General notes on making the transit experience a little better.
I have made it a habit of immediately stripping clothes straight into the washing machine after using the bus, so that any bed bugs / bed bug eggs are likely to go through the dryer.
This means, though, that I need another set of clothes to wear after getting home, or else I put on PJs and end up not going out e.g. for errands.
The end result is I end up with a heck of a lot more laundry, and there’s also more wear on my clothes.
Putting backpack in a bin would probably also be a good idea.
I use an extra large (70litre) backpack liner in which to put my backpack each night, instead of a garbage bag. It is stronger, does not rustle like a garbage bag, and the roll top makes a handle so I can hang it up and also drag my backpack outside the dorm in the early morning, thus avoiding waking others.
Is it worth it? It still has not stopped me from being bitten by bed bugs. It happened again on my last Camino Frances (in a good hotel, I might add) when I had three of the telltale bites on my face. Had to take all my gear to a commercial laundromat to put everything (including my pack) DRY through the hot cycle on the dryer to ensure I’d killed everything.
But I still had a fabulous time. I left the Francés and walked a different, less busy, camino path and stayed in the municipal albergues, all of which had metal bunks with those lovely thick blue plastic mattress covers! No more bugs.
Seen some conversations on reddit where people got laid off after company got wind they don’t have a personal vehicle, even if it’s not affecting their readiness for work or making them late.
Doesn’t seem to be the case for my work.
I was asked to drive in to work this week for an important conference. I put an 8-day permit on the car.
The bus is typically reliable, but if there’s a hint that something is going wrong, e.g. live ETA display on the app didn’t connect or there’s construction on the route, it’s often best to fall back preemptively to e.g. booking a taxi.
https://www.stephenson-eng.com/project/saskatoon-civic-operations-centre/
https://www.pilingcanada.ca/saskatoon-civic-operations-centre/
Instead, Keller Canada installed 640 continuous flight auger piles for the transit facility using Soilmec R-516 and R-625 drill rigs. CFA piles are installed by drilling a continuous flight hollow stem auger into the ground, and then pressure injecting concrete through the shaft of the auger as it is extracted. This eliminates any concerns of groundwater seepage or sloughing, as the hole is never left open without support. And casings are not necessary with the CFA drilling technique. Once the CFA pile bores are completely filled with concrete, steel reinforcement cages are pushed down into the fresh concrete.
https://strasmanarch.com/project/saskatoon-civic-operations-centre-2/
The project was to provide a bus storage capacity of 224 interior and 25 exterior buses with service lanes consisting of two fuel lanes, two bus wash lanes, under carriage clean and a fare drop lane. The Maintenance and Repair areas consisted of 17 Repair Bays, 1 Quick Service Inspection Bay, 2 Steam Bays, 2 Interior Bays, 6 Body Shop Bays and 1 Paint Booth.
F**** yeah infrastructure
https://www.vdacs.virginia.gov/pdf/bb-heat1.pdf
Recent research has determined the thermal death points (the temperature at which a bed bug dies) for bed bugs and their eggs. The thermal death point is determined by two things; temperature, and exposure time. Bed bugs exposed to 113°F will die if they receive constant exposure to that temperature for 90 minutes or more. However, they will die within 20 minutes if exposed to 118°F. Interestingly, bed bug eggs must be exposed to 118°F for 90 minutes to reach 100% mortality. Note that whole room heat treatments (see below) are based on a thermal death point of 113°F, yet these treatments have been very successful. This is due to the use of powerful fans to create convection currents within the heated room. These currents heat the bed bugs very rapidly, thus increasing their mortality.
The Clothes Dryer. One of the difficulties we face eliminating infestations is treating all of the household items that bed bugs are able to infest. Insecticides cannot be applied on household items like toys, clothes, shoes, or bedding. Fortunately, a household dryer is excellent for killing bed bugs on these items. A loosely filled dryer set on “high” is capable of killing all bed bug life-stages and their eggs in 30 minutes. A dryer with a removable shelf is excellent for killing bed bugs on items that cannot be tumbled, like leather shoes, handbags, knick-knacks, even books. However, the drying time may need to increase to make sure all items reach the bed bug thermal death point.
https://myhealth.alberta.ca/alberta/Pages/Working-in-places-with-bed-bugs.aspx
Wear clothing that can be washed then dried in a hot dryer. This includes your winter coat and other outerwear (like mittens).
