you have like five or six days to spend at this account to treat every single you know nook cranny you know area where they can be okay so um so steam is a great a great product you know it's It's a great technique to use, but you got to know you're going to miss a spot.

15:06 Okay. Yeah. And then they come to the subject of tonight's, today's episode. Yeah. Dry heat. Okay. Dry heat. You bring heaters in to the house itself, be it electric or propane, and then you bring the temperature up in the entire structure or room area to a certain level and leave it there for X amount of time, it will kill everything in there. It's going to kill the adults. It's going to kill the nymph. It's going to poach those eggs. And it's going to take care of pretty much everything. It's going to take care of all those areas.

15:47 If you do it right, it's going to take care of all those areas where bed bugs could be hiding, breeding, et cetera. And, yeah, it's an amazing thing. So how long does it take for the heaters to warm up to the correct temperature? And what would the correct temperature be usually? Okay. Okay. There's a damaging, a lethal, and a timetable to this. typically at 100 degrees, which is 37 Celsius. I'm going to round up on these Celsiuses because there's like 3, 6, 4, 6, 6, 5, 6, 7, 8. So we're going to round up on these, okay?

16:31 So 37 Celsius is going to cause damage. But we're not here to damage it. We're not here to hurt their feelings. We're here to kill them. So it starts – I'll just say it starts affecting them. Okay? At 113 degrees or 45 Celsius, it's going to take 90 minutes to kill them. Okay. When you get to 118 at 48 Celsius, it's going to take 20 minutes. But when you get up to 140 degrees or 60 Celsius all stages of life on bed bugs including the eggs will die immediately And so that the butter zone right there And you know in order to get a house up to that is, is, is crucial because not only do you have to, you're going to get, I mean, you're going to be spending several hours of a day doing this, doing this heat treatment on, you know, on, on a, on a particular treatment, but you want you want to get up to that butter zone not only does it kill them immediately but it's also going to help you know because yeah it'll kill the ones that are actually exposed to the 140 degrees but what do you do what do you do about the ones that are in the tufts or in the cushions or you know under you know under the under the arm war or anything like that you know you so 140 degrees is not only going to give you that immediate kill of the ones that are close But it's also going to help absorb, that heat is going to absorb into these, you know, articles of furniture inside the walls to a degree and things like that and do the job, you know, of killing them.

18:05 Yeah. Nice. Eggs, let's talk about eggs for just a second. At 125 degrees at 52 Celsius, it's going to take 90 minutes to kill an egg, to kill the bed on eggs. but we go at at at 140 degrees you know it it it fries them really nice fries them fries them over easy sunny side up no it will so when you do heat treatments um you do obviously do you just do one room or do you do the room next to it or it's obviously how it works in uk i'll just use an example here sure if you were to do an insecticide treatment all right you have to have proof that you've got bed bugs in that room so you're only supposed to do that room so with heat treatment obviously it's non-toxic do you just do the one room or where the customer wants to pay for it to be done okay typically with a heat treatment um we we i would you know i will go ahead and preface this we will do a limited chemical treatment with a heat resistant product um now that is areas where you know like like the bedroom um you know you know the base boards where the um where the baseboard actually meets the flooring we will treat around there because yes i have seen them dive into those areas um and um and also use a dry a dry residual product you know like a dust or whatnot in the um electrical outlet boxes and things like that oh i'm interested about that so yeah yeah we we would definitely we treat those um and then you know you

19:52 know in in ground zero we would treat pretty much everywhere the um you know where bed bugs could be and whatnot now that said as far as treating just an area we do that but i don't like doing that the reason being is because about 85 to 90 percent of the um the ones that we you know the the the um the inspections that we go to they they knew they had a problem and they tried to take action on that problem before they called us yeah and so basically you get it you get it okay they're taking these mattresses they're dragging them out of the room what are they doing if they're upstairs they're going bump bump bump bump with that mattress and they're knocking bed bugs everywhere, right?

