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A 3-step plan for keeping bed bugs out of your building

Teri Rogers Headshot - Floral
By Teri Karush Rogers  |
November 29, 2011 - 7:20AM
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The media frenzy over bed bugs died more than a year ago. But if you live in New York City (or own or manage a building here), the basic question hasn’t changed: It’s not if bed bugs will arrive at your building—it’s when…and when they do, will your building be ready?

Our sponsors, Bed Bug Fumigation Specialists (BBFS)—the guys behind the ingenious new Cimex Smart Cube, a giant, portable bed-bug-baking box that can be parked handily and discreetly next to your building’s laundry room—recommend this three-tiered action plan for triumphing over the little guys:

1. Education and regular inspections

The earlier an infestation is detected, the easier it is to get rid of. So a building’s first line of defense is its residents.  Residents need to know what bed bugs look like and where to look for them.  They need to be encouraged to report any suspicions—and their reports need to be responded to diligently and promptly.

Your building should also have regularly scheduled inspections of common areas and place monitoring devices and traps in strategic, low-visibility locations.

2. Current population eradication (the bugs, not the residents)

No matter what a spray-‘n-pay bed bug jockey insists, there’s no silver bullet when it comes to de-infesting a building or a single apartment.  Active infestations must be treated using an Integrated Pest Management approach involving chemical treatments, ‘green’ options, fumigation and heat treatments.  

3. Source elimination

Keeping bed bugs out means not letting them in.  To give building owners and residents peace of mind that a new resident won’t arrive with hitchhikers that infest the apartment and ultimately the whole building, some residential and commercial property managers are beginning to implement a Bed Bug Checkpoint requirement into their leases. 

At a minimum, they require incoming residents to pre-emptively treat belongings that could potentially harbor bed bugs.  Items may be fumigated off-site in a moving truck, or heat-treated on site in BBFS' new Cimex Smart Cube

Even better, the convenience and simplicity of the Cimex Smart Cube makes it easy to extend the Bed Bug Checkpoint to everyday life, such as bed-bug-proofing luggage after a trip, furniture deliveries, and thrift store purchases as they enter the building.

For more information  on the Cimex Smart Cube or fumigation treatments, click here or call Bed Bug Fumigation Specialists at 1-8779-NO-ITCH.


Bed Bug Fumigation Specialists (BBFS) is the industry's first fumigation treatment company specializing solely on bed bugs. Services include structural, container and truck fumigations. BBFS co-founders are also the inventors of the proprietary elimination chambers, The Cimex Smart Cube and The Cimex Fume Cube. With over 40 years of collective experience, BBFS is the company with the record you can count on. Its professionals have safely completed more than 50,000 fumigations, including over 2,500 successful bed bug eradications in NYC alone. Sleep tight with BBFS's bed bug solutions!

Related:

How to Bed Bug Proof Your Move  (sponsored)

The next big thing in bed bugs - and why you should care

Bed Bugs 101: Fumigation demystified (sponsored)

 

Teri Rogers Headshot - Floral

Teri Karush Rogers

Founder & Publisher

Founder and publisher Teri Karush Rogers launched Brick Underground in 2009. As a freelance journalist, she had previously covered New York City real estate for The New York Times. Teri has been featured as an expert on New York City residential real estate by The New York Times, New York Daily News, amNew York, NBC Nightly News, The Real Deal, Business Insider, the Huffington Post, and NY1 News, among others. Teri earned a BA in journalism and a law degree from New York University.

Brick Underground articles occasionally include the expertise of, or information about, advertising partners when relevant to the story. We will never promote an advertiser's product without making the relationship clear to our readers.

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