Posts Tagged ‘Prevent pests’

Pest Prevention What Do I Need To Prevent Pests?

September 26th, 2009

AddThis Social Bookmark Button


Pest prevention is a combination of botany, entomology, lawn, garden, and landscape maintenance, and craftsmanship. If you can handle these basic tasks, you can do it for yourself. The botany and entomology part is not that complex. Note that bugs and weeds like to have certain things in their environment. They need water and food and protection.

Insects like cover and food, and water to survive, and if you deprive them of the things they like to eat, places to hide, and the water they need to live, they will go away and look for more hospitable accommodations. Spiders like bugs to eat, if the bugs go away, the spiders go away. June bugs like certain types of light, deprive them of the light, and they will go away, without laying the eggs which would become the grubs that eat your lawns root system, and attract moles, skunks and armadillos. Eliminate standing water, and mosquitoes have no reason to stick around.

Exclude weed seed from your property, mow frequently, and most of the weeds that are there, will die out without being able to reproduce themselves with seed. Others may require manual removal, or other forms of treatment to get rid of them, and avoiding the practices that reintroduce them will prevent them from coming back.

In other words, the science you need for pest prevention is simply knowing what the bugs and weeds need to survive.Changing the habitats and habits that provide them with what they need to survive is a function of good lawn, garden and landscape practices.

If you do the work that needs to be done to the outside of your property, you will solve most of your homes pest control problems, which will reduce the number of insects trying to get into your home.

If your home becomes the source of food, water and cover for insects and arachnids, the same rules apply. don’t leave anything for them to eat, don’t leave anything for them to drink, and stop them from coming inside, and the battle is won. To stop them from coming inside, you need to practice the art of exclusion. Exclusion is where the craftsmanship part of the equation comes into play. It involves plugging holes, repairing screens, sealing cracks, and repairing weather stripping. It is really as simple as that!

If you want more details on the specifics of what needs to be done to be bug and weed free, start with: Prevention Starts Outdoors

Comments Off »

Posted in how to control pests, need to control pests, need to prevent pests, Pest prevention, pest prevention how to, Prevent pests

Tags:

Rodent Prevention Rodent Pest Control

September 22nd, 2009

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Preventing and controlling rodents


Here we will separate rodents into to non scientific classes: Outdoor rodents, such as moles and gophers, and indoor rodents like rats and mice. We have discussed the outdoor type in several other places, and will focus on the indoor type here.

Both rodent types are really outdoor rodents, since all of the creatures we are dealing with come from outside your home. What we need to focus on, is the way that they get inside.

Preventing Rodents

They obviously don't just materialize inside your home. They have to have an opening of some type. The size of the opening needed for mice and rats to get inside is not all that large.

In fact, a field mouse can get through a hole about one quarter inch in size. That is the size of a standard pencil! A large rat can squeeze through a hole twice that size, or roughly the size of an old grade school pencil or crayon. That's all it takes. A gap in weatherstripping, an ill fitting door, or door sweep, a cable tv opening that might have been done a bit too aggressively, or a small plumbing or electrical opening will do.

The rodents you are attempting to prevent, are coming inside for the same reason you live indoors. They seek protection from the elements, food and water. If you have exposed food, nice dark hiding places, and a small plumbing leak, they will be happy campers in your residence.

The trick is to keep them on the other side of the wall. Rats and mice are notorious nibblers, and if they find a hole too small to gain entry, they will naw and nibble away until it is large enough to get inside.

A few basic  rodent prevention precautions

  • Seal all the holes in your abode. A little stainless steel wool shoved and packed into the holes or crevices of an exterior wall followed by a nice bead of caulk will do nicely.
  • Changing poorly fitted weather stripping, and repairing doors that don't quite fit, and worn door sweeps will keep the rats and mice from using them as a gateway.
  • Check your roof, and roof vents to make sure that they are in good shape as well, and if not repair them. Soffit and eve vents should be screened with a fine mesh on the inside, and anything larger than an eighth of an inch repaired.
  • Tree limbs touching the roof, or overhanging the roof should be trimmed to prevent rodents from riding them onto your roof, and into your home.
  • Repeat the applicable steps listed, on the inside of your home. Keep food sealed inside containers, and fix any water leaks, and of course, keep everything tidy.