20:37 And they're buying bombs. They're buying all crap over the counter. Oh, God, yes. You know, the dressers. Boom, boom, boom. Okay, all this laundry's got to go out of this bedroom. We're going to pack it all up, carry it on our arms, carry it down the stairs, and boom, boom, boom, boom. They're spreading bedbugs all over the house when they do that. That is true. I know that is true. Yeah, I always want to treat the entire house, entire apartment, what have you because you don't know where they're going to be and um so so and and and you know if i do a if i do just like a room or whatnot i'm not going to i'm not going to warranty that work um it's like you know this is what you get there's no warranty if we have to come back because you found them in another area we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna give you a proposal for the entire house okay because and that's the only way we can warranty it sean you know because because of um you know because of all those little extenuous circumstances that go on you know before somebody gets on the phone and calls a pest control company no you are right because of an audit i'll be honest recently the most popular podcast i've had is around bed bugs and it's particularly around us so i don't know if you have it in america but there's been a product that we're all checking out it's called chin chicks chin chicks okay yeah and it's a silica dioxide dust a desiccant dust okay and a lot of people including myself i don't do as many bugs but a lot of people are having very good success rates because it's a physical mode of action

22:24 there can't be a resistance to it sure they can't and it's been very popular i don't think it's available there is a different one in america but it's not the same same exa that's it well this one's got four different versions of silica in it it's four different versions sure it is deemed non-toxic that is doesn't need approval um you said you don't you said you don't have a whole lot of um you don't do a whole lot of bed bug business i wish i i wish i did mate i wish i had it's on the site and i wish i got more work for it but the problem is i could if i went into the cities near me however i don't want to compete with their prices so gotcha well from a pragmatic standpoint, it is, you know, it is good money, but, um, you know, I've, I, I have to, um, you know, I have to have a little empathy for these people that have them, um, because there's, there's such a stigma with it here.

23:26 I don't know how it is over there, but, you know, here in the States, there's such a stigma with it. They, you know, you know, people think that they're, they're, they're, you know, I have them because I'm dirty or I have them because I'm, you know, I have them because I'm not a good housekeeper. But that's not the case. I have been to multimillion-dollar homes that had bedbugs in them. And that makes more sense because these are the people that are going to be doing the most traveling, the one with the most disposable income.

23:57 They take these trips. They take these cruises and whatnot, all the way down to the lower-class folks that maybe picked them up from a hospital or public transportation or from a consignment shop or even from just buying a new mattress. For fuck's sake, here in the States, when you buy a mattress, you have it delivered. When it's delivered, it is delivered in the same trucks that the old mattresses from other accounts are hauled away in. and so we have had so many people who have bought new mattresses that picked up bed bugs from from when they went to um you know when they went to a store and bought it oh yeah we'll deliver it not only we'll deliver it mrs smith we will haul your old one away and that's where a lot of people no you're right there we're thinking of it you are and don't get me started don't get me started on the people that throw their bed their their bed bug infested mattresses out on the curb and to put a sign on it that says free oh yeah you're right you are it's hard though because obviously there is like delusional parasitosis isn't there there is it's quite bad i've seen it really a couple of times and we we done an inspection a few years ago we done an inspection and we said to her, I can't find anything.

25:29 And then she said to us, you can see them crawling all over my face, can't you? I went, no. Then she rang us calling us charlatans, but we only charged her for an inspection. Her daughter rang and apologised. She says, well, if we were charlatans, we could have just charged you to fall them out and did it. But we won't do that. because it doesn't help. But sadly, there are firms out there that will take the money and just spray water. I've heard of this. I have. I've heard of it in a lot of places.

26:09 But there's also that thing, though, as well, where you can get it sometimes where it's like phantom bites. It's static. It's static. It's static. You can get that a lot, and that can be it sometimes as well. I did a large office building. It was in a high rise in downtown Indianapolis that complained of that. And that was back. But this was back when we had the big computer towers and stuff. And they were all tucked under their desk. The tower was. The keyboard screen was here because we had the big monitors that took up half the desk.

26:48 And, and, but, you know, the static, the static electricity that was coming from the, from the computer towers was affecting, affecting their legs. And, you know, not only did I see a lot of attractive legs during my investigation, but, you know, we didn't find anything. We set monitors under every single desk on an entire floor of this building and didn't come up with a single thing except maybe a couple of pieces of lint, a crumb from a cheese nip or something like that. But other than that, to veer off into another direction, inspection is so important.

27:31 I will never sell a bed bug treatment to anyone where I don't actually find either bed bugs or evidence of bed bugs, be it fecal marks, cast exoskeletons, things like that. Good. So do you pull the beds apart? I don't mean take them apart. Oh, mattress, box springs. Yeah, they all go up, and it's like – I'll be like – and I'll go to a place. It's like it'll be the last stop of the day. I've run several of these, and it's like I'm going – it's always a king-sized bed. Why does it have to be a king-sized bed all the time?

28:06 And I'm just like, I'm struggling. I got this 85-year-old prospect over here going, you need some help with that, son? And I was like, no, ma'am. I was like, I got it. Do you want to laugh? King-sized, I think. I've got a queen-sized bed. I've got a queen-sized bed. But yeah, it's always king-sized when you do inspections. Oh, absolutely. And especially in hotels, it's the double king. It's like, oh, yeah. Louise. but but um you know you just you just you just put your head down and bulldog through it uh but um no and uh yeah it's a inspection is really important never sell a bed bug job on somebody if you don't find actual bed bugs or evidence of them because that's just not right folks it's not right but if you use insecticide it's against the label So, technically heat treatment, it's not right, is it?

28:59 It's not right to tell someone. No. I will say this. There is another insect that does respond well to a heat treatment is fleas. Okay. Yeah. Fleas. Yeah. It works well on fleas and bed bugs. You know, if you've got something like ants or spiders or something, don't worry about it. but bed bugs bed bugs and fleas um do you sell the do you do the same process for fleas too or no oh sure yeah yeah you you have to because the two most important things in um a bed bug treatment is um temperature and airflow um so you know the customer's got to be ready for this um so so you know at trio pest control where i work the mighty trio uh you know we we always we always leave them with instructions and a bed bug prep list.

29:53 Now, you folks aren't going to be able to read this, but look at all that stuff there, okay? But wait, there's more. There's stuff on the back too. Yeah, I mean, basically what it boils down to as far as getting things ready, anything that can melt or explode has to be taken out of the house. You know, here in the States, We have homes with attached garages, covered porches. People have gazebos, things like that. These are places that you can haul that stuff out to. And, you know, these are things like, you know, wax candles, bar soaks, lotions, medications, drugs or guns and ammo.

30:35 You know, things like that. House plants, pets. Please get your pets out of there. um and please get them out before we arrive because we've chased more cats around people's houses than you want to know and i've got a lot of people i got the scars on my arm to prove it so a lot of people listen to you so what happens if you give them the prep etc and you turn up and they ain't done nothing what do you do one of the things that one of the things that sets trio pest control apart from the other companies is that we do a we do a pre-inspection one day before the treatment is scheduled.

31:10 So I will go in there and I'll just make sure that everything is ready for the treatment. If there's a couple of things that need to be done, you know, tweaking and whatnot, if the people are elderly and firm and whatnot, and they can't move a bookcase away from the wall, I'm there. I'm going to help them with that. And, you know, make sure all the switch plates, electrical outlet plates are removed from the wall so we can treat in those during the process. We'll take care of all of that. If it's ready, excellent.

31:46 We'll see you tomorrow. If it's not, then I'm going to say if it's not, but if it's just a couple of things, let's say, okay, you got 24 hours to deal with this. And 100% of the time, they take care of it. um but you know if they don't you know we are gonna you know we're gonna have to charge a rescheduling fee and blah blah blah and i tell them that boy that shit gets done man but um but so yeah that you know we we do that to make sure because we want to do as effective a treatment as possible because our reputation is on the line there and not only that we don't like doing reservices you know reservices don't pay so what you're saying is you can clear a bed bug infestation with heat treatment within one visit yes sir we can no nice yes sir yes nice um you know with a combination of the of the heat treatment plus the limited um residual treatment that we do in the course of that um is you know we we can we can we can take care of it it's one and done um yeah we're and we're so confident in that so we stand behind it for 90 days so if you so if you you know if you if you have um if you see a bed bug if you think you might have seen a bed if you hear rumors of bed bugs in your home you get on the phone to us and we're going to be out there to take care of it if we see what's going on is is a bed bug issue we're going to make it right okay so somebody say somebody wanted to like offer heat treatments

33:19 i know for a fact that it's very expensive to buy this equipment it is absolutely expensive to buy this equipment because i know a lot of firms just subcontract over pest control companies do the heat treatments exactly there's there's two ways of doing this um you know yeah i mean you could you know first off you're gonna have to buy the equipment i mean it's just it's just a but you know if if if if you're if you've got the reputation for doing a good job and everything that equipment is going to pay for itself in no time um um you know if you take a look at um there's two different types of two there's propane gas and there is electric you want me to show these pictures you can show those please do please do i show that okay this is this is the propane This is the propane heater heater um this particular one is a green tech titan um that is the 450 i believe which has 550 bt 550 000 btus of heat that is generated they do have a bigger one that puts out a million um we have we have two we have two of these units we have that one and we also have the big dog um and um basically if if you've ever seen a shop heater, they call it a salamander, where you use it to warm up your garage and whatnot.

