Rowhouse Neighbor with Bed Bugs - Can we Improve Exclusion on Party Wall?
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Anonymous
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I'm looking for some ideas. We recently discovered we had bed bugs. It is a brand new issue, two weeks ago. We have also determined that our neighbor has had them for a long time (they told us). In the the opinion of the exterminator, evidence suggests we have individuals wandering over from the neighbor.
We are ready to perform a whole house heat treatment, which can be very effective and knocking out our problem...in isolation. However, this can easily be a wasted $1500 if the source of the issue isn't addressed. We don't yet know if our neighbor can be brought on board. I am wondering if anyone has suggestions or experience with improving our protection against penetration of pests from one rowhouse to the next. We have a shared solid brick wall, which is solid but also old so there could be vulnerabilities in the old and rather soft brick. I assume there's some kind of shared space whatever void is between ceilings and the roofs (flat). I'm having thoughts along the line of adding a layer of drywall on the "party wall" and trying to redo the ancient and not-tight closets that sit up against that well. That doesn't address roof space or floors, however - would redoing the floor to hardwood help? Has anyone dealt with this or had a client who did? Any thoughts? I'm sorry for my imprecise question. I owe it to myself to try and figure this out ... and for the next person, if there is a next person. I feel like we're finally up against a systemic issue we have to address. |
Anonymous
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I am not sure you will be able to make a super tight seal good enough to keep out the bugs. Treating his house and yours with heat treatment is the best bet. failing that, you should look into pesticide treatments to see if you can create a chemical barrier.
There are also various pro-active measures you can take, e.g. tape/containers on the legs of beds, sofas etc, dusting diatomaceous earth in every crevice, regular vacuuming etc that could reduce your risks. sorry you are going through this. |
Anonymous
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OMG. I am SO SORRY that you are dealing with this. We had bedbugs in our row house 7 years ago, and I never knew where they came from, but I always wondered if they had come from the crazy lady next door. This must be very stressful for you.
I have no good advice, but I do have encouraging words: You will get through this! Try not to read the bedbug forums too much as they will drive you bonkers. You will get through this. |
Anonymous
| Ugh. I would offer to pay to have their half heat treated too. And hopefully that would shame them into chipping in, but if not, at least you could be confident that they are all gone. |
Anonymous
| Insecticides don't work. Get the heat treatment and offer to chip in for theirs. |
Anonymous
| This happened to us. The house next door ended up being the problem, but they refused to do anything about it and would not talk to us. We tried to go through the city to get it cleared up, but the program ran out of money that would have taken care of the issue pro bono. $15,000 later we moved. Took a huge loss on the house due to us disclosing it and now still are bouncing back. It was horrible. |
Anonymous
This will probably more effective in results and price than trying to seal off your house. |
Anonymous
OP here: Thank you. 
OP declares this an appropriate level of drama. Yes, right now this is a low-level problem, but it's psychology creepy and physically uncomfortable. Any kind of in situ war, without a heat treatment, requires dismantling furniture, removing all clutter, and obsessively cleaning and treating. This is how I have spent every afternoon for the past two weeks. It is my free time, along with feeling I can relax in my home. I just restructured my whole work schedule to spend afternoons with my now-school age child, and this is how my time is actually being spent. That's okay, since it is potentially a temporary situation. However, I can't ensure it will be temporary if the problem is located outside my physical and legal control. I also can't do something grandiose like rent or sell, because the moral and legal obligation to disclose makes that very unlikely. In a worst case scenario, I can live with the situation or I can double-pay mortgage/rent. Not being dramatic, I'm actually in full on analysis mode trying to figure out what my limited options are. My renovation question is me trying to figure out if there's some kind of due diligence / internal project I can fund that would resolve this catch-22. If neighbor can't or won't respond. If anyone with a better grasp on construction does have a reply, I will note your response. My question is too weird for me to be able to research it easily. Unfortunately, I don't have a precise enough idea of how houses (in general, rows in particular) are put together. I'm inclined to offer to foot the neighbor's bill, which DH thinks is weird and probably off-putting to suggest (it *is* kinda patronizing). Has anyone done that, and did it go over well? |
Anonymous
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You know, the thing is insecticides don't work to eradicate bedbugs, but.....
I have to wonder if they'd be an effective barrier. The heat treatment people and the message boards will tell you insecticides will only chase the bedbugs further into hiding, and then they'll just come out later, since the stupid little jerks can live what, 18 months?, without feeding. But if you heat treated, then used diatomaceous earth AND insecticides to create a barrier from the infected row house to your row house, I think you'd be ok. You'll never be able to seal up the connection between the two houses. But say you sealed AND used a chemical barrier? I think that might keep them over on the other side. And look, I'm no lawyer or anything close. But I think if you treated, and sealed off your side, I don't think you'd have anything to disclose. You've solved the problem on your side, right? |
Anonymous
OP here - did you take this loss with a current bed problem? Or did disclosure after resolution still pose a significant barrier. Was the neighbor a cause of recurrent issues? |
Anonymous
| Look into Cimexa (silica gel) rather than diatomaceous earth, as a supplement to heat treatment. It's much more effective than DE and not toxic. We had bedbugs a few years ago, which may well have come through the party wall, and after we did the heat treatment we put Cimexa down along the baseboards of the party wall, as well as in climb-up bed protectors, as a preventive measure. It helped to give me some peace of mind. |
Anonymous
| We had this and we eventually managed, with the help of our pest control company, to shame/nag the neighbors into doing the heat treatment with us. It worked and it solved the problem in one day. |
Anonymous
We had the problem in our row house years ago. Did chemical treatment once, then heat treatment and used diatomaceous earth along the floorboards of the adjoining wall. We also put it in small containers on bed feet. It worked. I know what you mean, OP, about the psychological drama. It’s been about 8 years, and I’m still vigilant. Prefer to stand on Metro and in waiting rooms. Let all our luggage sit in the trunk for a few hours when we get back from the beach. It never ends. |
Anonymous
| Sorry to bring this up, but if insects are finding ways to get through your party, you may also have a big code issue in terms of fire safety. I'd call a building inspector and get it checked. |
Anonymous
| Party wall, I mean. |