If you already have a rodent or two wandering around in your home, the next section should be of some help.

Trapping Rodents Rodent Control

"Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door"
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am not sure in exactly what context these words were penned or spoken, but have always assumed that it was somehow related to innovation as it relates to basic human needs being the chief way to success. If I am wrong about that, please forgive me Mr. Emerson.

I have looked at a lot of mouse trap innovations, and have yet to see any that actually top the good old spring loaded mechanical apparatus that we have have all been accustomed to seeing from childhood.

These traps have been maligned by users for not being efficient, but the problem is not with our traps, the problem is in the implementation.

Let me put it this way: The mouse trap didn't work because of operator error!

These tips should help.

The old cheese on the mousetrap, made famous by innumerable cartoons is really not the best way to use it.

Peanut butter on the trap is now the common standard, but if you are like me, you have come back to traps to find them licked clean.

  1. The best method I have found, is to glue a nut to the trap. This has resulted in a much higher rate of catches than any other method I have used. They can't lick it off, they can't steal it and make a run for the hole with the cat in hot pursuit.
  2. If this method does not suit you, try this: take some white bread, squeeze it together in a small ball, and then press it around the bait holder in such a way that it cannot be easily removed.
  3. In either method, set more than one trap per location. If one makes a catch, leave the other until you are sure that no others are scouting the same area.

Dealing with the mouse afterward.

This can be the most difficult part of the process. Let me offer a couple of suggestions for the squeamish:

  1. When you hear the clap of the trap, don't rush in quickly. In most cases, the unfortunate little critter may have a little kicking and squirming to do. Wait until this is over.
  2. If you use plastic grocery bags, get a couple of them, double them, put a hand inside, release the trap, and pick the mouse up with the bag. Pull the bag around the rodent, and tie it off. Drop the whole mess into another bag, and tie it off as well. Dispose of it in a suitable manner.

I do not recommend the use of glue traps. They can lead to some pretty nasty results.

Comments Off »

Posted in Pest prevention, rodent control, rodent prevention, rodent trapping

Tags:

Prevent Bugs At Home

October 16th, 2008

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

How To Prevent Bugs At Home


Most of this sites pest prevention information focuses on the interaction of plant and animal life, how they work together, and how to prevent them from working together to prevent weeds and bugs at home and on your property. Sometimes it can be beneficial to break this down separately as well, so we want to talk about a single issue, how to prevent bugs at home. Our focus will narrow a little bit, but remember, that there is always interaction between bugs and weeds and brush and all the other factors on and adjacent to your home and property.

To prevent bugs at home, particularly to prevent bugs from coming into your home is a matter of exclusion. Making sure that they have no way to get inside is how it is done. We want to offer some suggestions on just how to do this.

Homes have openings.

Homes have openings. How well those openings are sealed, determines how well you can prevent bugs at home, and how many pests will get inside. This article will help you to find those week spots in your defenses, and strengthen your homes border against the invaders. The more attention to detail that you give at this stage, the less likely it will be that you have unwanted visitors!

It is a necessary fact of life. You have to breathe. Stop doing it for more than a couple of minutes, and you are a goner! Your home has to breathe too, and In order to breathe, in order to allow entry for pipes and cables, in order to vent heat and harmful gases, there have to be openings in a home.

