The Infested Home Entry and Exit SOP

Purpose

This procedure lets a technician work inside a home with bed bugs or German cockroaches and leave without carrying any out. The insect does not harm the tech; it harms the next customer, the tech's family and the shop's trucks. The procedure controls the three things that do the carrying: what goes in, where it is set down, and what comes out. A step fails when an insect is found on gear, and the failure has one response: that item is sealed and treated before it goes anywhere near the truck cab or the next job.

For how each insect travels and why a single hitchhiker matters, see related: Bed Bugs, Cockroaches, and Not Taking Them Home.

Scope

Covers: any indoor service call at a home where bed bugs or German cockroaches are reported, suspected at booking, or discovered on arrival, including apartments adjacent to a known problem unit.

Does not cover:

• Outdoor-only work at the same address, which needs no part of this procedure.
• Hauling infested furniture or appliances away, which needs the item wrapped by the hauler or the pest professional before it moves.
• Applying any pesticide. Technicians do not spray gear, homes or trucks; that is a licensed pest professional working to the product label.
• Sewage-contact jobs, which add their own hygiene steps. See related: The Sewage Contact Hygiene SOP.

Roles and responsibilities

Procedure

1. Ask at booking and flag the job. The office asks every indoor caller whether there is any current bed bug or cockroach activity and whether the home has been treated recently, then records the answer, the affected rooms and the location of the equipment on the work order. Acceptance: the work order carries a yes or no, and a yes carries rooms and any re-entry time the pest company gave. What wrong looks like: a blank field, or a yes with no rooms. Stop rule: dispatch does not release the job until the field is filled. Hazard: a home treated within the last day may carry fresh residue; book the visit after the re-entry interval the pest company or the product label gave, and if nobody knows it, wait until the next day.

   OFFICE: Before we send someone, any bugs in the
           home right now? Bed bugs or roaches?
   CUSTOMER: Bed bugs. The exterminator came Tuesday.
   OFFICE: Thanks, that helps us. Which rooms?
   CUSTOMER: Both bedrooms.
   OFFICE: Did they say when people can be back in?
   CUSTOMER: Four hours after.
   OFFICE: Good. The furnace is in the hall closet?
           The tech brings a sealed kit and keeps it
           off the furniture. Just clear a path.
   

2. Pack a minimal kit at the truck. Put only the tools and parts for this job into a hard plastic tote with a latching lid. Leave the fabric tool bag, jacket, clipboard and anything foam or cloth in the truck. Acceptance: the tote holds only items on the job list and nothing fabric goes inside. What wrong looks like: the everyday bag carried in "just for the meter". Stop rule: go back and repack. Hazard: stage on the curb side of the truck, away from traffic, and lift the loaded tote with your legs rather than reaching across the bed.

3. Put shoe covers on at the threshold. Fit disposable shoe covers on both shoes at the door before stepping inside, and carry a sealable bag for them. Acceptance: both covers on before the first step in. What wrong looks like: a torn cover, or covers forgotten until halfway down the hall. Stop rule: step back out, replace them, continue. Hazard: shoe covers are slippery on hard floors and stairs; walk deliberately, use the handrail, and remove them before climbing an attic or a ladder, because they defeat a ladder's foot grip.

4. Set gear down only where insects are not. Place the tote on a bare hard floor at least three feet from beds, couches, upholstered chairs and the wall behind them, or on a light-colored plastic sheet you brought. Keep the lid shut between uses. Acceptance: nothing you brought touches a bed, upholstery or carpet beside a bed, and the lid is closed whenever your hands are out of it. What wrong looks like: the tablet set on the couch to take a signature. Stop rule: that item goes to step 7 inspection immediately and then into a sealed bag. Hazard: infested homes are often cluttered; do not reach blind into piles, which can hide sharps, and use a flashlight to look before your hand goes in.

5. Work without body contact with harborage. If furniture blocks the equipment, ask the customer to move it, or move it yourself wearing disposable sleeves or a coverall, and kneel on a plastic sheet rather than the floor beside a bed. Acceptance: no part of your clothing touches a bed or upholstered piece. What wrong looks like: kneeling against a mattress to reach a baseboard unit. Stop rule: that clothing is bagged and treated at step 9 before the next call. Hazard: opening a heavily infested appliance compartment disturbs droppings and shed skins, which are asthma triggers; keep your face back from the opening, and a tech with asthma wears an N95 under the shop's 29 CFR 1910.134 program or hands the compartment work to someone else.

