Willing to do just about anything

by Tommy Underhill
January 5, 2018

In an industry filled with unproven companies, products, and methods, Dr. Michael R. Linford could be considered the father of modern thermal pest eradication. He was first to commercialize today’s approach using heat for structural pest control beginning in 1989. Since then, he has continued to advance and refine his techniques, equipment, and training programs.

Today, Dr. Linford has pioneered a process that delivers proven efficacy without requiring costly equipment, licensing, or poisonous chemicals. GreenTech Heat is a methodology that can be administered by the maintenance staff when the need arises. Infestations are no longer free to pester us while we wait for an exterminator.

Bed bugs are a pest people are willing to do just about anything to get rid of. In December of 2017, a woman near Cincinnati, Ohio accidentally set fire to a multi-family home while trying to rid her infestation of bedbugs with rubbing alcohol. Three people were taken to a hospital and ten were displaced from the residence.

Just around Thanksgiving, a 13-year-old boy trying to kill a bed bug with alcohol and a match sparked a blaze that was responsible for setting an apartment complex on fire that displaced eight people and caused $300,000 in damage.

Unfortunately, the inappropriate application of heat is nothing new when combating these pests. A New Jersey house fire that ignited in 2013 was blamed on a homeowner’s battle against bedbugs. Woodbury, New Jersey Fire Marshal Joseph Buono relates that quick Internet remedies for killing bedbugs are a “catastrophe in the making.” He says that afflicted homeowners should “call the professionals.”

Killing bed bugs with heat is a proven methodology with equipment and training that is safe to people, pets, and property yet can be 100% lethal to insects of all life stages.

All organisms have a specific thermal death point, and many of those inhabiting our structures fall within the efficacy range of the GreenTech Heat process. This application of heat to a structure can eradicate or reduce targeted organisms to acceptable levels without damaging the structure and its contents in the treatment. Unlike treatment with fumigation or some chemicals, the structure is available for immediate human occupation.

The GreenTech Heat process is more than just hot air. It is “active” heating. This is primarily convective heating that deploys a combination of heaters and air movers which results in decreased odors and the reduction and/or elimination of many biological concerns such as

• dust mites and associated allergens
• insect pests including bed bugs, cockroaches, spiders, and termites
• viruses
• bacteria
• vocs

The GreenTech Heat process is especially beneficial to hotels and motels, furnished apartments, camps, college dorms, and low-income housing. In the case of a bed bug infestation, there is no need to discard or dispose of mattresses, box springs, bedding, carpeting, furnishings, or guests’ belongings when properly treated with the GreenTech Heat process! The GreenTech Heat process even kills pests in computers and electronics.

Although heat is lethal to all insects and arachnoids, bed bugs are the primary target for GreenTech Heat. While treatment can take place without any pesticides, active heat combined with desiccant dusts and liquid pesticides is synergistic. Combining heat and desiccants establishes a perimeter barrier upon conclusion of treatment, limiting the ability of bedbugs to return to the previously-infested zone.