068:Bed Bug Heat Treatment: How Professional Heat Treatments Work | Richard Barrie

0:00 Hello and welcome to Pest Perspectives episode 68. This week I have Richard Varyon, but before I mention what I'm going to talk about, I'll just mention that the podcast is now sponsored by Powered Now, a job management software company that can help you with all your pest control needs, treatment reports, invoices, etc. So, yeah, thanks for sponsoring us for a year. And if anyone else wants to sponsor the podcast to help the show, to push the show further. I messed that up, didn't I? Right. If anyone else wants to sponsor the show, they're more than welcome to.

0:50 Just drop us an email at pestperspectives at gmail.com. And everyone can tell this show is not scripted by that. I make it up on the fly. But this week we have on Richard Barry from, oh I've lost it now, from Bedbug. There we go. Bedbug experts, isn't it? That's it. There we go. Right. So how are you doing? I tell you what, I think you should introduce yourself because I made that sound really crap. Yeah, so I'm Richard Barry, I'm the bed bug experts. We cover the whole of the UK. A lot of our work subcontracted other pest control companies who want to use heat treatment.

1:41 But we have a big client base that we also do, which is for major companies. So we are kept really busy. Oh, nice to hear. So if anyone wonders, Richard did want to come on camera, but due to technical issues his camera won't switch on for some reason then we tried the ipad but i could see him and i could hear him but i but he couldn't hear me so we've gone with this option so if you're wondering that's why he's not on camera he wants to be but the powers that be are not letting him tell you know so so how did you get into um how did you get into pest control initially when you first started in the industry?

2:25 Yeah, so I was in the army and when I left the army my friend who worked for Rent-A-Kill lost a job and he introduced me to the managers who were doing interviews and I started off as a pest technician in the west of Scotland. Nice. And then after a couple of years I became a supervisor and then I worked my way through to a manager. then I was a job team manager for Scotland then I went to Libya done pest control in Libya we went to kill Libya so what kind of pest control did you do over there? what kind of things were you doing that's interesting so we went over for a £24 million rat contract to clear rats in three cities and then about six months into it I started a private business called Rent to Kill Delta out there okay and then a fun fact that when we had when we were working there we had to deal with the bubonic plague so with wow probably there's probably maybe only a bit I think it's probably only about 15 technicians in the country who've ever dealt with the bubonic plague yeah I would say you're pretty lucky but it sounds it's it sounds quite scary no it was it was very good it was absolutely brilliant then i went from there to work in dubai helps help set up dubai turkey and saudi arabia then what saudi arabia i was surprised you're not retired you're a globetrotter i was just tired i was retired yeah oh yeah but then i got divorced i had to come back to work oh okay no i uh i i like working boring something about the house all the time so so then i then i thought right i want to go back to work but i don't want to do hard work and because during rentagill times i was a fumigator then i actually thought that fumigators could do bed bugs and we progressed into heat treatments

4:28 with bed bugs with rentagill which i knew was relatively easy but it was early days then we don't have the equipment we didn't have the equipment that we've got now so we when I left Rent-A-Kill I thought I don't want to do full blown pest control I'll do bed bugs which is very simple, a couple of jobs maybe two jobs a month and that'll make my wages for a month okay that was the plan and then it just grew from there and it just got bigger and bigger and bigger yeah so what made you choose I've just got to say hello to the bed bug queen and hello Jackie.

5:06 I did see your Facebook message. The reason you can't see Richard is because his computer won't let it, on this stream yard, it won't work. So it's nothing to do with your phone. It's just the fact that the camera's not working. So we're just rolling with it, we are, just so you know. So why did you want to deal with bed bugs? like obviously well because what I'd done because I'd worked with Rent-A-Kill and we'd started off doing heat treatment bubbles the idea was that I'd initially buy a bubble but nobody will help you with heat treatments they won't tell you what equipment to buy they won't tell you where to buy it you know in the early days and it just so happened that I've seen some electric heaters and I bought electric heaters so I bought three electric heaters and one fan and then I just started from there I realised quickly that they didn't work and then bought more equipment and you realize it doesn't work then you so it's a progression it costs you know to get to where we are today trial and error cost a lot a lot of money well it sounds to me like tens of thousands of pounds because i hate it more than tens of thousands more and then you're learning all the damage that you do so nobody tells you what damage you've actually got to damage something and then realise we'll not do that again because that damaged so do you mean like say you've heated a room and you've damaged some of the building or you've broken the TV or something's due to heat yeah exactly so it's like the electric heaters, the first electric heaters

6:51 are put into a building and burnt three squares in the carpets oh oh okay they stuck to the nylon and the nylon melted underneath them and the heaters stuck to the carpet wow that's a learning curve isn't it it certainly is and it goes on like that you know it's like Ikea furniture would fall to bits certain types of Ikea furniture fall to bits because the glue melts same with certain types of worktops certain wardrobes yeah that's just is a nightmare yeah so what did you have to in the end you have like obviously you've learned over the years but you have to now have a prep sheet and a disclaimer to say we have no liability for this so we have a prep sheet and you know everybody has you know general stuff but what we do now we do a full inspection before we turn the heaters on so we tell the people we might have to move stuff.

