how to get 105 degrees in a home for three hours

ROFLMAO

No I don't think they do. Im living in the desert right now & have a dog,chickens, & a few outside cats. No fleas, some wicked ticks.

My animals are used to temps of 105%, & know how to find shade. That & water are easily available to them. If it gets to hot (110%) I bring them inside the house, which has AC.

I know WA state, it rarely reaches the temps we do,for as long, I predict if you follow your plan your gonna wind up with a dead cat. Its hard for any animal to adjust to a 40% temp change in 3 hours.

If you really don't like fleas, don't have fur buddies.

Wouldn't it be cheaper to just put the cat in an oven?

Ha, now that's funny.

Seriously though, flea collars work and I have never had a problem with fleas on my cat or the collars themselves. I buy one for the spring. Winter hasn't been a problem for fleas. They are very cheap and they won't burn your house down, cook a cat, or turn it into a glowing mutant.

What is cheaper, a new house or a flea collar. I know you don't like chemicals, but burning plastic on an electrical cord will be 100 times worse than that collar would ever be.

All in all this is an interesting thread. I would be curious how your plan works, heck I may try this out myself (albiet in a much more controlled fashion and I won't try and heat my house at 105 degrees). First though I have to find some fleas.........

Frontline was purchased and ... golly gee willickers ... not only do the fleas live on, but it made the cat sick. Go figure.

These fleas can be controlled with other techniques listed in the article, but I'm looking at this as a rare opportunity to gain first hand experience with something that sounds rather promising.

paul, wanted to mention also that many chemicals used in the manufacture of products in our homes are released into the air in high temps. well...just sayin that you might be not using some kinds of "chemicals" (targeted at flea lifecyles) and be releasing some that are way nastier, known to cause cancer type chemicals.

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A mystery is not an explanation..... on the contrary....no sooner is a myth forged than, in order to stand it needs another myth to support it.

Oh, my. I can't stop laughing.

Paul - When I read your first post... All I kept thinking was "skin cats", as my DH calls them. How 'bout raising some Sphynx felines? No hair. Maybe no fleas? Perhaps someone could enlighten me.

I would, however, forego the idea of "oven cats". Ugly.

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Living Simply... Or at least making the attempt. Blessed Be.

So if humidity is the point why not run a dehumidifier first to get it as low as you can then crank up the heat as much as you need to drop it to the needed level? Maybe the temp doesn't need to go so high? Got a sling psychrmometor ?

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Here's an excellent idea ...

I've been playing around with numbers at this site: http://einstein.atmos.colostate.edu/.../Humidity.html

And what if the dew point during my two experiments was something around 65 or 70 - then it would reduce the RH to about 50. Not quite low enough. And then for the three people that did the experiment and succeeded, what if they had a day with a dew point of 45? Then their RH would be something like 20 - and would probably kill every flea in the house even though the max temp was 85.

Worth considering ...

standing gravity heaters , 200,000 btu each with fans to circulate the air and a carbon monoxide detector 1 heater per 1000 sq feet 1 hour to temp at 60 degrees outside

i had a 24x26 garage 10 foor ceilings fairly well insulated but some what negated buy 2 8x8 overhead doors and 2 cheap single pain windows 1 heater with a fan blowing over it to curculate heat and speed the heat of all the air in the building in 15-20 minutes i could bring it from 35 to 65 with outdoor temps of 25

i expect this may cost you around 100 pounds of propane as these large heaters use about 20 pounds an hour on high


these are th heaters used when building block walls in jauary in wisconsin it goes somthing like this put up scafolding inside and out of future wall cover in plastic place a heater about every 20-30 feet and hook to 300 pound tanks then build a wall with temps in mid 50s while it is blowing 20 degrees just 4 mill away on the other side of the plastic

you asked how to get the house to 105 , not if i thought it was a good idea to do so

It's the altitude. In Reno, altitude +5k feet, no fleas.

This has to be one of the oddest things I have read about, at first I thought you must be pulling our legs. Honestly, what are you going to do when the fleas come back? Do you realize how much money you are going to waste heating the house to 105 for 3 hours, let alone a possible vet bill! Also the amount of chemicals that will be out gassed from your house could be huge. Not exactly "green". I have my doubt that you bought actual "Frontline" (the cheap stuff has been known to make animals sick). Buy "Frontline". It works out to just over $10 a month, not exactly breaking the bank. I live in a flea ridden area (outside of Eugene). We are looking at moving to the high desert and you are right, there aren't any fleas but I am going to assume you don't live in the high desert right now or you wouldn't have your flea explosion.

