When you take steps to guard your home or yard against bugs and wildlife, you’ll save money and protect your investment from harm. Even though you can do many of these practices on your own, you might want to consult a specialist to ensure you and your family are safe against these dangerous creatures. This guide will help you discover the value of preventive pest control in PA.
The Importance of Preventive Pest Control
Preventive pest control is your first line of defense against unwanted critters crawling into your house. It’s best to manage your property before rodents and insects become a costly, damaging problem. Consider some of the reasons it’s necessary to invest in pest control.
1. Pests Can Harm Your Health
Bugs and rodents can affect your health by irritating you with these medical conditions.
- Allergies: Cockroaches and stink bugs can worsen your allergies and asthma symptoms. If you have an allergy to stinging insects, an attack from them could send you to the hospital.
- Long-term illnesses: Mosquitoes may carry West Nile virus, which causes fever, neck stiffness, headache, and other unpleasant symptoms. Ticks can give you Lyme disease that stays dormant in your body and flares up after several months or years.
- Viruses: Mice carry salmonella, a bacterium that causes gastrointestinal issues. As these rodents produce droppings and urine, they spread viruses as they walk.
- Unpleasant bites: Spiders and other insects can bite you in the middle of the night, leaving irritating bumps on your skin.
2. Pests Might Ruin Your Valuables
Bugs and rodents can invade your home and cause hundreds of dollars in damage. Silverfish and other occasional household invaders live off organic fibers, such as books, photo albums, and cardboard boxes. Termites and carpenter ants can eat firewood and wooden furniture. If you don’t deal with them immediately, these insects could weaken your home’s framing structure. As their name suggests, carpet beetles can eat through carpeting and other fabric fibers.
Since most insects tend to work in hidden places, you might not notice them until it’s too late. Prevent them from coming into your house in the first place and keep your valuables in excellent condition.
3. Pests Eat and Contaminate Your Food
Most of the time, pests come into your house looking for warm shelter and a bite to eat. As a result, the first place they’ll visit is your kitchen, foraging through your pantry or snacking on crumbs left on the floor. Even if your eating or cooking area is clean, cockroaches, ants, rodents, and spiders may sense a warm place to spend the winter. As a result, they’ll make holes in your food containers and bring their diseases into your food supply.
4. It’s Challenging to Control the Pests Yourself
Even though it may seem easy to do it yourself, keeping your home pest-free has various struggles. You may be able to detect some larger pests, such as rats or cockroaches, but termites and silverfish can hide in your walls and floorboards for years. Over-the-counter pesticides and even eco-friendly products tend to put a bandage over the problem instead of fixing it. Try consulting a professional in the pest control industry to prevent or deal with recurring critters.
Why Do I Need Preventive Pest Control
Even if you’ve successfully prevented or gotten rid of bugs and rodents, there’s always a possibility that they’ll return. On the other hand, you can invest in preventive pest control to reap the following benefits.
- Gives you and your family peace of mind: Bed bugs and other insects can be traumatic to have in your home, so knowing that they’re gone will help you and your loved ones sleep better at night. When you trust in a professional pest control expert, they’ll inspect every potential infestation area in your living space. As a result, you’ll know your food is safe to eat and your house is free of mouse droppings and other waste.
- Saves you money on unnecessary expenses: Calling a pest control specialist to treat your home for pests can save money on potential infestations. If you get an uncontrollable population of bugs on your property, you may need to pay for emergency services, along with fees to repair and clean your valuables.
- Rids your home of harmful toxins: Commercial pesticides from your local hardware store may seem like a cost-effective treatment, but sometimes these products do more harm than good. Instead of getting rid of the bugs around your property, the toxic chemicals reduce your home’s indoor air quality. By guarding your home against a pest infestation, you can avoid using these dangerous treatments and focus on more eco-friendly methods.
- Maintains your family’s health and well-being: If you keep disease-carrying creatures from coming into your property, you may spare yourself and your family from future health complications, including allergic reactions and asthma attacks.
- Protects your most significant investment: Termites work underground and destroy your wood framing, and you could have an infestation of thousands of insects before you even notice them. Mice and ants can chew through wires, damaging your electrical system. Larger pests can crawl in through holes in your roof or attic to find a cozy place to rest their heads, leaving droppings and destruction in their path. Invest in preventive pest control to take care of your investment.
Preventive Pest Control Checklist
Besides having a clean home and storing food properly, there are other methods to prevent pests. To keep a potential infestation out of your living space, try to complete the following tasks at least once a month.
- Trim trees and shrubbery: Most pests, especially ticks and fleas, seek shelter in areas with damp, overgrown grass. This lush greenery is a safe hiding place with abundant nourishment. Regularly mow the lawn, trim your hedges and cut dead branches off your foliage to send pests looking for a new home.
- Clear yard waste: Once you’ve trimmed the branches in the yard, the next step is to dispose of weeds and other debris in a proper receptacle. Piles of overgrowth can attract pests and give them a place to hide. It helps to remove firewood from the side of your house and keep it as far away from your indoor living space as possible. After a rainstorm, you can also get rid of fallen branches and leaves around your property to avoid an infestation.