The primary openings are:

Vents:

  • Attic Vents: For dissipating heat.
  • Soffit Vents: For dissipating heat.
  • Plumbing Vents: For dissipating fumes and allowing the air needed for proper function of drainage systems.
  • Range vents: For dissipating the heat and smoke from cooking.
  • Hot gas vents for ventilating the hot gasses from gas hot water heaters.
  • Dryer vents for dissipating the hot air from clothes dryers.
  • Fan vents, for removing nuisance odors from bathrooms.
  • Weep holes are small vents for allowing the drainage and drying of condensate from natural heating and cooling in the walls of your home, to prevent mold.

Other openings:

Power, communication, and transmission lines and pipes:

  • Air Conditioning Condensate drains: Very often, these are small copper pipes through the walls of the home. These allow the removal of moisture from air conditioning units.
  • Plumbing pipe openings: Allowing plumbing into your home; In most cases today, this is done through the floor of the concrete slab, but sometimes in other areas for homes on blocks or pier and beam construction.
  • Electrical lines. To allow electricity transmission: These are most often at the upper portion of an outside wall.
  • Cable communications lines: For satellite or cable line entry: The location can vary.

A home with out some forms of ventilation would soon destroy itself. A home without electricity, plumbing and communication would not be much fun!

So, how do we accommodate all these holes in our homes, and still keep little critters out? Well, that is what this is about.

How To Close The Border:

  • Vents:

Before central heat and air, there were devices in homes to allow for the adjustment of temperature through the use of ventilation. We still have them in most homes today where they often serve as nothing more than vestiges of the ancient past. These were known as windows. Often the doors were used for the same purpose in the summer.

How did they manage to open these ventilation devices without allowing bugs in? This was accomplished through window and door screens. Taking a lesson from the past, we might consider the use of screens over the vents. Most home builders now screen vents, but there is always a chance, and you should check yours. Sometimes some are omitted by accident. I have seen a number of cases where rodents gained entry through dryer vents, and then chewed through the vent hose to get to the cheese and crackers. Write yourself a note to periodically check these vent screens for clogging.

  • Other openings:

For other entry routes into the home, pipes and cables, will need to be sealed using another ancient technology: Caulk. A tube of high quality caulk is one of the best tools in home pest prevention. Seal around those entries on the outside of your home. Even the very small cracks and holes. You might be surprised just how small an insect or a rodent can become when it is hungry, thirsty, hot dry, wet or cold. When you are done with the outside of your home, you are not done!

On the inside of your house, you should do the same thing. Give special attention to plumbing drains. Very often a box was used to to form around the bathroom piping for the plumbers to make all the connections. If this area is not filled before the walls are completed, there will be exposed soil on the inside of the wall. Most pretreatments for termites will lower the chances of anything coming into the home through these openings, but occasionally some do. If you have easy access to these areas through a pipe chase, filling the area with mortar or some other hardening substance is a good option, if not, the first time that a repair is made to your plumbing requiring a plumber to open up a wall, you might be able to do it. Otherwise, make sure that the inside wall is sealed well.

  • Caulking around doors and windows, inside and out should be checked, and resealed if needed.
  • Door sweeps should be checked and replaced if they do not reach the floor, or do not go all the way to the edges of the door.
  • All weather-stripping around doors and windows should be checked.
  • All screen doors should be in good order with no holes. The same is true of window screens. Look for a good fit. Check the window surface to surface seals where they open, make sure the seal is tight enough that the bugs can’t crawl between.

To see some photographs of typical problem areas, see: Bugs | Stop Them From Coming Inside

What else can you do?

OK, now you know how to prevent bugs at home, what else can you do? A lot! The more pests you stop from coming into your lawn, the more you can stop from coming into your home. If you stop them before they get to your lawn, you raise your chances of winning even more. Check out Prevention Starts Outdoors to get started, and don’t let pests get your best!

4 comments »

Posted in Bugs and weeds, control bugs, control lake weeds, control landscape pests, control lawn pests, control lawn weeds, control mosquitoes, control pests, control rodents, control weeds, Insects, Pest control, Pest management, Pest prevention, Prevent bugs, Prevent bugs at home, Prevent insects, Prevent pests

Tags: