Your heat treatment is scheduled. The hardest part, deciding to deal with this, is behind you. Now comes the practical question: what do you need to do before the crew shows up? Proper preparation is the single biggest thing you can control that affects how well your treatment goes. Hot Bugz sends every client a prep guide after booking, but this walkthrough explains the reasoning behind each step so you understand what matters most, what’s flexible, and what people commonly get wrong.
What to Remove from Your Home
Heat treatment brings your home’s interior to 130°F to 140°F and holds it there for hours. Most of your belongings handle this fine. A few categories don’t, and those need to come out before treatment day.
Anything with a low melting point tops the list. Candles, wax melts, crayons, and wax-sealed items will liquify. Vinyl records warp. Chocolate and candy melt. Cosmetics in plastic containers, especially lipsticks and certain creams, can soften or separate. If you have a collection of vinyl records or a box of nice chocolates, move them to your car or a neighbor’s place the night before.
Aerosol cans need to come out. Pressurized containers exposed to high heat pose a rupture risk. This includes hairspray, spray paint, cooking spray, and cleaning products in aerosol form. Standard screw-cap bottles and pump sprays are fine to leave.
Medications should be reviewed. Most pill-form medications in sealed bottles tolerate the treatment temperatures, but anything that specifically says “store below 77°F” or “refrigerate” needs to be removed. Insulin, certain biologics, and some compounded medications fall into this category. When in doubt, bag them and take them with you.
Live plants won’t survive the heat. Move them to a porch, a friend’s house, or your car (weather permitting). Fresh produce sitting on the counter should come out too. Canned goods and sealed pantry items can stay.
What to Leave in Place
This is where people most often over-prepare. The instinct is to bag everything, strip the beds, empty the closets, and essentially move out for the day. Don’t do that. It’s counterproductive.
Leave your bedding on the bed. Sheets, pillows, comforters, mattress pads: all of it stays. The heat needs to penetrate these items to kill any bugs or eggs hiding in the fabric. If you strip the bed and bag everything, those items don’t get treated. You’d then need to wash and dry every piece on high heat separately, which is exactly the extra work you’re paying to avoid.
Leave clothing in dressers and closets. Open the dresser drawers so air circulates through them, and open closet doors for the same reason. Clothing on hangers is fine. Folded clothing in drawers is fine. The heated air will reach it.
Leave furniture in place. The crew will position fans and heaters to ensure airflow reaches behind and underneath your furniture. If a piece needs to be moved, they’ll handle it. Rearranging your room beforehand can actually interfere with their equipment placement plan.
Pets, Fish, and Living Things
All pets need to be out of the home for the full duration of the treatment and for at least an hour or two after, while the space cools down. Dogs, cats, birds, reptiles, hamsters, anything alive. Make arrangements the day before so you’re not scrambling on treatment morning.
Fish tanks are a special case. The water in an aquarium will heat up during treatment, which can be lethal for fish at the temperatures involved. If the tank is small enough to move, take it out of the home entirely. For larger tanks that can’t be moved, talk to your technician during the scheduling call. There are sometimes options involving aeration and insulation that can protect the tank, but these need to be planned in advance, not figured out at 7 a.m. on treatment day.
If you have a home garden with grow lights or hydroponic equipment, those systems should be shut down and unplugged before treatment.
Electronics and Appliances
Laptops, desktop computers, televisions, gaming consoles, and phones can all stay in the home. Consumer electronics are designed and tested to withstand temperatures well above 140°F during shipping and warehouse storage. Your TV rode across the country in a metal shipping container that regularly exceeded these temperatures. It’ll be fine in your living room.
The one precaution worth taking: if you have any device with a visibly swollen lithium battery, remove it from the home. A compromised battery exposed to high heat is a fire risk. If the battery looks normal, leave the device where it is.
Refrigerators and freezers can stay plugged in. They maintain their own internal temperature and the contents inside will be unaffected. Ovens, dishwashers, and washing machines stay as well. Unplug any appliance you wouldn’t normally leave plugged in, like a space heater or a window AC unit, but major appliances are fine.
The Morning of Treatment
Aim to have your prep done the night before. Treatment in the morning should be simple: take your pets, grab whatever personal items you need for the day (medications, keys, wallet, a change of clothes if you want one), and leave. The crew typically arrives between 7 and 9 a.m. and will do a final walk-through with you before they start setting up.
A few things to handle before you walk out the door. Make sure all exterior doors and windows are closed and locked except for the entry the crew is using. If you have a security system, either disarm it or provide the code to the technician, since they’ll need to move through the home freely. If you live in a building with a property manager, let them know in advance that a pest control crew will be on site.
Leave your thermostat alone. The crew controls the temperature with their own equipment. Your HVAC system should be turned off to prevent it from fighting the heat or distributing untreated air from other zones.
What People Get Wrong Most Often
The number one mistake Hot Bugz sees is over-preparation. People spend an entire weekend bagging every item in their home, which exhausts them, delays the treatment if they’re not done in time, and actually reduces the treatment’s effectiveness by sealing items away from the heat.
The second most common mistake is removing the mattress. Some people assume the mattress needs to be thrown away before treatment. It doesn’t. The heat treatment is specifically designed to treat your mattress in place, killing every bug and egg inside it. A treated mattress is completely safe to sleep on that same night.
The third is forgetting about the garage or storage unit. If you’ve moved items from your bedroom to the garage while dealing with the infestation, those items may harbor bugs that won’t be reached during treatment of the main living space. Let your technician know about any items that were relocated so they can advise on whether those need treatment too.
Your Hot Bugz Prep Checklist at a Glance
To make this easy to reference on the day before treatment:
Remove: candles, wax items, aerosol cans, vinyl records, chocolate and candy, heat-sensitive medications, live plants, fresh produce, and items with swollen batteries.
Open: all dresser drawers, closet doors, and cabinet doors in treatment areas.
Arrange: pet care for the full day, fish tank plan if applicable, security system access for the crew.
Leave: bedding on beds, clothing in place, furniture where it is, electronics plugged in, refrigerator running.
Morning of: take pets and personal essentials, turn off HVAC, close windows, and hand off access to the crew.