Can You Kill Fleas in The Dryer?

Fleas create all sorts of problems and require immediate attention not only for your pets but for your entire home. If you have noticed your furry best friend scratching away, fleas may be stalking your pet. Desperate times call for immediate measures to get fleas off your pet and out of your home. What are the best ways to eliminate fleas? It’s a sure thing that your internet search has turned up with many options for you to try, causing you to question “can you kill fleas in the dryer?”.

Is this actually true? Is this method really a flea-killing option?

How To Know if You Have a Flea Problem

The fact that you are noticing signs of a flea problem and questioning can you kill fleas in the dryer gives you an early advantage in preventing serious infestations in your home and in your yard. Fleas are more problematic in the warmer months but they can be an ongoing issue year around.

Fleas are tiny little reddish-brown insects that need blood and warmth to survive. They are breeding machines that produce a healthy supply of eggs on a regular basis. Even though fleas need blood to survive, they will jump around to burrow in carpets and other fabrics for a time, hoping to find a new host. They also love warm and humid conditions; however, you can kill fleas in the dryer because the heat is too much for them to bear.

Pets typically display certain signs if fleas are causing issues to their body. Knowing these signs can help you be on guard to know when treatment for your pet is needed. Signs of fleas include lots of scratching, hair loss, red skin, pale gums, or flea dirt. Flea dirt is flea feces. It most likely will have a reddish color due to the digested blood from nibbling on your furry pals. (If you take a damp washcloth to your pet’s fur and it comes out red—they have fleas!)

When it comes to your home, you should be looking for flea eggs on the carpet. Their eggs are very small and white. If you find them though, this means your infestation has gotten to a pretty serious point. And your pet might not be the only one getting bites about the house. Noticing tiny bites around your ankles is another sign that fleas have begun to infest your home in other areas and while using your pet as a host.

It is important to pay attention to these signs so that your home doesn’t get overrun by these tiny creatures. Your furry pals can start to get pretty uncomfortable if not treated early.

How Can You Kill Fleas in the Dryer?

So if you do catch a flea problem early, how can you treat it? Can you kill fleas in the dryer, as we mentioned before? Absolutely. But the catch is that you have to wash and dry all of the areas that have fleas.

The reason that washing and drying anything with fleas works is that fleas have to stay at a constant temperature. Therefore, when you dry them, you are overrunning their internal temperatures and they aren’t able to survive. Since you can’t wash and dry the carpeted areas in your home, other measures will need to be taken with professional services from pest control professionals or carpet cleaning specialists.

If you have just started seeing your pet struggle with fleas, you can use this method to wash their beds, linens, clothes, and other washable items like that. But keep in mind this is only a viable option if your flea issue is caught early.

What to Do if You Don’t Catch a Flea Problem Early

But what if you don’t catch your flea problem early? Those fleas can reproduce rapidly. And once they get to parts of your home that you can’t wash and dry, the answer to can you kill fleas in the dryer will be a big, fat “NO”. So how do you get rid of them completely then?

No matter what severity of the flea problem you have, you always want to treat your pet, if you have one. That will keep the fleas from having a major food source. Protecting them from fleas not only keeps their skin healthy but can protect their overall health as well.

Now it would be time to consider whether you want to try to treat your problem on your own with a store brand treatment or call your local pest control company.

With the store-bought options, you may have to try several before finding one that completely eliminates all of the fleas. You also want to make sure that they are safe for pets and children based on your situation. .

If being annoying is not enough, fleas can also carry diseases. Fleas can transmit the dog tapeworm (Dipylidium caninum) to dogs, cats, and humans. Not being able to catch a flea problem early on could result in this transmission and will only compound your problems. Reactions to flea bites and infections can occur as well in both humans and pets, which will require you to seek medical attention.

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