7:53 We always have to move stuff. You know what I mean? We have to move stuff out of the heat area. Not TVs and electricals. They don't damage. It's more things like you don't want aerosols in a room, obviously. You don't want cigarette lighters in a room. You don't want live plants. Things like that. Well, yeah. I'd imagine that live plants you'd kill. I would imagine. You never have? No, we have. Oh, you have? sometimes you look at a plant and you think that's plastic and it turns out to be a live plant oh right, okay okay, well it's a big learning curve anyway, isn't it?

8:33 it is and then we've ended up now, we then tried steam steam, okay so we've done steam, and we still do steam to this day, so we don't, steam's something that we use, but we try to use it very sparingly you know because we the thing that we see is that from our first treatment you won't see bedbugs okay that's that's the kind of guarantee we're given you know i did see that on the website actually i did say that so yeah now that doesn't always work uh sometimes people will see bedbugs but that'll all depend on the situation uh like the house we've done on sunday that there was just unbelievable thousands upon thousands of bed bugs thousands absolutely thousands but only the ones you put the pictures up yeah i've seen that yeah that looks quite bad that yeah they've only showed one picture because you can't show the people we don't want to show the people stuff but you know it was horrendous they were actually the bed bugs were coming out the front door of the of the flat wow did they manage did you did they manage to spread to the in the building yeah that's right out of flash yeah yeah it was just it was very very bad and that's not the worst one we've done worse than that but it's bad

9:56 when your guys phone you and say bring suits and we don't use suits because we don't need to because you stand in front of a heater hose for one minute then there's no bed bugs on you bed bugs die in winter at 51 degrees well then yeah so we never tried to get to you but obviously some jobs you have to wear a suit when you guys are telling you bring us bring a suit no we don't we don't wear any suits ever you know we just get in ordinary clothes like i say because you you just stand in front of the hose for a minute and that they all die no sorry what i mean is when some of your guys tell you to bring a suit it's really bad yeah well i knew it was bad because i've done the survey in that one yeah even the even the even the the person who got us in for the survey wouldn't walk in the flat they wouldn't even enter the flat no you know it's I can't get a lot of details about it but no no I don't expect you to I don't but obviously you've got that discretion as well haven't you because you're the professional yeah it's a distressing it's a distressing situation anyway for someone to have have bed bugs in the first place Yeah.

11:12 Unfortunately, some of the ones we do, especially London jobs, London jobs for us, we're in London every day of the week, and some London places, London's a horrendous place for bedbugs. Absolutely. Yeah, it's horrendous, yeah. So we are in there every day. You know what? I'll be lucky if I get a few jobs a year in bedbugs, where I live. We never seem to get them. Recently, I've been getting a lot of, moths and fleas a few moles rats and mice but yeah that seems to get a lot of bed bugs but i don't go into leicester you see if we if we if we went into leicester we're a city then we probably would but yeah they'd probably be better to get someone local because of the price yeah so we've got a guy in leicester actually stays in leicester yeah oh yeah yeah he does Leicester up to Leeds and across to Birmingham and things like that oh ok and then further down this is why we get no bed work further down south we've got five guys yeah nice but no it's that was a joke by the way we don't really get much calls we don't we're big subcontractors so like I say we have a lot of pest control companies who just, they won't touch bed bugs and they just contact us and then we give them a price and they just put mark up.

12:42 Ah, so that was a question that was going to come up. Do you like just you said, yeah, well you just answered it. There you go. Yeah. Yeah, we do. Because a lot of, because obviously because it's a, obviously as you said before it is a big commitment to buy a piece of, you know, kit. Even now you don't really know what you're buying you could buy a piece of crap the problem is when people start bed bugs they underestimate they underestimate how much it's going to cost for one so you're looking at let's say you buy a van a van's going to cost you £22,000 £25,000 for a van then you've got to buy all the heaters £35 these days or more and then you've got to buy all the heaters, the fans, the electric cables, all the reedance equipment for it.

13:38 It's staggering, and it breaks down constantly. Cables burn out, so the upkeep of it is quite as a lot. So what are we talking for, a basic setup?