34:36 This is one of those on steroids. It works under the same principle. Now, I do take issue with the small propane tank that they have on that. In order to do an effective treatment, which is getting that house up to temperature as quickly as possible and maintaining that temperature for a specific period of time, you're going to need more than that little 20-pound tank. You're going to need two 100 pound tanks on that um and um you know in order especially especially um you know in different different seasons um you know in the winter time it's much more difficult to um to operate one of these you got to worry about the propane you know liquefying and freezing up in the tank so you're over there you're shaking the tanks and stuff trying to get the stuff going um And we don't have pictures of this, but this thing stays outside of the home, and the heat is introduced to the use of flexible Mylar ducting.

35:34 Anyone that has a clothes dryer in their house, the little hose that goes into the wall, this is one of those, but it's like massive. It's as big around as the outside of that. Those two red things right there, the Mylar clips onto that. you you have a temperature probe uh thermometer that goes into that right at the mouth of the the beast there and um so you can you can monitor your temperatures you're going to have a lot of sorry carry on carry on sorry um you're going to have a lot of heat loss between the heater and the house um going through that mylar so um typically again you want that house at 140 So you would have to have this initially at about 230, 235, or whatnot, because it loses a lot of heat going in there.

36:27 And that temperature probe right there, that thermometer lets you know what's going on right out of that. And inside that gray box on top there is a lot of funky electronic stuff that sometimes needs troubleshooting, sometimes not. But this is actually a very reliable machine. Just make sure you're using the right kind of gas. We had one that these run on propane. Our gas company delivered us four tanks of propylene one time and really screwed these things up. They got sooty and stuff and we couldn't get them started.

37:00 But we cleaned them out and got it fixed. No problem. But that's the propane one. This is the go-to if you're going to do effective heat treatments because that's going to get you up to temp fast. It's going to be able to effectively maintain the temperature in the house at the butter zone, which is 140 degrees or 60 degrees Celsius. And keep it there for the specific amount of time. The other one is electric. John, you got that one? I just want to ask you a question. Yes. How do you carry this around?

37:39 What vehicle? Okay. It's a big unit. I always tell the customers that, you know, we're going to come up to your home in an unmarked truck. Then I backtrack and I say, well, it is going to be marked. It's going to say U-Haul. U-Haul, okay. U-Haul, yes. It's our rental trucks down here. um so so you know we always we always rent a vehicle for this only because you know right now we're not you know we're not in the position to actually have a dedicated truck for this equipment um and um so we will we will rent them um if you're doing this you don't want to have your logo all over the truck you with with a with a big bed bug on it or whatever you know you want you you want you want to be as discreet as possible because neighbors are going to look out their windows and see what's going on.

38:29 You're going to have one or two of these things sitting outside somebody's house. You're going to have this big truck there. You're going to have guys sitting around smoking cigarettes and waiting to go in every 15 minutes to take temperature readings. They're going to want to know what's going on. So be as discreet as possible. But this one right here is totally our go-to here at Trio Pest Control because it's reliable, it's effective, and it gets the job done. Nice. So I will flip over to the other one.

38:59 Okay. Okay. These are the electric units. Now, these are going to deliver a lethal temperature if you play your cards right. Okay. These things, take a look at the picture and see, you've got all of these extension cords here. Why do you have them? It's because you have to plug these into two separate circuits in order to run them. You're going to have to have one for the fan itself and one for the heating element. And then these things take a lot longer to bring a house up to temperature. And they're great for smaller spaces, like hotel rooms or studio apartments, flats, I guess you call them over there.

39:48 Some of the cities, they still call them studio apartments. I think there's more to charge the more money. There you go. But anywho, these things, these are good for smaller jobs. When you've got a 2,500 square foot house and more, we've done 4,500, 5,000 square foot house, done heat treatments on them. You're going to need something with a little more chutzpah than what we have here on the picture. You know, these things have their place. Now, before we veer off into something else, I do want to say with the propane unit, you do have fans that you place around the house to circulate that air.

40:39 They're strategically placed to create kind of like a vortex of heated air in order to get the temperature up and keep everything nice and evenly heated. So, you know, you don't need them with these because they have their own fans. But with the propane, you've got a dedicated circulation fan on these. So it'll get that heat from the mouth of the duct to where you need it to go. And another thing that you can do with both of these is a direct heat. You can take the Mylar and, okay, say you've got a bed or a sofa or something.

41:18 You know that it's just totally loaded with bed bugs, right? So during the course of that treatment, you can take and adjust that mylar ducting to point directly at that to bring it up to a really good lethal temperature quickly in order to wipe those out while the fans are taking care of the rest of the house and keeping everything at the prescribed temperature. These things do a dual thing, but again, one of the things we run into a lot is we trip a lot of breakers, blow a lot of fuses with these things.

