Burnsville Company Sees Big Opportunity in Frying Bed Bugs
By Richard Chin - Pioneer Press - April 3, 2008
For 45 years, TEMP-AIR of Burnsville has supplied construction sites with portable heating and cooling equipment, becoming the largest company of its type in the country. Now, it’s turning its sights to a new venture: baking bed bugs.
The company sees big business in the little bugs, by creating portable room heaters and heating chambers with a 120-degree environment - hot enough to fry the pests.
They are rolling out a line of products they hope to market to everyone from pest-control companies to furniture-rental businesses to theaters - anyone who might be plagued by the little suckers and the lawsuits that inevitably follow infestations.
"This is going to be the top-of-the-line bedbug heater," said national sales manager Greg Grabow, describing a shiny dishwasher-sized electrical heater designed to be discreetly wheeled into a hotel room, dorm room or bedroom.
Turn it on, let the room heat to 120 to 140 degrees for six to eight hours, and the bedbugs should be toast, company officials said. That's hot enough to kill the bugs but not hot enough to damage structures or electronic equipment in residential settings.
Grabow said TEMP-AIR is one of two companies in the United States developing such equipment.
The company collaborated with researchers around the country to create the technology, which has been used in trials in the past couple of years on infestations ranging from a dormitory at Texas AM University to a local apartment building.
"This is a hotel here in Minneapolis, 15th story," Grabow said, displaying a photo of a TEMP-AIR machine in a room.
"It's a very famous, large chain of hotels," said Raj Hulasare, a senior scientist and product manager for the company.
On another job, the company set up a portable heated chamber at a Job Corps dormitory site that had a bedbug problem. Students were allowed to bake luggage they were taking on Christmas break to kill any bedbugs hoping to hitch a ride home.
Grabow and Hulasare said they think heat is the solution to the bedbug problem because it avoids the environmental and health concerns surrounding chemical pesticides. Treating with heat allows the room to be inhabited almost immediately afterward, they said.
Another advantage: Clothing and other possessions that might be infested don't have to be moved out of the room.
On Wednesday, Dan Mizer, associate director of residence life at Texas AM, brought bedbug-sniffing dogs to the school's infested dorm, at a cost of $1,185 a day, to check the room treated by TEMP-AIR. The canine verdict: No more bedbugs.
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