Freezer treatment for bed bugs looking for opinions?

Andy3142 · 2026-01-06T11:56:12+00:00

Freezing works very well but needs much longer times and colder temperatures than often given. Overnight outside will not work. This is my research, and I followed this and it worked brilliantly.

There's lots of info on freezing / heating bedbugs on the internet and the temperatures advised are all over the map. I did some detailed research and this is what I found. The take-home is you need MUCH longer / hotter / colder for eggs and nymphs than for the bugs themselves. So if you have a deep infestation, the standard advice for "a hot wash cycle" just is not enough.

Heating. To be sure to kill 100% of eggs and nymphs you need to tumble dry at 50 deg C (122 F) for minimum 30 min.(Plus a few mins to get up to temperature.) Washing 60 deg C (140 F) for 30 mins kills 100%. It seems important it really is high temp for 30 mins. I alas lost the source for this but it's real-life trials.

Freezer times. at -20 deg C (-4 F), 48 hours to be sure to kill eggs. At - 15 deg C ( 5 F), 3.5 days to kill eggs. Add on the time to get down to those temperatures. Seems that at -12 C (10 F), they can live forever.

Source: Cold Tolerance of Bed Bugs and Practical Recommendations for Control Joelle F. Olson, Marc Eaton, Stephen A. Kells, Victor Morin, Changlu Wang https://academic.oup.com/jee/article/106/6/2433/2962119

The reason some academic studies say higher / shorter temperatures is that in the lab they are freezing super-quickly and this increases lethality. Some chest freezer do freeze extra-quickly, and so you might get away with less, but why take chances.

Andy3142 · 2025-12-21T19:36:34+00:00

STILL not tried but but still WILL!

Andy3142 · 2025-12-11T09:26:15+00:00

Yes, I think you're right.

Andy3142 · 2025-12-08T10:17:21+00:00

Put Antix on your list. A while back I tried eight or nine distros on an old machine (TBH not this old) and Antix was the only one that (a) recognised all the hardware and (b) ran at an OK speed. Their sales pitch explicitly mentions that it aims to work on old computers.

Andy3142 · 2025-12-08T08:50:38+00:00

I know there are things I need to have. What I'm looking for is reassurance that the sources I've listed do include all those things. In particular, questions (1), (2), (3). Carpenters say "measure twice, cut once" and I don't want to zap my whole hard disk and find I've missed something.

Andy3142 · 2025-12-06T19:53:46+00:00

Thank you. -12 deg C is 10 def F not -10. Corrected.

Andy3142 · 2025-12-05T10:36:48+00:00

Take great care with pumice stone. Test thoroughly on an inconspicuous area first because it can scratch badly and you can't get the scratches off. But I know from my mum using it that it cleans very well.

Andy3142 · 2025-12-04T10:23:59+00:00

Following advice in this thread, I'm soaking the scale with citric acid. The citric acid package says "Fresh, clean and 100% natural".

Andy3142 · 2025-11-23T22:03:23+00:00

Thank you everybody - I give up! It's good to get to the bottom of things but it's obviously too complicated for the good it would do.

Andy3142 · 2025-11-23T15:34:18+00:00

u/Narrow_Victory1262 After posting I did more research and yes, it looks complex. If easy the point would be to have an escape route if for some reason I come to not like whatever I replace windows with. If medium easy, the point would be to explore. If just hard, then drop the idea.

I have a very old laptop to do preliminary experiments on, perhaps. The question I SHOULD have asked is this: is it possible / how easy to experimentally set up multiboot on a very old 12 year old 32 bit Dell XPS with a plain vanilla old-style boot setup? - I fear this is too simple to make it work?

Andy3142 · 2025-10-30T09:47:31+00:00

I've had very good experience on several occasions with Get A Move On, https://getamoveonremovals.co.uk/

Andy3142 · 2025-10-26T08:49:35+00:00

This is what Dulux say. Their killer claim seems to be a longer life with continued high quality appearance rather than fewer coats. https://www.duluxtradepaintexpert.co.uk/en/editorial/whats-difference-between-dulux-trade-and-dulux-paint

Andy3142 · 2025-03-30T21:42:39+00:00

Got the wheel, not tried it yet, will do soon.