Light coloured clothing makes it easier to see bed bugs. Choose pants without cuffs and shoes that are smooth with no trim that bed bugs can hide under.
The bottoms of my baseboards have cracks where dust and particles get swept.
Is there a way to seal this?
https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/pesticide/pest-proofing-tips.pdf
Backer Rod: Tube-shaped material
that is used to help fill larger gaps
and cracks.
Seal crevices with sealant. Use hardware
cloth or sheet metal for the larger
structural gaps.
I flatly coudln’t go to Lakeview Church dance dec 2nd at 6:30 pm. Missed the 55 bus I saw I could use, then figured I’d go home and put a permit on the car, but SGI was switching to SGI beta and
Fine, called Comfort Cabs, 30 minute wait time.
Then my options were Ride or Uber, for $35 (each way, too.)
So, basically couldn’t make it.
Importance of having a charged phone becomes higher, not just for bus pass but to know when the next bus is arriving - don’t have car keys to get home. Frequently this is just a matter of me not remembering to plug in my phone during the day.
I set up BatteryOne on android to give me constant reminders to refill my phone below ~40%.
At 12:30 am in winter almost had the last bus on sunday miss me at the bus stop, even though I had my headlamp on - just happened to catch his eye as he went by.
Need to be doing something dramatic like actively waving the light with arm over the road to reliably flag down the bus.
need a huge polythene bag to keep winter jacket in on the hanger to avoid things falling off it
portable hand steamer might be a good option for high-risk areas of things that can’t be washed (like winter jacket).
[!success]
I wonder if microwave sterilization would be possible.I can imagine a high-power X-band transmitter that operates below skin-depth being useful against
There’s clearly huge demand for better solutions to bed bugs.
Review of microwave technologies applied to the control of bed bugs in buildings
https://cstb.hal.science/hal-04698379/
oh, yeah.
The thermal effect of microwave heating demonstrates effectiveness over all stages of the life cycle. However, the exposure levels required are very high, similar to those found in a home microwave oven. The effectiveness of direct heating of bed bugs by microwaves is severely limited by the millimeter size of the insect. The sizes are a factor of 10 to 20 smaller than the depth of microwave penetration at the 2.45 GHz frequency, which is in the order of several centimeters. Transparency from bed bugs to microwaves at this frequency would require examining the effect of higher frequencies (above 20 GHz), which was done in 2011 by a competent research team in the UK.
Moreover, results of the study suggest that if the garments or household fabrics are to be sterilized or decontaminated from bed bugs, the use of a microwave oven would be a better option because it is a quick and dry sterilization lasting no more than 30 seconds. Our results are in line with the findings of Tyrpak (2016), demonstrating microwave treatment as the best to kill all bed bugs in portable household items. When doing so, one should take into consideration the effect that temperature and time would have on the clothes or stuff being treated, as well as the possible damage to the color or contents which could be caused by utilizing the microwave oven for extended periods of time. When compared to the chemical treatments, such as pesticides, using a washing machine or a microwave oven does not leave any residual negative effect if used appropriately and these decontamination methods are completely harmless (Naylor and Boase, 2010; Martinsons, 2023; Todd, 2023).
https://researcherslinks.com/current-issues/Comparative-Evaluation-of-Some-Unconventional/14/1/12212/html
Dry heat can also be used against household pests
embedded in structures. The USDD (2010) recommends controlling bed bugs by heating an infested
room to 4458C until effective (no time period given).
Pereira et al. (2009) developed a thermal death time
curve for bed bugs showing 100% mortality from
100 min at 418C to 1 min at 498C.
