Preparing For Winter Pests And How To Prevent Them
Winter is coming and preparing for winter pests should be a big to do action item for any homeowner if that hasn’t been done already. No exaggeration, pests cause billions of damages every year from damages to crops to damage to properties. We do our best to prevent our customers from becoming a part of these types of statistics by publishing both these blog articles with helpful information to the average homeowner, and by providing pest control services of course. But whether you use our services, someone else or attempt a DIY approach, knowing is half the battle, so read on to learn why preparing for winter pests now is key to preventing them going forward.
Why They Enter Your Home In The First Place
Pests enter our homes for a variety of reasons from needing food and water, to curiosity and random meandering, and in the winter, searching for warmth. And if it’s not obvious, it’s the last point, searching for warmth, that answers 90% of why pests try to enter your home as it gets colder. Unlike many animals more suited to dealing with colder temperatures and others that hibernate, many pests simply won’t survive without finding warmer weather or a heat source that can sustain them all season long.
The remaining 10% of course, lies with why pests normally enter your home during warmer months: food and water and random meandering into your home.
How To Get Rid Of Winter Pests
Getting rid of winter pests isn’t as hard as one might think. The challenge comes in finding them. As we know, most pests are looking for warmth during the winter, and many insect based pests also need a bit of humidity to allow their bodies to take in moisture from the air to sustain themselves. That being said, the basement is always a key place to look as it tends to be the most humid area of any home. We recommend checking for rooms that are often undisturbed, along baseboards, up in ceiling tiles, drains and even the foundation and any exposed insultation for signs of a pest presence or infestation.
Once their presence is known, we recommend calling us in to ensure full coverage, but you can also get by with standard pesticides found in home improvements stores though be warned, these products are usually not as long lasting, effective or safe as the treatments we use at MasterGuard. To get the job handled long term, you will definitely need a professional pest control service to treat the inside and outside of your home. Whether that professional pest control service is us at MasterGuard or another service, if preparing for winter pests is your goal, we can’t recommend hiring a service like ours enough.
Why Preparing For Winter Pests Prevents Them
Similarly to how animals prepare for hibernation during winter (sometimes even in your home), preparing for winter pests is essential to preventing them for the long haul, and not just winter. Sealing off your home with a preventative treatment is crucial to keeping them out all year long by creating a barrier that will both stop them from entering entirely or kill them after they’ve crossed it, absorbing the minute lethal chemicals that are strong enough to harm them but not anyone else living on the property.
Once a barrier has been created, the flow of pests coming has effectively been halted for the meantime until another treatment is needed. During this window, we recommend taking a hard look around the property to see if any weak points exist that traditional treatments aren’t effective against like cracks in the foundation, window seals and door trim that aren’t properly sealing, internal pest problems should be handled, tree branches that may have grown too close to the property should be trimmed farther back and even roofing should be checked for any potential breaks where pests (and water) might leak through into the ceiling, which can be a real dilemma to pinpoint exactly where efforts need to be focused. Preparing for winter pests now means preparing for the unseen and the unknown, but it also means stopping future problems from ever occuring saving time and money.
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