COVID-19 RESPONSE
A Healthy Home is dedicated and committed to protecting and serving each and every one of our customers. During this time, we will continue to provide essential services and continue to follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations. Trust A Healthy Home to protect your home from pests and keeping your family safe and secure from public health threats.
FAQs
Bed Bugs
Q. What are Bed bugs?
A. Bed bugs are parasitic insects that resemble flat ticks. Adult Bed bugs may grow to 1/4”. They hide in the corners of rooms, behind walls, in beds and furnishings. Bed bugs come out at night and feed on human blood. While feeding, they inject a tiny amount of their saliva into the skin to keep the blood from coagulating. The females must feed 5 times before laying up to 5 eggs a day as many as 300 in a lifetime. The eggs hatch every 8-10 days.
Q. Where do Bed bugs come from, I've never heard of them?
A. Bed bugs have been invading our homes again after many years of absence from this country. People are traveling more to exotic locals, and we don't use DDT anymore to eliminate them (for obvious reasons).
Q. Why can't I use something from the internet or the hardware store to kill them myself?
A. Bed bugs are not hard to kill. Unfortunately, bombs and sprays that are available to residents are frequently insufficient to kill them all, and their eggs. With Bed bugs, even one viable female left alive can reinfest an entire house in a matter of weeks. The nests can be anywhere in the room, including the walls, which commercial products cannot penetrate. This is why exterminators usually do anywhere from 2-5 treatments.
Q. Why are they attacking me/us? I keep a clean house?
A. Bed bugs do not discriminate by neighborhood, income, or how clean your home is, they are only interested in one thing, their next meal. They do, however, prefer some people to others.
Q. Will my apartment/condo management pay for A Healthy Home to treat my Bed bug infestation?
A. Most management companies have a contract with a regular pest control company. Ask, but if you want a healthier way to kill your bugs, you may have to pay for our service yourself, and many do just that, for peace of mind!
Q. Are Bed bug bites harmful?
A. Although Bed bugs bites are not normally harmful, most people become allergic to the bites just as the Bed bugs have established their colony in your home. These bites then leave itchy bumps or welts that can last 1-2 weeks without treatment. Most of the harm is psychological. Just the idea of blood sucking bugs crawling on the Bed at night is frightening to most people, keeping them up at night.
Q. How do you kill the Bed bugs?
A. A Healthy Home has a simple solution that won't require people to throw out their furniture, have all of their clothing bagged or dry cleaned and their lives disrupted by this annoying pest. First, we use our industrial vacuum on carpeting to remove and kill any Bed bugs or eggs which may be around the bed, box, or the surrounding floor.
Next, we apply our special Dual Action Non-Hazardous Insecticides. Most infestations are completely removed with 1 to 2 treatments. A Healthy Home can retreat your home as soon as necessary, not wait the usual 2 weeks between treatments that companies use toxic pesticides have to by law. We warranty our work because it works.
Dust Mites
Q. How often should a mattress be cleaned?
A. Dust mites thrive on the skin flakes we shed every night. The recommended service interval is once every six months.
Q. Why can't I just vacuum my own mattress?
A. Traditional household or commercial vacuums do not have the power to remove the highly resilient dust mites and other harmful debris that are deeply embedded in the mattress. And, they do not utilize the all important germ killing UV-C light*, the key to effective disinfection.
Q. How long does the cleaning process take?
A. It depends on the size of mattress, but between 15-20 minutes for a twin mattress and about 30 minutes for a king mattress.
Q. Can mattress cleaning cure my allergy?
A. No, it doesn’t offer any cure, but it will help to reduce the severity and frequency of allergies. Many of our customers have found that their particular allergy disappears altogether and in the case of asthmatics, about 85% of sufferers are allergic to house dust mite droppings, so the chances of us helping an asthma sufferer is very high.
Q. Can an old mattress be cleaned effectively?
A. Yes, most definitely. Mattresses that are old will have much higher levels of dust mites and droppings, dead skin, fungal spores, bacteria and germs. This will also apply to hand me down ones as well. Our process is extremely effective and will make them clean and fresh again.
Q. Do protective mattress covers work?
A. There have been studies that show them not to work effectively. Also, from our experience, whenever we have tested a mattress with a cover, the mattress has always tested positive for contamination.
Q. Is there a dust mite season, as with pollen or molds? Are the summer months tougher on people with dust mite allergies because of the higher humidity?
A. It may be higher in the summer in many climates because of the warmth and higher humidity. But people who are sensitive to dust mites often will have symptoms all year-round. And in the wintertime, when people spend more time indoors and keep windows and doors closed, dust mite particles are often still in the house, which can still be a problem.