Steam cleaners for dealing with woodworms/ wood eating beetles?

Nov 16, 2015 07:29:05

Hai everybody,

this is my first question as a newb in the world of Permies:)

I've made a small bedroom space inside my living area by using recycled wood and new (BUT bug infected) split bamboo rolls.
I do like the looks of it, but now I have to deal with the woodworm or some kind of wood eating beetles.

I live in the Netherlands, now it's mostly rainy wheater, and I don't have much gardenspace for any outside storage nor space to fix it, so it has to be done indoors.
Throwing it away is not an optinion (I really want to try to reuse them), so what to do next?
I dont have any experience with Borax or other solutions, but this is what I thought:

How about using a steam cleaner for killing the wood worms and maybe some amount of alcohol (for me) afterwards

Any thoughts about it?

Thank you so much!
Take care.
Rosa Bottel

PS. sorry for the bad English

Nov 19, 2015 13:04:18

Apparently heat treatment works for bed bugs. So you are probably onto something for your beetles. You might find other suggestions from this thread https://permies.com/t/4570/bugs/Organic-bed-bug-control that you could apply. At least most bed bug remedies are intended for indoor use.

Sorry, I don't have personal experience to work from here.

Nov 19, 2015 14:58:45

Hey Casie,
thanks for your comment and link in your reply.
I considered borax, but, like Paul said in this threat: it is toxic. And the bamboo rolls are in the sleeping/living/ dining/ kitchen area. (well.. at least we have the bath tub in a different room)
With a nosy 8month old puppy, borax isn't the best solution I'm affraid. My second thought is that my idea for using hot steam will bend the split bamboo wood and will damage it also, but in a different way than de woodbeetles are doing already.

Yesterday the manager of the gardencentre (where I bought the bamboo) contacted me,
he would like to take back the Bad Bamboo roll and is willing to give me my money back AND a 50 euro coupon for the dissapointment. That is so nice!
I will give him the advice to treat the bamboo like its at a high risk for his other wood containing products, but I think he sure will see and even hearing the woodbeetles bugging around.

So today I did some reverse engineering with the structure, and apparently it was even worst than I thought. The woodbeetles had some feast inside the bamboo, so I think it is not bad at all that I took it away before they run out of old wood and started on my other structures.
Next thing I did was putting on some sticky paper tape that painters (some of them) use and put it backwards on the remaning poles, so they might get stuck when they are wonder around.
I also taped some of the holes that aren made from the screws we used to put the whole thing together, to visualize if there is still any action from remaining beetles.

Well.. it is time for me to re-think my other options for a low budget, sustainable, rental house proof -and bug free- room devider.
oh, my bad. I've made some very high quality videos of my efforts today, the bugs are kind of cute- so hopefully people can have a good laugh out of this one:)
https://vimeo.com/146311012

What kind of corn soldier are you? And don't say "kernel" - that's only for this tiny ad:

The new purple deck of permaculture playing cards

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulwheaton/garden-cards