13:54 I'd say between 30 and 40. still a lot though isn't it for someone to put an outlay on and they don't know whether it's it's really going to work isn't it well i tell everybody because the last time i was on a podcast you get lots of calls i'm starting the bed bugs i'm starting bed bugs and then you see that you ask it let's let's talk about it you say how many bed bug jobs do you get a year and then figure that out divide that that value which you'd charge them with the money you have to outlay 30 40 thousand is it really worth it to have a van sitting there you know so a lot of people will jump in and we get people who come on the phone to us and say buy can we what you want to buy the equipment you know and no we don't want to buy your equipment he's no we've got our own equipment so it's definitely i feel sorry for people but you can only tell people and then it's up to them they dive in do you make your own do you make your own kit is that what you're saying no no i'm saying I feel sorry for people who buy equipment from oh you know they get and buy it and then they stuck with it they don they not getting enough work yeah it is a hard one i think you should really you know if you you see you diving the

15:11 to be fair for a lot of people that could say you're doing wedding pest control and you figure ah bed bugs has loads of money and you dive in you spend all that money it could actually put you out of business. Considering the fact that my van's two-year-old and it's done 80,000 miles. You really do do some miles, don't you? Wow, that is a lot. Yeah. That's a lot. Tomorrow I'm up and the drive tomorrow's not so far. I think I'm 50 miles away tomorrow, you know. I generally leave the house about 5 o'clock in the morning to get to the job for half past 8.

15:48 And then I might not be home till 8 o'clock at night. okay and some nights like last week i had to drive from here to skegness that's a six hour drive i've done two jobs in skegness then i see that because i uh i like to go on holiday to skegness it's only an hour and a half for me yeah i go to i go to putland's holiday camp with the kids and then I drove back here to Dumfries wow that's a drive isn't it yeah and then I done one on Sunday so I worked Friday in Skagnes Saturday I was in Dumfries and then I went up to a place up the coast called Lags on Sunday okay so I see I see you've actually made your own bed bug monitor I did, yeah.

16:43 And it's a very, very good one. And I'm not just saying that because I made it. But if you think of bed bug monitors at the minute, there's hundreds of bed bug monitors out. There is. And every other one will have a... They've all got a ferymon on them. So if you imagine there's, let's say, there's 10 with ferymons on. Every ferymon will be different, yeah? Every manufacturer says that ferymon's the best feryl moon in the market they will yeah when when a piece of equipment comes on the market i automatically buy it okay i test that and evaluate it and i was testing the i was testing bed bug monitor the bed mug monitors and i thought these don't really work they're rubbish but what i did notice that anybody that does regular bed bug jobs will notice that bed bugs love wood they absolutely love it and I thought right I'm going to make a wooden bed bug monitor and that's what I did so after a couple of trials and error I made it about three years actually to finish it then I sent it down to Richard Nailer for testing, you know Dr Richard?

17:54 Oh yes, yes nice and he said it was one of the best he'd ever seen so yeah well that's quite a statement coming from Richard the guy tests everything everything yeah he even chucks bed bugs in his bed with him yeah yeah he's very good have you ever done that? and I never will no no chance but I'll be like I know who this guy is and run now I know that I'm not going to carry bed bugs home I know that you know I absolutely know that you know and all the time I've been doing it I've ever carried bed bugs off but when I was married my wife still made me strip at the front door and i had to take all my clothes off take them up with the worst machine you know i wasn't allowed to walk in with you you in that room they'd all be killed

18:47 yeah they're all killed yeah yeah yeah yeah definitely but couldn't she say that then even when you told her no even my guys the guys that work for me they always make them strap off at the door really you need to understand yeah yeah when you see some of the pictures oh that's probably what puts them off but they will die with that matter yeah

19:17 to say have you ever done these i've heard about these big london jobs where you do the entire block how does that work then when you do the whole block is it room by room or do you warm the whole building them no no there's not enough heaters to do that so we the biggest one we did we did was 55 bedrooms damn wow so and we just you know we heated up in blocks at 10 at a time so it's okay 10 is just about six days to do it so how how long does it take obviously let's do a comparison from when you started doing heat treatments to now yeah like i mean i've heard the old equipment used to take three and four or five hours to warm up does it take not long now it used to take eight hours to do a heat treatment yeah yeah so so you know that there's different types of heat treatments there's there's pods you know that you've probably seen them it's a chamber the one that rentakil started and started to use there's stacks where people put it in the middle of the floor put a polythene sheet over it.

20:24 And then there's space, which we do. Which space, we don't take the clothes out of the room, we don't tell them to wash them, we don't tell them to boil, wash their clothes. We just put the hoses in, put fans in, and then heat the whole room up. Okay. Our heaters, from start, from the minute we switch them on, in about five minutes the whole room's at 55 degrees.

20:50 Is that Is that all that's needed to kill bed bugs then? 55? They'll die at 51. Okay. We'll hold the heat between 51 and 50. So there's a time scale. At 51, they'll die in one minute. Okay. If it's only 48, it takes hours. That's strange. Yeah, it's strange. It's very strange. Yeah. And what happens is, we'll heat them up rapid so you knock down very quickly don't have time to run away at 45 degrees bed bugs think to themselves holy shit I'm going to die here and they start to run up the way they'll run onto the beds and they'll try and run but they're always aiming for cold places so we tell the people don't make your bed, just jump out in the morning, we heat the room up and all the bed bugs will go under the parlours in the coal and then wait 55 degrees then we hang those up and kill all the bed bugs so how long does it take you to get to the temperature 55 degrees then no more than 10 minutes see that's amazing how technology changes so you said it used to take like eight hours and now it takes 55 minutes that's That really shows how far it's moved on.