6. Bag everything that leaves the home, inside the home. Failed parts, old filters, packaging and the warranty return go into clear sealable plastic bags before they cross the threshold, double-bagged where an edge could tear through. Acceptance: every outbound item is sealed indoors, and nothing in cardboard leaves loose. What wrong looks like: a failed control board dropped into its original carton for the van. Stop rule: put the carton in a bag at the curb and treat the bag as possibly infested. Hazard: sheet metal and board edges cut; handle parts by their edges and use cut-resistant gloves for the bagging.

7. Inspect everything on the way out. Outside the door on a light surface, remove the shoe covers into their bag, then inspect the tote, each tool, the sealed bags, your cuffs, hems, shoes and kneeling sheet with a flashlight, paying attention to seams, latches and corners. Acceptance: zero insects found on any item. What wrong looks like: a live bug, a cast skin, or a cockroach in the tote. Stop rule: that item goes into a sealed bag that rides in the truck bed or a sealed bin, never the cab; the tech tells the office before the next call and the item goes to step 8. Hazard: work in daylight or under a work light so you are not crouched in a dark stairwell, and crush an insect rather than spraying anything on it.

8. Treat any flagged item before it is used again. Fabric and items that tolerate heat go through a clothes dryer on high for at least 30 minutes, which EPA guidance gives for bed bugs. Hard gear goes into a portable heat chamber until a probe thermometer at the center of the load reads at least 118 F and holds it for 20 minutes, or into a freezer holding 0 F or colder for at least four days. Acceptance: time and temperature logged for each item. What wrong looks like: a chamber that never brings the center of a packed load up to temperature. Stop rule: extend the run until the center reads, or freeze instead. Hazard: remove batteries and battery-powered tools before heating, because a heated lithium cell can fail and catch fire, and let frozen electronics warm sealed in their bag so condensation does not form inside them.

9. Change and treat clothing before the next home on a positive day. If step 7 found anything or step 5 failed, the tech changes into spare work clothes at the truck, seals the worn set in a bag, and dries it on high for 30 minutes before washing. On a clean day the clothes go through the dryer on high at the end of the shift before entering the household wash. Acceptance: bagged clothes reach the dryer the same day. What wrong looks like: worn clothes left on the bedroom floor at home. Stop rule: dry them on high before anything else touches them. Hazard: this step protects the tech's household, who never chose the exposure.

The record this produces

The work order carries the booking flag, affected rooms and re-entry time from step 1, and the tech closes it with three fields: exit inspection result (clean or found), what was found and on which item, and treatment applied with time and temperature. A "found" result creates a note on the truck's record, and the owner checks that truck's sticky monitor traps on the next two weekly checks before clearing it. The shop reads these records when a later customer reports an infestation and asks who visited, and the answer it needs is "a tech who followed a written procedure and logged a clean exit."

Worked pass

A furnace no-heat call at an apartment, flagged at booking with bed bugs in both bedrooms, treated four days earlier. Technician: Sam.

• Step 1, pass. Flag yes, rooms both bedrooms, re-entry four hours, long past. Furnace in the hall closet.
• Step 2, pass. Hard tote with meter, screwdrivers, a replacement flame sensor and a foam kneeling pad. Fabric bag and jacket left in the truck.
• Step 3, pass. Covers on at the door.
• Step 4, pass. Tote on the hall's bare floor, about six feet from the nearest bedroom door, lid shut between uses.
• Step 5, pass. Knelt on the foam pad on the hall floor, nothing touching the bedroom furniture. The closet held no insect activity.
• Step 6, pass. Old flame sensor sealed in a clear bag in the hall.
• Step 7, fail. On the stoop, the flashlight showed one adult bed bug in the seam of the foam kneeling pad. The pad had been on the hall floor, not near a bed, which shows why inspection is not optional even when every placement rule was followed. Sam sealed the pad in a bag, put it in the bed toolbox, and called the office before driving on.
• Step 8, pass after the fail. The pad is foam, so it went into the shop chest freezer, logged at minus 2 F, for four days.
• Step 9, pass. Sam changed at the truck and bagged the worn clothes, which went in the shop dryer on high for 30 minutes that afternoon.

The owner checked that truck's cab and parts-bin monitors on the next two weekly checks, both zero, and cleared it. The shop also switched to a smooth vinyl kneeling pad, because the foam pad's seam was the only harborage the kit carried in.

References

• EPA, bed bug guidance on heat (dryer) and freezing treatment of belongings
• University of Minnesota Extension, research on lethal temperature and duration for bed bug life stages
• 29 CFR 1910.134, respiratory protection
• See related: Bed Bugs, Cockroaches, and Not Taking Them Home
• See related: Allergy and Asthma Triggers in Customer Homes