Does Hot Weather Kill Bedbugs in Hammersmith and Fulham?

The idea is reasonable. Bedbugs cannot survive being held at a high enough temperature for long enough, and that is the whole basis of heat treatment. But the words doing the work are high enough, long enough and, just as important, everywhere at once. Hot weather manages none of the three.

Why a Heatwave Does Not Work

A warm spell raises the air in a room a little, not to a temperature bedbugs cannot survive. Indoor heat in summer is also uneven. The top of a loft room may feel stifling while the floor, the inside of the mattress and the gap behind the skirting stay far cooler.

Bedbugs respond to that. They are not stuck in one spot; if one part of the room gets uncomfortable they move deeper into seams, joints and floor gaps where it is cooler. Warmth, if anything, speeds up their life cycle: they feed, breed and develop faster in a warm home than a cold one. So a hot summer can mean more activity, not less.

The Hot Car, the Sunny Windowsill and the Black Bag

People try all sorts of do-it-yourself versions. The common ones are leaving bedding or a suitcase in a parked car on a sunny day, putting items on a windowsill, or sealing things in a black bin bag in the garden.

• A car heats up unevenly. The dashboard gets very hot while the boot, the seat seams and the middle of a packed bag stay much cooler, and the heat falls away whenever a cloud passes.
• A windowsill heats one side of an object. Bugs simply move to the shaded side or into a fold.
• A bin bag in the sun warms the outside layer. The middle of a bundle of bedding may barely change.
• Nothing is measured, so you cannot tell whether the coolest part ever reached a lethal level.

The result is that some bugs die and some do not, and you cannot know which. Worse, carrying bags of infested things out to the car and back can drop bugs on the stairs and in the car itself; our guide to bedbugs in taxis and minicabs covers how vehicles fit in.

What Controlled Heat Does Differently

A heat treatment is built around the three things the weather misses. Heaters bring the whole room up to a temperature bedbugs cannot survive, and fans keep the air moving so that corners and floor level are not left behind. The room is then held there, rather than warmed briefly and allowed to fall away.

Most importantly, it is checked. A thermal camera shows where the room is still cool: the underside of a divan, the back of a wardrobe, the edge of the floor. Those cold spots are worked on until they come up too. Because every hiding place reaches a lethal level at the same time, there is nowhere cooler for the bugs to retreat to, and eggs die along with adults.

Our London guide on how heat treatment works sets out the method in full, and can bedbugs survive heat treatment deals with the question of what happens if part of a room is missed.

What Heat You Can Use Yourself

There is one form of household heat that genuinely helps: the washing machine and tumble dryer. Bedding and clothes from around the bed, washed hot and dried hot, then kept sealed, are part of preparing for either treatment. That works because a machine heats the whole load evenly for a set time, which is exactly what the sun does not do.

It deals with what goes in the drum, though, not with the bed frame, the skirting or the carpet edge. For those, the choice is between heat treatment in Hammersmith and Fulham and a chemical course.

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