22:14 Yeah. The problem is that, and I get this a lot when people phone me up and they've bought the equipment, they get the room to 50 degrees and then they stop, they switch it off and think that's it. That's not it. You have to allow everything to eat up to 55 degrees. So you have to constantly be taking readings and moving the fans and circulating the air. because we're not really interested in the adult bed bugs they're dead easy to kill it's the eggs we're trying to hard boil eggs and that's what i try to do right i've got a question here yeah i have from linkedin i've got on my phone that's why i'm looking down because it's come as up as linkedin user it's actually a late uh someone called lee darby does the heat penetrate materials such as cardboard wood etc to treat clothes in wardrobes or cupboards etc i think she does bed bugs she does yeah so it does yeah yeah but you've got to allow like i say it's a soak in time It's no use getting to 55 and switching off.

23:27 You have to let the heat soak in. So the minimum that we are going to have temperature in at any time is four hours. Okay. That's the minimum.

23:38 We're going to keep it at 55.

23:42 Okay. So would you, like, are you there, like, in one property all day per job? or do you just do room by room or no no you heat a whole house at one thing heat a whole house i suppose what you just put heaters in each room or does it depend on the layout individually yeah so obviously sometimes can it can you have an adjoining room that's next to it but the heat will go through the walls with it or no no no you have to have a hose in every room yeah okay oh so you have the you have the the machine but you can you have you can have multiple hoses coming out of it is that right or yeah so it's generally there's generally well we have get we've got machines that can two hoses come out of the motion of the machines is one hose and you put a splitter but you put a splitter box on it okay and split it down yeah yes this is a fair question it is i know she's very much into bed bugs um yeah i'm surprised bed bug queen's not asked many questions here but she's not asked much she hasn't she well when i uh thank there lee says i thank you i asked because i had to use a heat there we go thank Thank you.

25:07 I asked because I had to use a heat treatment on one job and they told me it doesn't penetrate into drawers or wardrobes or items in cardboard boxes, etc. Thank you for clarifying. You can't. So drawers, we open the drawers, do you know what I mean? So we'll open the drawers, we'll open the wardrobes. but if you've got it in a box let's say you've got clothes in a cardboard box then we would spell that out and spread it out across the living room across the bedroom Sounds like you just say anything you want doing chuck it in a heap love chuck it all in yeah people put it in black bags and you have to rip the black bags open and spread the clothes about it's all about the air movement yeah so if you've got enough fans in there blowing at a certain direction for enough time then it'll penetrate yeah you know that's good to hear great great question thanks for that uh also jason was saying from ask press control that he did a bed bug job today and he had to strip off in the garage standing in a plastic bag.

26:19 There you go.

26:24 So obviously you do specialise in bed bugs, but is that the only pest you deal with? No, no, no. I also have a pest control company. Oh, do you? Is that a different name then? Yeah, it's a different name. It's separate, yeah. What's it called? It's just called the local one. It's just called the Aishire Pest Control. Oh, okay. oh okay it's just a local company you know for this reach I don't work in that but you know I've got people who do that you've actually got a business that runs itself then yeah well nice that is what they say the dream is successful business can run itself no the dream is inventing a bed bug monitor and retiring and get residual income yeah can people know if someone wanted to buy your bed bug monitor do you sell it to the sell it to people or not yeah we do yes it's got a website i will put that in the description after the show so if anyone wants to test it out it does sound good because you're right because bed bugs do like wood going on wood so it's a it's a long term bed bug monitor it's not like at the minute if you buy a cardboard one it probably lasts maybe a month and then it gets dusty and it's you know and it's no use the bed bug the clear view bed bug monitor is designed that when you go on holiday you take it on holiday with you you put it in your suitcase you come back you put it back into your bed you know it's designed to be moved about with you so yeah that's good i think i said i think i sent you the picture of the hotel you you did and i forgot to actually upload it to put it in here.

28:12 I mean, they were one of the first customers a year and a half ago, they bought those monitors. And then they hadn't been checking them monthly, like they're supposed to do. And they pulled the bed out there, and lo and behold, it was full of bed bugs.

28:29 See, had they been checking it monthly, they could have been on top of it more. They would have been well on top of it. As it was, then we have to heat that room, the room's either side, the room above them below so the cost of the escalator costly mistake yeah yeah one thing i wanted to ask you because we were chatting about moths the other day yeah he's just you mad you mentioned that you use these parasitic wasps you do yeah parasitic ones so is that just like for house moth like like clothes moth, is that?

29:03 Tapping moth, yeah. So what's the... You come in a satchee, you get about 2,000 in a satchee. They're very small, you can hardly see them, and there's only a little pinprick. You just set the satchee in the floor, and then they start to hatch over three weeks or something like that. Yeah, you put moth traps in to trap the male moths, and then the parasitic was to everything else, yeah. It sounds good though, because obviously it's non-toxic, but a lot of it though as well is the way you probably have to word it to the customer because I'm going to let loads of wafts off in your house, but you can't see them and you won't get stung.