- Clean out your gutters: Gutters and downspouts control the flow of rainwater away from your home. If there’s an obstruction in them, especially in the fall or after a rainstorm, they could become flooded and attract pests. You can check your gutters for fallen leaves and other debris to make sure water flows freely out of them.
- Remove standing water from your property: Mosquitoes breed in standing water, so they’ll make their home in areas around your property with excess moisture. Instead of giving them a place to land, you can flip over kiddie pools and empty planters to remove standing water from your yard. It also helps to fill in your lawn’s uneven elevation to prevent minor flooding.
- Seal the cracks around your house: Over time, wear and tear on your property can produce cracks near your walls, windows, doors, and roof shingles. Rodents and small pests can hide in unbelievably small spaces, infiltrating parts of your home you didn’t even know existed. Instead of letting them take over, seal the gaps throughout your property with silicone caulk and weatherstripping.
- Protect the necessary openings of your house: Besides the cracks in your walls, windows, and doors, you can seal your chimney and ductwork to keep pests from coming inside. Mesh wire can prevent bats and insects from sneaking into your living space through the chimney, and proper maintenance of your HVAC system keeps pests out of your ductwork. You can also replace your ripped window screens to guard against flies and mosquitoes.
- Check your pipes and drains for leaks: Pests come into a home looking for water that they can drink. To reduce water sources around your living space, you may inspect your drainage system for leaky pipes and replace them as necessary.
- Inspect the attic and basement: Rodents and insects tend to seek shelter in the attic and basement, the two places you’re least likely to check. These spots have plenty of pipes and storage where pests can find warmth and nourishment without interruption. You can inspect and clean these areas of your property to prevent critters from making a permanent home and multiplying.
- Use plastic or metal bins instead of cardboard boxes: Silverfish, rodents, and other pests can chew through cardboard boxes and get into clothing and holiday decorations that you’ve stored in the attic or basement. Keeping your valuables in reusable plastic or metal containers may prevent pests from coming into your home in search of food.
- Inspect packaging before you carry it inside: Bugs can travel into your home through delivery boxes and items you bought at the store. Before bringing them into your living space, inspect them for eggs and other signs of pests.
- Add and inspect door sweeps: Rodents and other insects can slide underneath gaps in your door. Adding door sweeps in each of your exterior entryways can prevent a potential pest invasion. You may also inspect these components for tears and chew marks, replacing them as necessary.
- Check your garage door: An garage door can allow rodents, insects, and other wildlife into your home. This part of your living space is attractive to pests because it’s warmer than the cold outdoors, even if you don’t have insulation in it. Inspect your garage door for gaps between the edge and the floor, and call a professional garage door company to repair or replace it if you notice any issues.
- Install pest monitors: Even if you haven’t discovered any rodents or insects around your property, use glue boards, mouse traps, and other pest monitors to keep track of a potential infestation. It helps to put these traps in problem areas, such as under pipes or behind appliances. If you notice any pests in your glue traps, you can call a professional pest control specialist to assess and treat the area.
- Use the proper dryer vent cover: If your clothes dryer is outdated, it may produce excess heat that provides a comfortable place for rodents to build a home. Inspecting the vent cover to ensure it’s clean and functional can help keep pests out of your laundry room. It may also be necessary to install a new vent cover so rodents won’t come inside your property.
When to Hire an Expert Pest Control Specialist
Even if you try to prevent pests from coming into your home by following all of our tips, rodents and insects can somehow make their way into your home. A professional in the pest control industry can help you target the specific bugs and wildlife in your local area that could infest your living space and destroy your valuables. Instead of endangering yourself by interacting with these harmful, disease-carrying creatures, you can hire a specialist who knows how to remove them from your house safely and efficiently.
A pest management professional can help you deal with rodents and insects in the following situations.
- Before you have a pest problem: Hiring a pest control specialist before you have a pest infestation can help you save money on potential treatments and repairs to your property. During a preventive inspection, the professional will examine your property’s various rooms and note any troublesome areas where pests could establish a home. Since they have an eye for leaky pipes and gaps near the door, they know what treatment methods work to repel insects and mice from your living space.
- When you notice your first pest: If you’ve seen one bug, more may come or have already found hiding places throughout your property. Instead of dealing with these creatures by yourself, you can contact a professional pest control specialist to target the areas where they could have established nests. Pests may know how to live and work out of sight, but specialists know their typical hiding places to get rid of them and prevent them from coming into your home in the future.
If you discover any pests on your property, it’s essential to deal with them as soon as possible to prevent them from spreading uncontrollably. You can call a professional pest control company to help you tackle your infestation and keep your loved ones safe and healthy.
Contact Spectrum Pest Control to Schedule a Preventive Inspection
Even if your living space is clean, rodents and bugs may still find a way to infest the inside of your property. At Spectrum Pest Control, we offer year-round residential pest control services to homeowners in Pennsylvania and Ohio so that you can keep pests out of your home every season. For more information about how we can help you with preventive pest control, contact us online or call 412-532-1380 to schedule a home inspection.
