When it comes to protecting your living spaces from pests, some materials require more attention than others. This list of home pest control tips helps you comb through your buildings’ structures and possessions to protect and treat like a pro.
Home pest control guide to materials
Giving your home a thorough check from time to time is an important part of home maintenance. Staying on top of potentially damaging activity is a key part of preventative home pest control — which is always better than cure! Start with our guide to debugging room by room. In it, we review the possible pests that occupy each space in your home.
We now look at issues like overwintering pest activity, why it happens and the materials pests get attracted to in and around your home.
Home materials to inspect and check
The home is built with a variety of materials, some more processed than others. Be sure to check all the usual suspect spaces for pests leaving behind signs of damage. And most importantly, clear out spaces before pests move in for the winter. This is an act called overwintering — a process when pests wait out wintery cold temperatures, ice, snow, or limited food supplies. Overwintering pests often go unnoticed, until there is a sudden presence of pests during manageable warmer conditions or in the spring.
While overwintering happens during select conditions, pests congregate towards certain materials of homes.
Carpets, fabrics and upholstered furniture
Cosy, warm and fabulous places for pests to burrow. You are likely to find bed bugs, ticks, and fleas in these areas, besides their favourite furry and feathery hideouts. They target hosts they can prey on for blood, but can sometimes find themselves in unlikely places after you have returned home. Whether you have pets depositing pests or are a carrier yourself (via clothing, footwear, etc) it is important to check these spaces. And don’t forget to clean, vacuum and sweep where necessary.
Areas to check:
- Furniture and bedding
- Carpeting
- Flooring cracks and crevices
- Laundry piles
- Cars
- Leaf piles and yard waste
Solutions:
- Fendona 6 SC — an insecticide concentrate that works as quickly as 5 minutes, full knockdown after 30 minutes and death within 24 hours.
- Efekto No Insect Indoors NF Fleas & Bedbugs RTU — a ready-to-use insecticide for fleas and bedbugs.
- Efekto No Insect Indoor SC — can be used inside for common pests and outside the home for ants.
- Efekto Karbadust — for inside and outside use to control ticks and fleas.
Insulation and wiring
Any resident’s worst nightmare? Rats and mice. While their surprise scuttling can send many people screaming, there is concern for having a rodent invasion in the home. Besides forcing their way through buildings, their chewing habits on the insulation around wires cause a real threat of fire. Rodents build their nests in large electrical appliances, causing them to short circuit and malfunction — leading to the risk of fire.
You will need to check:
- Entry points around roofs and eaves — they can flatten their bodies to slip through small gaps to get inside attics, crawl spaces and walls. They then tunnel into the insulation to make a home or to gather soft materials for their nests like wood, paper, cloth, and books.
- Basements, garages, storage closets and sheds — great hiding places in low traffic areas.
- Kitchens — getting into cupboards of food or looking for sources of water.
- Upholstered furniture or seats of cars — rodents gnaw and burrow into to create a hidden snug nest.
Solutions:
Efekto Eco Rat™ and Eco Rat™ Bait Station — the only green band rodenticide on the market, with a designed bait station to control the exposure of bait with non-targets.
Supa Kill Rat & Mouse Blocks and Supa Kill Rat & Mouse Granular – a ready-to-use grain bait for the control of Rats and Mice inside your home.
Efekto Eco Rat Bait with Bait station work together to provide an effective, green option for indoor and outdoor rodent control. These solutions work to eliminate both rat and mouse infestations by protecting your home. Our groundbreaking green band rodenticide works safely when handled correctly, which we demonstrate with our tutorial.
Supa-Kill® Bait with Bait Station, provides a reliable rodent management for residential, commercial, and warehouse spaces. It is designed to fit into tight spaces and can be positioned either vertically or horizontally.
Thatch roofing
Keep regular cleaning and inspections of both rafters and thatched surfaces and use effective pest control products.
Solutions:
Fendona 6 SC — an insecticide concentrate that works as quickly as 5 minutes, full knockdown after 30 minutes and death within 24 hours.
Fumitabs — highly effective fumigation tablets, a single tablet covers 27m3 (3x3x3 meters)
No Insect Indoor SC — can be used inside for common pests.
No Insect Indoors NF Flying Insects — a fast-acting ready-to-use insecticide for flying insects.
Brick and mortar
In addition to the usual structural material found around a home, an unlikely space to check? Brick and mortar. While reliable building materials for their sturdiness, they can still be prey to pests like hornets, wasps and mason bees. Their usual nesting places include cavities like hollow trees and barns, as well as exposed areas like branches, utility poles and eaves. Wasps and hornets are known to build nests to the home’s exterior in protected areas and mason bees can tunnel through brick mortar, burrowing their way into walls.
Give your home a walk-around periodically to check for honeycomb-like structures or mounds of mud suspended on the eaves and walls.
Solution:
No Insect Indoors NF Flying Insects — a fast-acting ready-to-use insecticide for flying insects.
Keep your home solid, sturdy and sound
Looking for more answers about specific home pest control solutions treatments? Explore our blog posts on a variety of pest control topics or ask an expert directly.