29:45 Yeah, but the thing is, the big sale is it's non-toxic. You're not using a chemical. No, you're not. That's the thing. And they die, they're sterile. They can't breed. So it's not as if you're going to get. So you know with that I had a technical question If someone was to have say a window open they wouldn just fly out the window would they Oh, I don't know. Probably. Probably. They're more likely to be in the carpet, crawling about the carpet. Yeah, to be fair, though, if someone had in that region, I would say keep your windows shut.

30:23 Yeah, that's a reasonable thing to say, isn't it? Yeah. but no I'm close to trying it, it sounds so cool in the pest control side we've been trying we've been trying to move away from poisonous, we've been trying to buy electronic mouse boxes we've been doing things like that rather than trying to use so much poisons and insecticides I have trialed a digital box i have i did the um syngenta 24 7 monitoring it's a hard one because well you've got monitors in it's like when it has an activation it's like you've got to learn how many activations you need to warrant baiting it yeah you can have 50 or 40 activations it might be a quarter of the block yeah you've got to try all these things and yeah it takes about yeah it was an official trial i didn't pay for it was through the um through the mpta obviously but this was before i became a board director because i was like mouthing off on linkedin like i do i say digital is not for small businesses and people seen it and they said do you want to try one you want do you want to try it then all right but i liked it but i said that it's got to be the right client and the right customer and the right please say say a food site or someone that's a bit more high priority yeah then it would probably work better that would yeah but it's definitely it's basically

32:08 cost the cost of quite substantial they were so it'd have to be someone more high-end i didn't in my review I didn't totally slack it off I just said I feel that if a small business had a bigger site and it's higher end then it probably might suit that site because of the costs yeah we're not talking 500 quid a year we're not you know that's a big issue in pest control and people are always wary of it they say like you know the client can't afford that you're thinking and that's people thinking they're judging a client you know what I mean so you have to give them I'm probably for me to come and do something is really expensive you know what I mean doing the heat treatment but you get what you pay for you'll get a good night's sleep that night I don't have to you know follow up I don't although I do follow up because I feel that when people are paying that much money they deserve to follow up you know what I mean but yeah yeah so i did no you are right though it's a big thing in pest control because we've changed the way we are now we offer we offer a lot more than we used to because you're right there's a big mentality i've seen it on the groups and they actually say i know my customers won't want that and he won't want to yeah rather asking the client say here's

33:35 here's your options do you want them or do you just want this anybody that's worked for rent to kill for a long period of time would do that because they know there's no rent to kill prices they know that the customers pay for it so people that's worked for rent to kill is going to go in and charge the top dollar they've got the experience and they've also got the sales experience of how to sell it as well but a lot of people come from smaller companies haven't got that experience but i'm just getting i know we don't now do a lot of in rodent we do a lot of proofing now i wasn't i always should have done but i wasn't confident in how to how to ask people how to you know but now i word it as an optional um optional surveys free yeah basically when we're doing riddance on a rouse a rat or a mouse we now offer them you know i'm not going to guarantee that you'll never get anything again but these areas can produce access and we offer them um that and a lot to be fair recently i've had a lot of them say yes so yeah so so we've got to show you on our court sheet when we're quoting for a job yeah it'll say right we're going to do the rice and mice for x amount but additional service you need that proofing

35:03 so we'll proof, we proof anything up to the size of a 10 pence free of charge anything above that 10 pence free of charge and we put that on the sheet and say we're going to do this, we'll do this it'll cost you this, this, this, the total price and that's the way Rindicill do it multiple so when you get into a premise you should be quoting three other things at all times, not just rats and mice so you should be quoting three other things, options so let's say it was a let's take a house for example if you were walking into a house and you were saying right you've got mice, you'd be offered to do the vent covers that's one option brush strip is another option so there's two, there's three things you've just quoted for another house okay I didn't add in bait stations, monitoring points.

36:01 Oh, I know they love their bait stations. They do. Long-term contracts will come visiting. So you shouldn't be quoting. You shouldn't be walking in and blindly quoting for a pest control job. You know, I'll do a three-treatment job for rats and mice and then just walking out the door. There's more opportunity there. Well, that's what we do now. Obviously, we do the riddance job, but we also now offer them the additional proofing and it's really worked yeah stuff stuff that i didn't think would happen like recently we got a yeah a quite substantial house this isn't a normal house uh quote got accepted it was nearly two grand yeah that's a lot of event covers and all sorts but yeah i was a bit oh shall i shunna i'll do it and then she never accepted the quote and when i went on the visit last time i mentioned it to her she's oh i've been meaning to talk to you about that and then i came downstairs from doing what was doing yeah we'll we'll we'll do it yeah we'll have it yeah it's like it's like the bed the bed bugs so when i walk into you let's say i tell i'll offer them the bed bug treatment i'll then offer them the clear view bed mug monitors and i'll offer them a contract for me to come in and check those and if i find them you know we'll give them reduced cost in the heat room it's not that's that's really good that is i imagine that you get a lot of people take you up on that do you yeah we've got yeah we've got a couple you've got thousands that means No, that's a good idea.

