Tim Maloney is so confident in his anti bed bug system that he released 400 of the parasites into a test chamber – and then slept in it overnight.
When the Canadian scientist first conceived of the idea of the GoodKnight bed in 2010, he likely didn’t expect an entrepreneurial journey that would involve the military, self-experimentation, and insect-related mishaps at customs, but his years of hard work are finally being recognized. Recently, his phone has been ringing off the hook, and media outlets in his hometown of Montreal have been soliciting interviews with the inventor. When he sent out offers to come watch live as he released the bed bugs on himself, only one member of the media took him up on it, however… Yours truly. I can’t imagine why – the Maloneys are a wonderful family.
While Tim Maloney is the CEO of GoodKnight, his co-creators include his sister Laurel and father Paul. All three are entomologists, and even his mother Carmela – a board member – holds a degree in science.
“She’s not much into bugs, though,” Laurel told me when I visited.
“She’s one of those types to freak out, actually,” Paul added.
The playful comments and vampire puns (since bed bugs live off blood; get it?) bespoke of a robust and evident family bond, strengthened through common passions and years of working together. Part scientist, part inventor, and part builder, the Maloney family is just the perfect mix of genius to make for great Bond villains – if they weren’t so friendly and nice. They converted an old van to run on electricity. They constructed the second story on their home. They had a geothermal well installed on their property. They built a laboratory in their backyard, complete with hermetically-sealed test chamber and observation deck.
“We have fun building stuff around here,” said Laurel, as nonchalantly as if they had completed a 300-piece family puzzle.
In 2000, the family put its entomological knowledge to work when city bylaws were introduced that banned pesticide use in homes. Suddenly, a problem existed – how were people to deal with infestations now? Like any good entrepreneurs, the Maloneys recognized the opportunity and started up a business that would solve this problem: ecologically-friendly pest control.
After 10 years, the business was bringing in steady income, but wasn’t growing. “We felt we had to rethink things,” said Tim. “We were always brainstorming – how can we make our services better?”
A significant portion of the calls the family was getting were for bed bug jobs. Rather than use pesticides, the Maloneys would attack the infestation with a multi-step process that involved isolating the bed, treating the mattress with a steam cleaner, and sterilizing the bedding in a clothes drier. It was a time-consuming process, and while thorough, it couldn’t guarantee complete extermination in a single visit (and neither can pesticides). “That’s the thing with bed bugs,” said Tim. “It only takes one to start [the infestation] over again.”
After giving the matter considerable thought, the eureka moment finally struck: “Why don’t we make a bed that heat treats itself?” And thus the GoodKnight bed was conceived.
What followed was an iterative process of design and testing that culminated in the current model being produced and sold. In essence, the GoodKnight is a specialized bed frame that houses a heater and a baglike “cover” that neatly folds away beneath the bed, out of sight. When you’re ready for heating, you simply pull out the cover, zip it up around the entire bed, then turn on the heater. Hot air inflates the cover, allowing convection to evenly heat the bed to 50 degrees celsius – no hotter than a clothes drier.
Three hours later, a timer dings, the heater turns off, the cover deflates, and all that’s left to do is apply glue traps to prevent more bed bugs from getting into the bed, fold the cover back into the lower compartment, and clean out the dead bed bugs. The process is so simple and hassle-free that I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t witnessed it myself – I thought the cover would have been a nightmare to work with, but everything has been specifically engineered to ensure the operator has to do as little work as possible.
But does it work?
That’s what the Maloneys had to set out to prove – and to none other than the military. After a lengthy application process through the government-sponsored Build in Canada Innovation Program, the family was partnered with the Canadian military to help commercialize and test the GoodKnight. But the military didn’t want to conduct human trials – one could imagine how the public may react to learning that the military is conducting bed bug-related experiments on people. However, the military was fine with the Maloneys doing the testing themselves, so that’s just what the family sought to do.
Easier said than done, however. Delays, setbacks, and course-corrections made the journey a lot longer and more challenging than the Maloneys had initially anticipated, and all the while, they had to coordinate with the military to set and meet deadlines, according to their contract.
First, they had to build their backyard lab test chamber, which they finally accomplished over the winter – certainly a suboptimal time for construction, especially in Canada. Then they had to get ahold of bed bugs, which proved to be more troublesome than you’d think. Figuring they could create their own supply, the Maloneys tried to breed bed bugs themselves and bought a rabbit to use as a food source – but Carmela fell in love with the animal. “So I started feeding them instead,” said Tim. Take a moment to appreciate the implication.
