When David sells a bed bug heater, part of his pitch is that the buyer can rent the machine out to other people. He gave that pitch often enough that he turned the question on himself. “Why don’t I get my own equipment and start renting it out here locally,” he says he thought.
The selling hasn’t stopped. David is director of technical services at a company that sells heat equipment for killing bed bugs to homeowners, hotels and pest control companies, and he still works there. After 2020, having dabbled before then, he put together a set of his own units and started RIP Rentals in Anaheim. He runs it alone.
That arrangement shapes how he talks to the people who call. “I’m never trying to upsell anybody on anything because I don’t have anything to upsell with,” he says. There is heat and nothing else. Most callers already know they have bed bugs and want them gone.
Heat treatment, as he sees it, is the best thing pest control has to offer: no chemicals, safe around kids and animals, and expensive enough that many people treat it as a luxury. He wanted to put it within reach of ordinary households, and he already had the teaching part down. “I already explain to people over and over how to use the equipment,” he says. He will drive as far as he can reach, about 200 miles from Anaheim, with what he says is the same kind of equipment Disneyland uses.
The principle is simple. The heater brings a structure up to 120 degrees, which he says can take an hour or two. Then the heat holds for four hours, long enough to work into “every cranny and crease” of a house. That kills the bugs and the eggs in one treatment, he says, so nobody has to come back a week later and do it again.
His customers are all residential, and most of the work is rental. The kit, as the business lays it out, is a heater, air movers, a digital thermometer and a setup guide, with a phone number to call when someone is unsure about a fan angle or a cord run. Some customers would rather hand the job to David. Kelly M., who brought bed bugs home after an Airbnb stay, described him inspecting her house, moving things around and pulling out items the heat could have damaged before he started.
Showing up is the part he won’t bend on. “Anytime I say I’m going to be somewhere, I’m there,” he says. He likes to be “beyond punctual,” arriving about 25 minutes early to look over the situation so the heat goes on at the time he promised. He has been that way since he was a kid.
He counts 11 years of experience with the treatment and the machines, and it is the machines he talks about with the most pride. “I know the equipment like the back of my hand,” he says. “I’ve mastered the tools themselves too. I actually assemble them myself.”