37:49 At the minute, because people, there's people starting the pest control industry, and I was fortunate to start with Renterkill, but people just starting going across, so they've no sense of what to charge. but in the minute we've got people going in and doing bed bug jobs for £125 £150 well too cheap you'll never get a bed bug job off me for any less than £1,000 I wouldn't even walk out I wouldn't go out of bed for £1,000 I was about to say that you beat me to it I think that people in the hill pest control industry a lot of people are on a race to the bottom I agree it's you've got to charge what you think you're worth and you know because a lot of people I'm not saying everyone is but a lot of people don't take into consideration the costs of the job, the costs of the materials if you're in a trade body van insurance, wages exactly your national insurance your staff wages you know everything that goes with you there's a calculation that you have to make and you know you have to add everything in and when somebody says to you why is it so expensive you just rattle those off yeah i'll tell you why it's so expensive i've got to pay for vans insurances you know blah blah blah and rattle those off to the customer they don't think of that obviously because they don't have the business mindset but there's a lot of pest controls that don't think about any of that i mean i've seen people say oh no the cost of a wasp nest is is you know i mean

39:36 cost to do a wasp nest yeah someone i see it online 30 quid i said you don't even know what you're talking about 30 pounds to do what's next yeah right you can't think but they don't i don't mean the price they're going to give to customer their cost to do that do it but they don't take everything else into account they don't once again it's all but they haven't taken into the count the cost of the vehicle the insurance the tires the petrol to get there you know everything else ended is doing a wash nest for 30 pound it's off their head yeah let them do it i do not i'll tell you where you should i'll tell you what you should be pleasing if rent kills 300 pounds to do a wash nest you should be anywhere below that i did i tell you what i did and that it was a A couple of years ago now, there was a contract pub that had them.

40:28 And they charged. These were easy. These were in the Vicam days, obviously. Yeah. A few years ago now. And there was two. They were very simple. Probably two poles. Not very high up in the eaves. One at the front, one at the back. It was £1,600 for two nests. Yeah. they rang me and I did it for well at the time I think it was £250 for both so not bad I tried to get the contract for the pub but it never happened yeah it's like you know you can't think what the client is thinking you know you can't say you've got to make a living nobody should be charging nobody should be charging the sale nowadays out for any less than £50 an hour that would be the minimum I would say you're right because we're supposed to be a skilled trade we are yeah and I'm talking £50 an hour plus 20% for Brett yeah exactly so yeah also Jason's got a question here which of your monitors do you think work the best?

41:52 It's obviously been on your website the standard or the dark top ones So the dark top ones are for when they're lying out in the open so bed bugs we know generally like dark areas don't we so let's say you're lying it out lying it out somewhere where it was light that's why the dark ones are there so you're lying on a carpet or something like that then the light to get into the dark yeah the white ones are the white ones are superb super monitors there you go Jason he's probably been looking on your site you might notice a sale going through soon you never know I know Jason oh you do yeah have you ever tried his downpipe Chad Guards they're a very good product they are I tend not to look at the business you're that busy with Red Bull because I wouldn't imagine you'd have time at the minute I'm spending a bit more because one of my guys died and I've got a new start sorry to hear that mate sorry to hear that had he worked for you for a long time We worked together for 34 years.

43:15 Oh, goodness. That must have been wound. Sorry to hear about that. Yeah. Terrible. It was a shame. That is. But I've got a new start work up now, and they're really into TikTok and everything, so they do all the TikTok. It's very funny. Oh. Have you got, out of interest, has your business got a TikTok? It's got one, but we don't use it much, you know. Get him on it. Get him on it. I've got a web guy who does all that sort of stuff. I do a TED noise. Yeah, but if this lad's young, is he going to be on the show?

43:50 No, it's a girl. A girl. But if she's into it, let her do some TikTok. You'll find it. She'll probably do a better job than your web guy. I'm telling you. Yeah, she started doing them, so she's quite funny. Oh, yeah, that's good, Dan. Because a lot of them videos can get like, I've got videos on there that it was me telling people not to block a wasp nest hole yeah 212 000 years half of the world telling me i'm an idiot don't know what you're talking about and the other's saying no he's right i tried doing that and they still came they came through into my living room funny enough funny enough she she gets stung today no she was standing we were looking at a wash nest but she was standing like 12 feet back and one just come up and stung her i've had that before yeah in the head and i've got no hair

44:54 but i wasn't doing the worst nest i just got stung Yeah. No, no, she doesn't do without being fully suited up. Well that the way you should be Do you know these parasitic wasps do you know if they can deal with any other kind of insects or not I don't know I just you know the guy I can't remember how I came up I had heard about them years ago and then it popped up in a feed somewhere and I thought right okay I'm going to do I'm going to do these if they're cheap enough Rent to Kill when we were in Libya, not Libya or Dubai, we get, you know, rentakill come out with the ones that kill the flies, so there's millions of flies you can imagine, and we were doing the ruler of Dubai's stables, and he didn't want any flies, so we're getting the parasitic Watson to kill the flies there, and that was the first time I heard them.