“I want to do this for science.”
“We still have the freakin’ rabbit,” said Paul.
“It’s well taken care of,” added Laurel. It’s true – I saw the family pet myself.
Unfortunately, as Tim’s arm increasingly reddened and swelled from bed bug bites, the ordeal became too much to handle. Laurel wanted to help with the feeding. “I’m a scientist,” she had said to herself. “I want to do this for science.” But the psychological hurdle proved too high to jump – and who can blame her?
Instead, the Maloneys decided to get a supplier. You’d think that’d be the end of the headache, right? Well, it turns out that bed bugs are just a tad undesirable, and while waiting for their first shipment to arrive, the Maloneys found out that Canada Plant Protection intercepted the package and incinerated the insects.
Meanwhile, the Maloneys had shipped GoodKnight beds to a military base, as per their contract. For three months, the beds sat in storage at the base – and during that time, the base suffered three separate bed bug infestations. The soldiers wanted to deploy the then-untested GoodKnight system, but by the technicalities of the contract, the military couldn’t assemble the beds. So Paul had to make an over 3,000 mile round trip to the base to put them in working order.
After a lot of tears, sweat, and blood (get it?), the Maloneys were finally ready to begin testing. But by then, the military was already satisfied that the system works. “They had the beds installed at their base,” said Tim, “and they told us, ‘you don’t even have to do the testing – we’re happy with it!'” In fact, the military base was planning to slowly replace all the beds in their barracks and hotels with GoodKnight beds. But the Maloneys wanted to ensure that proper testing was conducted regardless – scientific rigor, and all.
“We tend to have a thought that conventional pest control works,” said Paul, “but in fact, it doesn’t.” Paul, a M.Sc. graduate from Canada’s McGill University, said he’s never seen published research material displaying test results of bed bug products working with human test subjects.
“Because no one wants to do what [Tim is] doing,” said Laurel. Without human test subjects to serve as bait, bed bugs have no reason to climb up into a bed, which skews any published findings that claim a system is working.
“There isn’t much literature on bed bugs,” said Paul. “There hasn’t been much research done, and the research that has been done has been poor.”
When I visited on September 30, the Maloneys were conducting their second official trial in a planned three-trial run. Two weeks prior, during their first trial, two members of the military came to inspect their setup, and a live feed of the test chamber is constantly being broadcast to the military for auditing. The isolation chamber is impressive, complete with decontamination shower, recording equipment, and, of course, numerous safeguards to guarantee that no bed bugs can escape. The white room ensures easy visibility of the dark bed bugs, and an ingenious system of ropes and hooks on the ceiling allow Tim to hang the sheets and even suspend the mattress in the air for full visual inspection.
“If it was a conventional asylum, we wouldn’t give him ropes and hooks,” said Paul.
With Tim in the chamber and all recording systems a go, the time came to release the bed bugs: 400 of them, spread across four containers. He released the first batch just beneath the pillow – the very pillow he would be resting his head on that night, and every night for the next several days. The next release spot was the foot of the bed, then the two far corners of the room.
“There hasn’t been much research done, and the research that has been done has been poor.”
“I think these ones are hungry,” Tim remarked as the bed bugs – normally inactive in direct light – crawled about.
As Tim walked barefoot around the room, making ready to set up the GoodKnight system, Laurel warned him whenever he stepped too close to a bed bug – and even when she spotted one climbing on his foot.
“Now I’m feeling a little itchy,” said Tim. The psychological effect of being in a confined space with hundreds of biting insects cannot be overstated – there’s a reason TV shows like Fear Factor and Panic Button expose people to such situations for cash.
“When you’re sleeping in a home infested with bed bugs, you only really get half-sleep,” said Laurel, who once suffered an infestation in her apartment. But for Tim, the GoodKnight brings him the peace of mind he needs to get a good night’s rest.
“You just feel safer sleeping in a bed that’s been sterilized,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to sleep in [the test chamber] without the GoodKnight.”
Even Laurel was able to sleep easy once she installed a beta-version of the GoodKnight in her apartment. “It’s nice to have that comfort that so many people don’t have when they have an infestation,” she said.