41:51 You know, the party line is, you know, one of these things takes less energy than a microwave oven to operate. But when you've got 12 microwave ovens going in one house, that's an issue. So you kind of got to, you know, make sure that your circuits are right. One of the things you ask the client when you come in is where's your breaker box? because if you're going to trip a breaker or blow a fuse, you need to know so you can scramble down there right now and get that reset, move your plugs around, and stuff like that.

42:28 Okay.

42:31 There's two different schools of this, and both of them have their place. and I wouldn't stick a million BTU propane bed bug heater into a hotel room, so to say. It would be interesting to see what happens, but that's not exactly how you want to go about it.

42:54 A lot of precautions need to be made when you're doing your pretreatment inspection. One of them is fire suppression devices, sprinklers, and so forth. if there are if those are those are evident if those are present in the area you need to take action we've got covers for those you know you know some of the larger electronics that people have in their homes such as you know large screen tvs computer towers printers stereos and things like that those can stay in the in the house when we do these we cover those with insulating blankets and you know an insulating blanket you know blankets that you can buy moving blankets are perfect for that you know they're you know they're not they're not expensive and you know they they insulate things really well to keep those you know electronic devices below a damaging temperature and other other things you have to be concerned about is things like vinyl flooring um okay you know vinyl flooring at about 120 fahrenheit um which is what 49 degrees celsius um is going to it can buckle warp and things like that when you're doing your temperature readings you want to you want to make sure that you're not stepping on those bubbles and stuff like that once that once it cools down it will shrink back and it will be fine um so you don't have to worry about it staying like that forever um you know just just be careful when you're doing your

44:31 temperature readings um and temperature readings should be done every 15 minutes or so just go in and go through every area of the house and you know take one of these this is one of those laser you know laser thingies that um you know it gives you a reading and um you know oh yeah exactly so So my room here at Cheesebag Studios is 20.8 degrees Celsius. So I may be turning a fan on here soon.

45:02 But anyway, these are great devices. I mean, you're not just going to point in the room and be done with it. You're going to point in that room. You're going to point at the bed. You're going to point up at the ceiling. You're going to point at the closet. Yeah, you know, things like that. So take several readings in each room so you know what the temperature is in those areas. Because if you've got, if you pointed at the wall and it says 145 degrees, and then you pointed at the bed and it says 118, you need to make some adjustments.

45:34 Because, of course, heat rises, you're going to get a higher reading on the ceiling. You will. Yeah. And you want to do that about every 15 minutes. Do you write these readings down? You just make sure that? We just keep them in our head. We don't keep a heating log. That would be a nightmare because if a customer asks for it, yeah. Yeah, they have. We don't keep them for eating. I'm sorry. We're killing your bedbugs. Are your bedbugs dead? Okay, we're good then. There's so many other moving parts to a bedbug heat treatment.

46:13 Adding another element to it is just a pain. see i'll be honest with you you've added so much more context because there's a lot more to think about than just just setting this machine up and just going to play on your phone for a bit exactly there's not because you're you're you're you're taking you're taking temperature readings in the in in the house you're you're taking temperature readings at the units at the heating units themselves and adjusting it there's a little little screw little knob there you have to go You pull it too hard, you're going to blow your flame out, and then you've got to restart it, and it's a pain.

46:47 But, you know, you have to adjust that, you know, to get it in, to keep everything in that sweet zone, you know, for as long as you can in order to kill those bugs in their house.

47:00 Sean, let's talk a minute about the actual technicians themselves as far as keeping them safe. I mean, because, you know, I mean, we're going to be in a hot environment. They're going to be lugging fans up and down stairs. They're going to be dealing with all of this. When you're loading up at the beginning of the day to head to the job, lift with your freaking legs and not your back. That's it. Yeah, these propane units weigh a ton. They're actually very easy to move around. But if you pick one up the wrong way, you're going to have a bad day.

47:41 So, you know, just be cautious. Mind your safety. Lift with your legs like you've always been told and stuff like that. Same with those propane tanks. Yeah, see, look at that. That is not actual size. Look at that. I mean, you know, but that's the size of a motorcycle. But, yeah, they are, you know, they're beasts, but they're good at their job. um so uh you know the tanks and everything the fans are not light either um so you know you just want to you just want to be careful when you're loading everything make sure everything is secured in your in in your truck so when you're driving to the site you're not hitting railroad tracks or taking curves and stuff and knocking everything around um you wouldn't want to knock that around that program you would not want to knock that around um yeah so i've um yeah i've i've i've I've worked on our units more than a few times and, um, you know, they, you know, they're not fragile, but doggone it.