My advice: take the cat in to the groomers if you don't want to wash it yourself. Apply Frontline. Wash bedding. Use something like Borax on your carpets, vacuum, and then make sure you stay on top of the Frontline. You will get rid of them.

Cook your cat and the house? I'm going no on that one.

Why not turn off the heat, open the windows, and leave for the weekend during a hard freeze. Take the cat and give it an herbal flea bath.

We had fleas one year and they died over the winter because we heated with wood, but our house had no windows. So at night it got freezing cold. We survived with good sleeping bags, but the fleas didn't make it.

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Shae in Arkansas

frontline: not me. I would never buy the stuff.

borax: if you read my article, you would know why I don't use borax to kill fleas.

outgassing and vet bill: I think these are both exaggerations. 105 is not an uncommon naturally occurring temp.

105 vs. 85: Have you read my recent post about trying 85 instead of 105?

Freezing out the fleas: not feasible for most folks.

OK. I'm all for experimenting. I love experimenting with hydrogen myself. And I really like your website. But I think there must have been other causes for the fleas that went poof!! at 105 degrees. With their breeding habits, I think somehow fleas must be related to rabbits in the grand scheme of things. But if you really wanted to test the theory, why not try it on a smaller scale first. Take the cat in a cat carrier in the front seat of your car with you with the heater turned on high. Take a thermometer and place it on the carrier. Take a three hour+ drive through the countryside. If you have trouble getting the interior up to 105, take some plastic and block off the rear of the interior. If you have a pickup, all the better. Take some water so you don't dehydrate and be sure to give kitty a bitty bowl of water too. If the cat has fleas after the trip, no reason to really go on with a larger scale experiment. The worst that could happen is you now have a flea infested vehicle...

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Would your pipes freeze?

Actually there has been a lot of work on this as an alternative to conventional fumigation to rid structures of formosan termites, drywood termites and other pest. It is done using indirect heat and the goal is to raise the Temp inside the wood to a temp of about 130F. It has to be done slowly to allow interier of the wood to get warm without spiking the temp in the house much above 130F. If the temp gets much higher damage can occur becuase of glues etc., used in construction. Personally I have used a solarization for some furniture I bought used. When I saw some roaches, I enclosed it in clear plastic on a hot sunny day in the MIssissippi delta and by that evening there was only dead (good) roaches. It may be impractical to do the house with out the large forced air heaters the pros used. Dr Greg Henderson at LSU is an urban entomologist who has been on the forfront of pest control research and maybe you can google him up for a contact and information.

Paul, whenever you do this, I want you to take a photo of your experiment. Perhaps you can pose with the cat on your lap and holding a thermometer showing 105ºF. Send the photo to AngieM2. You might just become the July or August "Cover Boy" for the 2009 Homesteading Today calendar!

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Wouldnt it be easier to just build a hot box, a very well insulated box with a light bulb inside, catch some fleas, insert fleas in box then monitor temp and humidity in the box. You could control conditions such as heat with and without humidity and experiment that way to find least hospitable conditions for fleas. .Heck of lot easier to try on that scale first than trying to experiment on an entire house.

And I lived ten years in northern Michigan, cold and humid. Not one flea. Lots of mosquitoes and blackflies and a few ticks. Here in AR gets dry and hot in summer and plenty fleas and ticks, but very few mosqitoes and no blackflies.

I use frontline on my dogs and cats. Cats need very low dose of frontline. Frontline dose is by weight. I buy frontline for extra large dog then use needless syringe to parcel it out. Gotta love use of extensive packaging and marketting to maximize profits. Shame they dont just sell it bulk in glass bottle with syringe taped to the side, but sure that would really cut into profits. Anyway half milliliter is plenty for average adult cat and thats size Frontline is sold in specifically for cats and I have went upto one milliliter on large cat. Never had one show slightest symptoms of toxicity not even my 19 year old cat in weakened condition. But like humans I'm sure there are individual cats that are very sensitive to certain chemicals.

By way this works with chemical in Frontline, (100 g/L Fipronil & 120 g/L (S)-Methoprene), its same formula and concentration for dogs and cats just different dosages based on body weight. Other flea medications that use other chemicals can be toxic to cats. Dont ever use the perithrin flea dope sold for use on dogs in Walmart and such places on cats (its very toxic to them) and its not that effective on dogs at the recommended dosage.

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"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

105 is not an uncommon naturally occurring temp. I have a new mobile home and here with hot summers in Florida my home never gets over 88f in the house with no air on. as for fleas even if you kill them they will be back in a week. When i lived in town we had flea issues you could spray but they would come back because neighbor had them bad and did nothing about it out here in the country the cats go in and out never had fleas in the house and the dogs stay out side and few fleas.