45:55 Oh, so there is a version that does flies then, okay. Yeah, yeah. because my mate was asking me I've heard there's some fly version so I'll have a look on that Dragonfly site you recommended I don't know how the fly ones I don't know how they went in the end because we couldn't get permission to bring them in the country or something like that but they were available at the time I'll have to see I'll have a look on that I've actually tried to add one of them on LinkedIn I'll see if I can get the guy from Dragonfly to come on the podcast and have a talk yeah i will he's been on the other podcast the um beauties and beasties he's been on there before he has yeah he's a he'll be an interesting guy oh yeah most definitely yeah so what do you think future of the bed bug world is what do you think You're going to say, hey, didn't you?

46:55 Yeah. I mean, it's hard to say, really. There's products come on the market every other day for bed bugs. Now, even when I was in Rent-A-Kill, every single company would bring a product and go, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, you know. This will be the end of it. This will be the end of it. But in reality, the bed bugs just keep adapting and adapting and adapting. You know, and they just, I don't know. I think it's just going to go on and on for a long time. There was one in America that they saw just now, which I think they're trying to get into the UK, which gave them a mould, like a bacterial in them, a mould that ate them from the night.

47:35 That will be out eventually. You're on about apprehend, didn't you? Apprehend, yeah.

47:43 Richard Naylor's tested it, I believe, or he is testing it. So I believe it's, they reckon, I don't know how far away, a year or two away, I don't know. But it will be coming to the UK. Yeah, no doubt. But once again, that's a long-term thing. So you spray it and it takes a long time to kill them. Yeah. So obviously, it's not the biggest of game changers because America's got it and they've still got bedbugs. They've still got bedbugs. It's the same with everybody. There's not a product on the market at this very time that would actually stop bedbugs.

48:17 You know what I mean? There's no game changers on there. None. That is one word. I hate. If somebody puts a game changer, I'm like, I don't want to try that because it puts me off because I think no, it ain't. Yeah. So I know the Bedbug Queen's own cheese that Chinch X dust. I'm quite sure that Rent to Kill had a version of that 20 years ago. There was something, weren't there, that was registered with the HSE. There was. and they they they let it run out I don't know what it was it was some kind of dust yeah it was it was I'm sure I'm pretty sure it was it's roughly it was the same thing but what happened was it come on the market reticle pushed it big time and it wasn't for bed bugs and it was for cockroaches okay but it suddenly it died the death as if it was 10 aftermarket you know it just never went anywhere and reticle withdrew it as a product well I suppose if you spend that much on it you've got to get a return on investment especially how much it costs to do a product registering, they reckon it costs millions, you can spend all that money and then they say no it's like once again the Clearview Bedbug monitor the amount of money then to patent it and everything like that is substantial you know you've got to build models test them, you send them to Dr Richard he tests them you know and then that doesn't work and then you come back and you test it again until you get the correct one so it's doing anything nowadays and that's nothing compared to an insecticide and insecticides millions to bring onto the market Yeah they are, it's like there's more leaving the market than there is joining because they reckon it's something like

50:15 six to eight years or something to actually get something registered that's an insecticide or you know uh like a bait because obviously when it comes to when it comes to introducing new active ingredients they reckon there's only once there's a new one found once in a generation a lot of it because a lot of the baits that they have on the market a lot of them are just they've just changed them up slightly a lot of them a lot of them are just mixtures of different there's no massive innovations everyone talks about cilantro but yeah some people say it works some people say it don't but it all depends on the situation yeah so so yeah so we we used to use that in a liquid form you know so it would come in a black liquid and you had to get like fish guts measure it out exactly and with the fish guts and then you put it down for the rats oh or depending what they were eating you know yeah definitely a bit different different things i heard of what i heard of one that someone told me about obviously it was long before my day alpha chloroist used to put it in corn you can mix it up in buckets of corn apparently yeah they got banned because the birds used to die or something they used to be everywhere

51:37 yeah well they used to take off if somebody scared the pigeons they would take off and then you've got like a one pound flying bomb that was the problem yeah so it started to fly away and then it would pass out and then it would just come down like a a bomb yeah because I think obviously some people back then just put it anywhere out in the open etc yes we did yes we did we did yes anywhere we wanted I think it's back but I think it's in a block form called Black Pearl I've never tried it I've never tried that one there used to be a poison called lindine and I'm sure that if there's any older pest controllers on there they'll have heard of it when I was first getting shown when I first started which was 43 years ago my supervisor says go into the van and you'll get a tub and it says lindy on it and bring it in.