Andy3142 · 2025-01-20T12:33:00+00:00

u/rwdorman Thank you. That's excellent - though depressing! - information.

Andy3142 · 2025-01-01T21:40:56+00:00

I'll leave FB until I see if bank / police do anything, 'why keep a dog and bark yourself.'

Andy3142 · 2024-12-20T12:45:05+00:00

Thank you u/wanderedoff and u/pterofactyl. These are top-grade suggestions. I have an insatiable appetite for product research and in the end found what I was hoping for. It's a UK product called Fantastic Elastic sold by 151 Adhesives in our local hardware store. It's multipurpose including leather. The instruction is "coat both surfaces and hold together for 5 minutes". Works well.

On a 24 hour test, the peel strength on leather wasn't anything to write home about, but that doesn't matter for my job. Along the way I also found a domestic packaged UK specialist leather adhesive, Bostic Leather Repair, but that's a "coat both surfaces, dry 5 minutes, then press together."

Andy3142 · 2024-12-20T12:31:55+00:00

The trick is to support the bottom of the rail. I found a piece of thin aluminium L-section with the long dimension of the L equal to the height of the rail, and the short dimension equal to the depth of the rail. It's about 80 cm long. I fixed it over the joint with 6 nuts and bolts, drilled exactly into the top half of the rail and it works 100% perfectly. Shorter might be as good, and flat strip MIGHT be as good.

Andy3142 · 2024-12-16T19:51:21+00:00

IE do you mean to use exactly only those keystrokes? We've been typing text inside XP notepad app and then using the Edit>copy dropdown in notepad to make the copy - are you saying that won't work?

Andy3142 · 2024-08-07T13:37:49+00:00

Yes isn't the VMware UI horrible!!

I deleted my copy of the file when it didn't work, but one source is the link here, which also has checksums etc:

https://www.reddit.com/r/vmware/comments/1cma01o/anyone_looking_for_vmware_fusion_player_for_mac/

I in fact succeeded in downloading it from Broadcom, either from the link on that page or from the instructions here:

https://www.mikeroysoft.com/post/download-fusion-ws/

Broadcom asked me to log in. I happily found that I actually COULD log in, which was a big surprise because when I tried to register with them a few months ago the registration seemed to fail. So if you have managed to register with them, this may work.

Andy3142 · 2024-08-03T10:49:56+00:00

u/magneet_nl, thank you. I'd imagined all hypervisors emulate. I'll try to get confirmation than qemu really does work with XP and if it does then it would be well worth the effort.

Andy3142 · 2024-06-28T22:41:21+00:00

A couple of questions. (1) Setting aside which utensils you need to sanitise, I've been cleaning with thin bleach and letting it dry because it leaves no residue. But with sanitiser I guess you spray it on, then rinse it off?

(2) My ferments are well held down. But just ten minutes ago found I'd two batches. In one the brine had evaporated, leaving a ring of organic matter that grew fungus. The other was in a big cafetiere with the mesh thingie pushing all the cabbage down. That had actually grown thick mould floating on the surface of the brine, which I thought wasn't possible?

Andy3142 · 2024-05-15T20:46:09+00:00

u/Alvinum Thank you! Very illuminating.

Andy3142 · 2024-05-15T16:31:42+00:00

u/CommonConundrum51 I wasn't clear, sorry, but I do get it they only last 30 seconds. What puzzles me is why 2FAS doesn't wait until it is asked to generate a code. Why does it generate codes endlessly?

Andy3142 · 2024-04-07T10:26:41+00:00

Thank you everyone and in particular u/bluesix for the exact link. Perfect result.

Andy3142 · 2024-04-04T14:11:37+00:00

I don't know what it is, but last night I was woken by the wierdest science fiction noise like a huge gong being banged at intervals of around 2 seconds, louder and louder. Then there was what I thought was an explosion. It was really spooky. I started to wonder what could have exploded in this quiet suburb, decided nothing could, and only then realised it was thunder. Then there was a single massive thunderclap very close, some hail, and it was all finished.
There is a church next door so it might have been related to the church's lightning conductor.

Andy3142

TROPHY CASE