Fleas can be an absolute pain and if not taken care of can become increasingly worse. Typically, any temperature over 35 degrees Celsius can have a damaging effect on fleas. This temperature won’t kill them straight away and it’ll take several days in these types of conditions to kill them. If you’re wanting to kill fleas quicker than this, it’s recommended to use heats of 103 degrees celsius which will typically kill them within an hour.
Remember to act fast when you have fleas indoors, fleas love to inhabit both inside and outside depending on the time of year. They look for areas that have a base temperature of around 21 degrees celsius this makes them thrive and start breeding. Throughout the winter months, they’ll migrate indoors and try to nest and bread, stopping this as soon as possible is a vital step in controlling your flea issue.
Treating fleas with heat has loads of benefits behind it. Heat treatment won’t only kill the currently living fleas but also their eggs and larvae. This is great prevention for them reappearing and I totally recommend anyone to use heat treatment on fleas as pest control.
Another benefit to using heat is that it’s natural. Using harsh pesticides can be harmful to yourself and the environment your around. What sounds worse to you? Using heat, or using a harsh chemical to control your flea problem?
How to Kill Fleas with Heat
We’ve now discussed that heat can kill fleas, but what are the techniques used to do such a thing? Below are a few different methods and it depends on where your fleas are and what material they’re trying to inhabit.
Washer and Dryer
The first one we’ll discuss is the washer and dryer method, I thought this would be the best place to start as most people have access to one another.
You’ll first want to start with washing your material in a washing machine at a high temperature. Use plenty of washing detergents, the mix between the hot water, detergent, and the spinning cycle will shake and kill most of the fleas. Or alternatively, send them down the sewer.
The next step is just an extra precaution and I think you should do it anyway as it’ll get rid of any of the “lucky” fleas which survived the wash. You’ll now want to put your infected material in a hot dry. The temperature of the dryer will be hot enough to kill any leftover fleas or flea eggs. Beware that this may sink the material you’re trying to disinfect. If you’re not happy with the result, I recommend you repeat the process until you are.
ZappaBug
A ZappaBug is specifically designed to use heat for disinfecting most materials that have fleas, pupae, or eggs. They’re super simple to use and only requires you to put the items in the ZappaBug heating unit and leave it there for around an hour. The ZappaBug will now heat up to around 60 degrees celsius which is hot enough to kill all fleas and eggs.
After disinfecting the object with heat using the ZappaBug unit, depending on the item’s material it is a good idea to deep clean it. Deep cleaning the object will remove any dead fleas or eggs. As you now know the object which you’ve disinfected from fleas is a breeding house for them, you should use preventions like flea spray. Doing this will ensure that they won’t be coming back to this object as they’ll be a deterrent.
Something to remember, fleas at 60 degrees will die in around 10 minutes but it’s recommended that you embed the object inside of the heating unit for up to an hour for the best results. You can also purchase ZaapaBug rooms, this is big enough to disinfect large household items such as sofas and tables.
Steam Cleaner
Using a steamer is possibly the most common way that pest control companies use when clearing fleas from an area or an object. Most steamers can reach temperatures of around 100 degrees celsius which is more than enough to kill and fleas, larvae, or eggs. It can kill them instantly but is recommended to be cleaned several times with a steam cleaner just to be sure that you’ve killed all fleas depending on their development stages.
Steam cleaners are greatly beneficial to use when wanting to disinfect something from fleas. It’s also natural and hasn’t got any harsh chemicals involved, so it’s completely safe to use around kids or pets. Also, other than removing the fleas you’ll be left with clean objects and you’ll be eliminating any other allergens and bacteria.
Does Heat Make Fleas Worse?
Yes and no, heat can be deadly to fleas if they’re in that constant environment. But like most animals or insects they have a survival instinct. As soon as they feel too hot, they’ll look for cooler places to nest and breed.
So this might result in them wanting to breed inside your house because throughout the summer months it may be cooler than outside. However, it’s also the same the other way around. If it’s too cold outside, they’ll want to come in and nest because of the warmth.
Will Heat kill Fleas in a Car?
As you can tell, throughout this article heat can kill fleas. If it’s a hot summer’s day and your car reaches temperatures that kill fleas which is possibly anything above 35 degrees celsius (depending on how long they are in there).
If you’re looking to get rid of fleas from inside your car, then it is often said that using a flea bomb in your car is the ideal way to do it. If you’re going to use a flea bomb, make sure you don’t re-open the car for 48 hours after putting it in there.
Another good tip is to also remove anything removable and deep clean it with either a steam cleaner or by using the washing machine and dryer method that is mentioned above.