48:41 You know, there's things that, there's things that you could do to, to avoid having to maintain them as often. Um, but you know, so that's, that's, that's the equipment. Let's talk about the technicians themselves. Um, you know, one, one of the most important things that you need in, in any, in any bed bug treatment is this.

49:01 This is a bottle of water folks. yeah this is a bottle yeah yeah you see how big it is yeah this is american size sean um but but yeah um yeah you want to you want to bring about eight or nine of these um and you want to make sure make sure that you stay hydrated because this work sucks the life out of you um so you know and you know just make sure you're hydrated um you don't have to worry about finding a bathroom or anything like that because you're going to sweat it out um you're going to need a towel surely Yeah, something to dab yourself off with when you get a little schvitzy.

49:38 But yeah, I mean, it's going to be hot work. And don't stay in that house longer than 15 minutes at a time because it will affect you. And if you're a glasses wearer like me, take them off if you can, unless you're blind without them, because these things heat up a lot quicker than your skin does. It hurts. I can imagine. Yeah, I have. I put them on before. I'd be like, ah! Does Jenny do these? Jenny do these? Does Jenny? Jenny who? Oh, that Jenny. Yes, Jenny does. Jenny and I have been on about two or three ourselves.

50:18 The area that Jenny works at, she usually does more conventional treatments just because we don't have the equipment in that area to take care of it. we had, we did just before I went on vacation last week, we, we did, we did go up to her, to her territory and take care of a heat treatment. It was the most, it was the most incredible heat treatment I ever had, you know, cause everything runs on electricity, right? The fans and everything, you know, Laura Ingalls Wilder had more outlets in her little house on the prairie than I had in this house that I had to do.

50:51 And cause, and, and trying to find, trying to find a plug or a receptacle to plug these things in was interesting at best. But, but I had, I had William the Merciful with me, the owner of Trio Pest Control. He and I got that job done We were able to get that house up to temp and and and get it done But I want to done He never going to hear this but I want to throw out a shout out to Richard Turner He our heat technician and the guy is a bloody wizard. He is just incredible. He has been able to take 100 pound propane tanks with only this much propane in them and four of them and actually treat a 4,000 square foot house and get it up to temp and maintain it.

51:42 Um, yeah, that, that's how important airflow is on. Um, yeah, it's, it, it was just incredible. So, um, you know, my hat's off to him. He taught me, he's taught me tons on, on this. And, uh, so, um, you know, every time I, every time I go out on a, on a, on a heat treatment that I do myself, um, I always, I, I'm always using what I taught from him so nice that's good that is that is so um that answers another question i was going to ask you maybe not um in your area do you do if the customer doesn't want to heat treatment will you do traditional traditional version like jenny what in her area we will do it um but what we but when we do these um the thing with the thing with the chemical treatments is we have to come up and do it again and again and again and by the time they have paid for the initial treatment and all the follow-ups they are equal or not greater than the price of a heat treatment okay so but with a heat treatment the way the way trio pest control does their heat treatments we are one and done and um yeah we we can get it all taken care of in one trip we only have to disrupt your life, you know, once and, and it's, it's all handled.

53:05 We're using less, we're using less chemicals in your home. I mean, we are using them, but we're using far less chemicals in your home. And, you know, you have, you, you, you have the satisfaction of knowing that those, those, you know, those bugs die that day. Yeah. Instead of waiting for them to crawl into a chemical barrier or a dust or whatnot. Yeah. There's been a lot of interesting things said on this podcast about recently, especially when Dr. Richard he didn't mention the product. He just said that he did a trial in his lab and he gave up after 12 days.

53:48 The chemical wasn't doing anything. It didn't do anything. It didn't kill any of them. After 12 days, he gave up. but he won't mention he trials products from all around the world that literally people, any chemical in your country, I guarantee he's tested. He gets stuff blown in for him. Honestly, he's like a guru. That's it. Yeah. One of the things that, one of the things that most of the bed bug customers over here lack is patience. You know, they, they, they, they, they want it right now. I mean, it's the American culture, instant gratification.

54:23 And treatment. There you go. Then, heat treatment delivers it there you go exactly yeah it's um i bet this one this one will be popular for some reason on this podcast whenever it's bed bugs it's just subject i just love it they do it the numbers do well they do well bed bugs bed bugs are um probably the one of more interesting i mean because you think about it i mean we've been killing we've been killing cockroaches for centuries. We've been killing others. And we had this gap where we didn't have to worry about bedbugs.