52:32 So I walked down the tub and in those days you had to decide you off that you were cleared to use every poison. So every individual poison you had to be cleared on. And he opened the lid with a mask on, the gloves on, and he did half a teaspoon out and he put it down the hole and he shut it up and he says, right, you know how to use that? Never open that tub again. It was that deadly. It was carcinogenic and it lasted for 99 years. Wow. and in those days in the cities they used to put it into the whole cavities and kilo bags how the world's moved on yeah yeah wow i always because many years ago there was this thing where what's that one it's not the same stuff that they reckon that if you were to breathe it your heart would stop and you'd be dead on the spot yeah the cyanide cyanide yeah oh i wouldn't want to be dead just like that and you can't and you wouldn't be able to use a mask would you because you reckon if you could smell almonds there's something wrong yeah you couldn't wear a mask is that right or something yeah that's right one of the poses yeah yeah when i was in libya they used to buy used to buy for stocks in the market and to treat the cockroaches in the house while they were in there so what used to happen is they used to and this happened even when it was in dubai they bought it in the market treated the flat and all the people downstairs died

54:06 wow and it used to happen in libya all the time you could just walk into the market and buy tubes of a stocks and see how there was a case here there weren't there yeah about that case where some people I don't know how they got it in the country they bought was it aluminium phosphite yeah a little girl downstairs on her birthday died yeah it came through the floor was that not in Leicester I think that was in Leicester I don't know where it was it may have been I don't know but they reckon they brought it in somehow got it through customs yeah yeah it seems a bit dodgy to me I don't know how they get that through literally in some of those countries you can walk into the market and buy literally anything, any type of poison, anything you want, most of it comes from China, and when you read the labels straight away, it's all carcinogenic.

54:58 So, part of the thing when we were in Libya was to work with the government to try and get all those poisons withdrawn off the market. Because people are just dying. Did it work? Nah. People, they don't care. It's just not one of those things that they worry about, you know what I mean? do you think it's changed or just still no it won't change wherever they can make money they'll make money yeah yeah awesome and in Libya that you know don't uh i'm trying to think his name now the rat guy who from uh Reading University he came out uh because they wanted to do the testing of the rats so they cut off their tails and send it away for tests and they see they're immune to the poison.

55:47 He'd been all over the world and he said that it was the most rat-infested places he'd ever been in his life. They were literally just walking down the street beside you. Bloody hell. Yeah. And then in the bubonic plague, when we'd done the bubonic plague, I had flew back here on holiday and I left the airport and he says get back on the airport, get back on the plane, fly back up, they've got the bubonic plague. And we were there for So how did you deal with that then?

56:20 So it's spread. People think it's the rats. It's the fleas that are on the rats, not the rats. It's the actual fleas. So what you have to do is you've got to treat all the burrs.

56:35 It's spread by the fat sand rat, which is immune to bromodialone and all that because you only eat salt bushes. So what we've done was we had the army. 50 soldiers lined up and they'd walk for it, stick a sticker in the burrow, then we'd have guys come along pump dust in there to kill the fleas as much as they could then we would drop the stocks and close the burrow and just gas the fat sand rats from the burrow, and we had to do that round all the villages but while you were walking there I bet you felt really important when you had the army with you as well, didn't you?

57:12 So just where we were walking, Tabruk was one of the most mined places in the world during the Second World War. It's still one of the most other than Ukraine now, but there's the most landmines. Camels get blew up all the time and everything like that. So as you were walking along, you were finding old pineapple grenades, you were seeing landmines, you were seeing everything lying there. You had to avoid it and not walk on them or touch them so that's mental you've seen it all mate you have yeah you have but yeah it's been a it's been a good chat it has I've learnt a lot I'm sure people watching have learnt a lot yeah yeah it's been a great chat thanks for coming on so if anyone wants to use your services is just subcontract would you like to tell people where they can find you yeah just go to the website the bed bug experts and i will put all that information in the uh description when i publish it properly yeah i will but yeah no no thanks for uh coming on i'm sorry but i don't know what is wrong well at least your voice works because when i first tried to book you and i i haven't got a voice mate i've had surgery yeah i just had judging my throat yeah yeah you did so your voice is doing well yeah yeah i can understand you anyway because you said to me you've got a thick scottish accent i can hear it i can i can understand you perfectly i'm i'm concentrating on trying to speak slowly oh i see oh okay it's a mental effort i've got a scottish family though yeah because a lot of my family i don't know whether you know uh there's a place near me called corby and a lot of people moved from scotland down to the steelworks in corby

59:19 they did so that's how the scottish element and you know met met you know they they set up there and you know they call corby many scotland but not so much these days yeah they do they do because most of the steelworks now has all been knocked down but the rest of it has been knocked down now yeah but anyway Richard thanks for coming on everyone seems to have enjoyed it Jason said thanks guys Jackie said a very interesting podcast thank you but yeah thanks for coming on I'll just end the stream but if you want to hold on for just a second I will so thanks everyone and I'll see everyone next week on the podcast.