Some household pests such as bed bugs, Cimex
lectularius L. (Homoptera: Cimicidae), can be controlled with hot water. Laundering infested clothes and
linens in water 4498C with detergent, followed by
20 min in a standard clothes drier (4608C) will
eliminate all life-stages (USDD 2010)
History and use of heat in pest control: a review
J.D. Hansena *, J.A. Johnsonb and D.A. Winterc
Selective heating in an RF field implies that insects are heated at a faster rate than
the commodity that surrounds them. Some workers have provided evidence that certain
species have been selectively heated to lethal temperatures under certain conditions
(NELSON and WHITNEY. 1960). NELSON and CHARITY (1972) compared the dielectric
properties of different cereals and cereal products at different frequencies and concluded
that selective heating of insects in a cereal was less likely to occur at microwave frequencies. e.g. 1-15 GHz than in the l-100 MHz range. The present experiments at 8.5 GHz,
and those of BAKER et nl. (1956) and HAMID et al. (1968) at 2.45 GHz support this
conclusion.
Physiological Injury.—As pointed out in the introduction, the lethal action of RF electric fields on insects is
believed to be principally thermal in nature. Frings (1952) noted and studied in some detail the “knockdown”
of insects when exposed to RF electric fields, and he
concluded that rapid heating in the legs could explain the
knockdown effect. Injuries noted by Whitney et al.
(1961) in stored-grain insects, after RF treatment in
wheat, lend support to this theory. The injuries were
noted in the appendages, particularly in the joints of the
legs. Injury to the histoblasts was suspected in RFtreated larvae of the yellow mealworm that developed into
adults with badly deformed or missing legs (Kadoum
et al. 1967a). Rai et al. (1971) described abnormal development in both cephalic and thoracic appendages of the
same species, after RF treatment in the larval and
pupal stages. Other types of abnormal development,
characterized by incomplete metamorphosis, were reported
by Carpenter and Livstone (1971), who exposed pupae
of the same species to 10-GHz microwave energy at levels
so low that little total body heating was observed.
Insect-Control Studies with Microwaves and Other Radiofrequency Energy123 | American Entomologist | Oxford Academic
Therefore, it is postulated
that tilt’ effective dielectric loss factor of the insect
will gradually increase at frequencies >2.45 GHz
whert’as that of the product, which is below the
critical moisture content, will not. This could lead
to mort’ t>fficientselective heating of the insect and
consequent higher mortality at a lower product
tempt’rature. Other work at 46.35 GHz by Belyaev
et al. (1990) and efforts to measure the complex
permittivity of Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decl’mlineata (Say), by Colpitts et al. (1992) over
tilt’ range from 100 MHz to 26.5 GHz have also
lwen reported, indicating renewed interest in efft>ctsat microwave and millimeter wave frequencies
High-Power Microwave Radiation as an Alternative Insect
Control Method for Stored Products
STEVEN L. HALVERSON, WENDELL E. BURKHOLDER,l TIMOTHY S. BIGELOW,2
ERIK V. NORDHEIM,3 ANDMARK E. MISENHEIMER4
This should be something that’s easy to simulate with FDTD.
Bed bug eggs feel like they should be dielectric resonators with a large loss tangent. They should heat much faster than skin when hit by a pulse, being that they have nowhere to radiate water to.
Should find model organisms with similar eggs and body water content.
Advantage over something like UV would be that it can penetrate deep into cloth. The loss tangent of cloth is very low. Skin effects might be an issue for e.g. wood or metal.
The advantage over heat would be? And over steam?
one of the documents stated it is almost impossible to remove bed bug eggs from a bagless vacuum canister, said for cleaning a bagged vacuum should be used. I don’t see why this is the case.
nice general recommendation, I used a plastic gift card wrapped in paper towel to get debris and grunge out from cracks, baseboards, etc.
At the time of this writing, practically all natural bed bug populations collected in Virginia
have been found to be a least somewhat resistant to pyrethroid insecticides
https://www.vdacs.virginia.gov/pdf/bb-biology1.pdf
https://help.cornell-ipm.org/hc/en-us/articles/26282960576791-4-Vacuuming-to-Get-Rid-of-Bed-Bugs
great resource.
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/pest-control-tips/bedbugs-how-do-i-get-rid-them.html
another great resource.
Bedbugs: how do I prevent an infestation?
another great resource.
- something to scrape along mattress seams and other crevices (like an old credit card cut into a long triangle: use it in a sweeping motion in narrow spaces to chase bedbugs out of hiding)
- alcohol, glass-cleaner, or baby wipes for checking if stains are bedbug droppings (if spots dissolve into a reddish brown colour when rubbed, the spots could be bedbug droppings)