54:57 Now all of a sudden, boom, they're back. And everybody's scrambling. Everybody wants more information. Everybody wants the next best thing. And so right now, as it stands, bedbugs have not built up a resistance to heat. I don't believe they ever could. No, they couldn't. No. I mean, it is what it is. You know, it's like you walk out, oh, it's 140 degrees, squish. That's it, you know. Exactly. And, you know, and that's the thing. Now, will heat evolve in the future with different, you know, different equipment, different ways?

55:39 Absolutely. I expect that, you know. And, you know, maybe sometime in the range of my continuing in my career, it'll happen. But, you know, for right now, man, you know, heat's the bomb. And it's been very successful, you know, over at my beloved Trio Pest Control. And it delivers fast results. it is a tad pricey because you know you know we have to price these you know based on based on other economic numbers you know the price of fuel and stuff like that oh yeah but you know but but again if you put it if you put it in terms of how many how many follow-ups you have to do on a chemical treatment you know it basically evens out you know it may be a little more it may be a little less but still you know you're still looking at the same amount of money you're getting tons and tons you're getting much more chemicals dumped into your house during a during a um during a thing you don't have to have a um you know you don't have to have your house looking like a you know an operating room at a cardiac hospital in order for biological to work um you know you've got all this you've got all these other these elements that you know heat don't play no exactly I was just thinking in my head there where I heard you chatting on your podcast.

57:06 Who was it that went with you? And he said it was like the day he went to do a heat treatment. And he said it was like moving day. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They had somebody that took. There is a such thing as over prepping. Yeah. But these people, in all candor, these people did not over prep because they just had so much shit in the house. It's like, okay, now this, because they were, I mean, they were blowing me up that whole time. That's one of the drawbacks to, I mean, you can do a prep list.

57:45 You can do instructions. You can even do it three times on the agreement itself. but they are still going to have questions that are on this paper. They just either glanced over it and didn't, didn't see it, or it'd be, it'd be easier just to call Brad and find out, you know, I'm sitting at a restaurant eating a salad with my beloved bride. And all of a sudden, you know, my phone starts blowing up with these questions is like, I just took a picture of me with a piece of set with a fork in my mouth and said, I'm busy right now, but read your, read your prep sheet.

58:19 And, but, But yeah, these people, they were like, okay, I can take it from this room. Can I put it in the trailer? Yeah, we walk in. There's a U-Haul trailer there just like ours, and it was full of stuff. I mean, it's like shoes, games, things like that, things you're not normally going to find bed bugs in. But they had loaded it all up. But we ended up being able to do an effective treatment for them. This was a huge house. Again, they had a lot of stuff. and you know so that you know it was worth it i mean you know i go through a lot of hassle you know as as a as an account executive um you know having to answer these questions on on hours off hours late at night wake up first thing in the morning before i could take you know hit the loo and i'm yeah i'm bombarded it's worth it to know that these people are going to soon be bed bug free um because see that's that's the thing i hear from all the people that i've had on this podcast and i have a lot of people who just do bed bugs and that is their one thing that they love to know that they will solve the bed bug issue and that's their purpose yeah i i would say of all the of all the pests that i deal with in my career um nothing hits me nothing hits me harder than bed bugs um and not because they're a disease vector because they're not um but you know because you know it's because of the stigma it's because of the emotional um impact that it has on the clients um things like that you know you know you know a lot of people you know some people will say yeah you're not selling pest control you're selling peace of mind it's never been more it's never been more true than than than it is when you're dealing with a bed bug issue so i always

1:00:06 want to make sure that those things are handled 100 so i'm in a bed book group um the bed book queen who's been on here she's got big anyone can post on it and some of the people that comment are always anonymous but some of the stories that they they want to know where they clear they clear and a lot of them are but seven weeks later they're still wondering they've seen nothing they've been expected nothing but they've had no bites nothing but yeah it's quite and shout out to you if you're on this group watching this podcast i will post it on this group on that group because they yeah, anything bedbug related, they'll watch yeah, that's what I hear about a lot of people is the peace of mind, they're giving the people that have been living with it and they've solved it.