With the bed bugs released and given time to settle, the next step was to heat treat the bed. As Tim set up the system, Paul and Laurel explained that you could stuff other items that you’d like to treat on the mattress, within the cover – clothes, a travel pack, or really anything that can survive temperatures of 50 degrees celsius. Laurel once tossed her laptop in after finding a bed bug in it, and while the Maloneys don’t recommend putting electronics in there, her laptop was not adversely affected. The military even put their TV in the bed. One of their other customers said she would have put her dining room table in there if she could have.
The previous trial lasted two weeks, but after nine days, Tim had collected 398 dead bed bugs, with no living bed bugs anywhere in sight. They were expecting to be missing up to 5% of the dead bed bugs – lost perhaps within the heater – so missing only 0.5% was considered a great success.
“It’s a much more intellectual approach than just finding the biggest, baddest chemical.”
After zipping up the bed cover and turning on the heater, it was a matter of waiting three hours to let the system work its magic. The bed bugs die just about instantaneously, the Maloneys explained, but to ensure the heat penetrates all the materials, they established the three hour cycle as a precaution. The results of this trial are expected to follow the same course as the previous trial, as well as an earlier beta trial before the military inspection: an exponential decay of the bed bug population following every treatment. In fact, their setup was being generous to the bed bugs by only applying half of them directly to the bed, and thus only killing 50% of them during the first treatment: in a typical infestation, up to 95% of the bed bugs can be expected to be found in the bed.
Because bed bugs typically feed every five to 10 days, it can take a while for all of them to venture out and into a bed. In the absence of human bait, which the insects can detect through heat and carbon dioxide sensors, they can survive in a hibernation state for up to 18 months. The Maloneys told me of stories in which people kept infested furniture in storage for a year and a half, only to have the infestation start up again once they took it out of storage.
Three hours later, it was time to count the dead bed bugs. Tim unzipped the sack and began the carcass collection. The number of bed bugs that had crawled into the pillow – between the pillow and pillow cover – made me grimace. But after a thorough inspection, not a single live bed bug was found on the bed.
Considering the alternative is harsh chemicals, I found myself baffled that heat treatment isn’t a more widespread practice in pest control. Pesticides can be dangerous. Some are considered too hazardous for the general public, and frankly, I don’t know how comfortable I’d feel pressing my face up against a pillow that has been sprayed with a substance that carries a skull and crossbone safety label. A reputable Canadian news outlet shot a documentary investigating mysterious deaths in foreign hotels that are alleged to have been caused by pesticides. The Maloneys used to employ bed bug-sniffing dogs to detect the insects, but stopped this practice after one of their dogs developed a nose tumor – was it because he was sniffing baseboards laced with pesticides? They didn’t want to risk it.
The Maloneys explained that their approach to pest control draws heavily on science, contrary to the traditional approach of pesticide spraying. Using their entomological knowledge of a bed bug’s life cycle and what it needs to survive, they found the most elegant solution to collapsing a bed bug population. “It’s a much more intellectual approach than just finding the biggest, baddest chemical,” said Tim.
Ever since the Maloneys committed to the GoodKnight project full-time, they stopped their service business. But they continued to receive calls for help – people asking what they can do themselves to deal with an infestation – and while the GoodKnight is a robust product, the Maloneys are aware that not everyone is ready or able to take the step of replacing their bed. So they put together a robust “Bed bug survival guide,” available for free on their website, which explains how you can deal with an infestation yourself, without pesticides. A blog on their services website offers tips on dealing with various pest issues. If you’re presently concerned about bed bugs, here are some quickies I learned from the Maloneys: caulk up your baseboards; bed bugs get stuck in double-sided tape; diatomaceous earth dries out and kills bed bugs over time.
But it’s the “second-hand bed” industry that most needs the GoodKnight: hotels. “They’re in a really bad situation,” said Paul. “It’s not their fault, necessary, but they have the second-hand beds. And they don’t understand that there are a lot of people who don’t react to bed bugs – their skin doesn’t react to the bites. So many people are spreading bed bugs without knowing it – it can be something of an epidemic” – an epidemic that will hopefully be stopped if GoodKnight changes the way the world deals with bed bugs. The Canadian military is already on board, and I don’t know about you, but that’s one hell of an endorsement from where I’m sitting. If something’s good enough for soldiers, I’d feel safe using it.