1:00:56 That's absolutely true Sean, think what if it was your house you know I know my wife would be like you haven't brought any home yeah yeah and i i would be too it's like i have this i have this procedure sean that i do whenever i do it a bed bug treatment or a bed bug inspection that i've seen you know like you know biblical proportions you know i live in a house with an attached garage i have a bathrobe hanging there i was you know and and if the bathrobe isn't there i always text my wife say i need the bathrobe in the garage i go in i drop the door i strip naked sometimes the door closes sometimes it doesn't give the neighbors a show um but you know and and then all that goes in all my clothing goes into a bag yeah i get in the robe the bag gets immediately dumped into the washing machine i immediately get dumped into the shower and so far i have had no bedbugs introductions into my house because that's good and it's it's it's it's you know it's it's it's a procedure but damn it it works um so you know you do you got you always got to be mindful of that because there's always going to be one there may be one that always hits your pant leg or or something like that so yeah you gotta watch that yeah no that's that's a good point that

1:02:17 is it's because um right that's a good procedure that is i thought for a second you're gonna say she dumps him in the bin i was like she dumps him in the bin no no we're not to that stage yet you know maybe if i brought bed bugs into my house one day they would go in the bin or they may be burnt in the backyard i don't know but but but until then this this is for you though this has worked out pretty well if you like if you like if it happens right let's get you all exactly i'm gonna heat my house hell yeah i'm gonna heat my house absolutely yeah no you've actually been quite uh detailed in what we in in what you're on about with uh bed bugs because bed bug heat treatments you've been through the whole process and yeah thanks for that no one's ever done the in-depth bit all like you've got to think about this you got to think about that you are right because you could damage property couldn't you no absolutely Yeah, absolutely.

1:03:20 And we have, you know, I get it. These things happen. But, you know, the trick is just to be as cautious as you can in order to keep it from happening. Most people, you know, if it's just a little thing, you know, like some vinyl blinds, you know, window blinds that might have been damaged or something. If they don't care, it's like, piss, just get rid of my bed bugs. And, but you still, you know, it still, it still, it still breaks your heart. Also, I, one more thing I wanted to add before, before we go, you know, if, if you go into a bed bug inspection and somebody has, you know, a completely infested thing, a piece of furniture and whatnot, and they're like, well, we want to get rid of this before you do the treatment.

1:04:08 Always tell them don't do that because you want, you want, you want to, you want to treat the furniture that's infested before they throw it away because that's just doing a favor for humanity you know because you don't want you don't want you know you throw it out on the curb and then the gypsies come and get it you know and then they got that bug so you don't want to do that to another human being that's not nice oh no it's not because uh the biggest conversation i hear with people is is you got to tell them even though you've got bed bugs you've got to sleep in that bed the minute you move it goes you know they'll follow you effectively won't they they will they will follow you but yeah there's been some great I'll be honest with you great in depth this is the most in depth I think we've actually had on heat treatment I've had heat treatments on before but not to this extent your knowledge is great I'm glad I can show you the dark underbelly of the heat treatment but anyway anybody that catches this podcast if um you know if you're in the central indiana area and you're having that issue reach out to trio pest control at trio pest control.com we'd be happy to talk to you shameless plug there sorry no i don't mind i don't mind if anyone ever sees it

1:05:32 um but yeah no thanks for coming on the podcast it's been great to have you on it's been a blast sean it's a pleasure to be here get you back on at some point for something else i'm sure but uh but yeah do you want to plug your podcast as well because you all should be watching well next time you want to drop your standards and want to be on pesc tales from the crawl space we'd be happy to have you i'm always open to coming on i am i've got that it's on the front yeah beat one or twelve or one in the morning i'm sat up down here now so i wouldn't disturb anyone see there you go right absolutely so um so yeah but but uh it's been it's been good but um i will stick a link your podcast in description and also trio pest controls as well okay i will well appreciate that so if you stay around for a minute but um thanks everyone for watching please drop a like please drop a follow drop a subscribe spotify review apple podcasts we're everywhere anywhere just exactly yeah so thanks everyone and we'll be back next week i'm pretty sure i've got on one of the guys from the best oh the best pest control podcast i'm trying to think.

1:07:02 Have you heard of that new podcast? The Best Pest Control Podcast? That's the best. No, they're actually called Best Pest. I spent almost a whole week with Jack and he never said anything about it. No, I'm just kidding. Best Pest Control Podcast. Hang on. I'm messing this up now. I must have a look. There we go. It's called The Best Pest Podcast. It's quite new. It is. Send me a link to that, please. I will. it's actually named that one of the guys from that is on next week looking forward to seeing it I'll send you a link to that one I will and also follow Pestigen Podcast Jenny and Candice that's a good podcast to have especially for the ladies that listen but I watch anyway they're not i've been on before for an hour you can identify as a woman yeah exactly but yeah so i'll just end the podcast now you hang on just for a minute but thanks everyone and i'll see you all next week