Want to save money and protect your home effectively? Discover pest control secrets that professionals might not want you to know, from DIY treatments to understanding true costs and risks, and take control of your pest management.
Here are 12 things that pest controllers do not want you to know.
1. Pest Control Is Easier Than You Think
The truth is pretty much anybody can do it. You don’t need to be particularly strong or young. You certainly do not need to be a man. More and more women are getting into the field now, and that’s great news. The fact is, most of the time, even a child can do it.
Because of all the mystery and misinformation that is surrounding this stuff, it’s probably not a good idea to send kids out to apply pesticides. The fact is that they would be able to do it. Sure, there are times when pest control can be a little bit of work, like if you’re trenching for termites or something like that.
The vast majority of the time, this is really easy work. Pest controllers are not selling anything that you cannot do yourself quite easily. What they are really selling is their knowledge. Simply put, you are paying them because they know something you don’t. They have no Magic Bullets.
2. Pest Control Doesn’t Have to Be Expensive
The truth is that most of the cost for hiring a pro is going to be labor, overhead, and the profit that they wish to make. While a gallon of a professional pesticide can look really expensive, it goes a really long way. In most cases, you can do your own pest control for a fraction of the cost that the pros charge.
Think about it; they have to charge you for labor and material, but overhead as well. You’re paying for the phones, the vehicles, the uniforms, the equipment, the office worker to answer the phone, the accountant, the insurance, the income tax, the computers, and the advertising. Then they need to add some sort of profit. They’re not exactly doing this to run a charity.
All you need to do is buy the pesticides, maybe an inexpensive sprayer, and perhaps some protective equipment like rubber gloves and goggles, and you’re good to go. This is going to be a lot less expensive for you to do rather than hiring a professional. If you do this work yourself, you will save a boatload of cash. Your wallet is going to love you for it.
3. Pesticides Aren’t Always Hazardous
The Pest Control industry has us all thinking that using professional pesticides is a very dangerous thing to do, but is it? Pesticides got a really bad rap in the 20th century, but this is no longer the 20th century. Almost all of those really hazardous pesticides were banned near the end of the 20th century. They literally do not make them anymore.
Today, most pesticides are required to be safe for children. That’s right, after they are applied and have dried, those pesticides are required to be safe for kids. The toxicity of pesticides, like all chemicals, are rated with signal words. The signal word that they put on the label is going to tell you just how hazardous a chemical really is.
The signal word on most of the pesticides that the pros are going to use, and the pesticides that you can buy as well in most States, have the same exact signal word as common laundry detergent. That’s right, most of the pesticides that you are going to be handling are no more toxic than the laundry detergent that you use to wash your clothes.
Sure, you certainly do not want to be bathing in this stuff, but if you get a little on your hands, then just simply wash them, and you will be just fine. Now, this does not mean that you should not wear protective equipment such as gloves, goggles, and a mask, but this material is nowhere near as hazardous to your health as you were led to believe.
4. You Can Do More Than Pest Controllers
There are some Pest Control applications that a lot of pest controllers simply will not do, and that will leave your home unprotected against some pests. For example, many pest controllers will not apply pesticides above their heads, so that means that they will not spray your eaves or fascia boards. This can be a problem in some areas of the country because dry wood termites enter through the eaves and fascia boards.
If you have unpainted wood, you know that may just be stained or something, then you can also be subject to carpenter bees as well. Also, many pest control companies will not treat your attic with boracare. Again, this would be a problem in certain areas of the country because treating your addict with boracare is an excellent way to treat and prevent dry wood termites as well as other wood destroying pests.
Since it can be difficult or even impossible sometimes to find a pest control company that will perform these functions, then these are applications that you have no choice but to do yourself. Obviously, since these pest control companies will not perform these functions, they are not going to even tell you that these are treatments that should be done.
Unless you have really done your homework to learn all about these different pests, such as dry wood termites, and if you don’t do it yourself, then you are going to get reinfested time and time again with dry wood termites.
5. Skip Spraying, Remove Mosquito Breeding Areas
Some pest controllers make a pretty good living going from home to home with a big backpack fogger and fogging yards with a pesticide for mosquitoes. That will keep the mosquito population down to a minimum. Most of the time, all you really need to do is simply remove the breeding areas, and you will no longer have a mosquito problem.
The truth is that only female mosquitoes bite, and that is because they need to take a blood meal before they lay their eggs. Since they only lay their eggs in Shallow standing water, then all you need to do is remove those water sources, and voila, you no longer have a mosquito problem.
Areas where mosquitoes breed are things like bird baths that have not been properly cared for, swimming pools that are no longer in use, flower pots that have a pan of water under them, low spots in your yard where water tends to gather and stay, or any other areas where there is shallow standing water.
A reputable pest controller will go around and assist you with removing these water sources and correcting those sorts of problems, but there are some pest controllers who will simply show up at your property, do some fogging, and then just hand you the bill.
It’s a great gig for them too because since they did not remove the breeding areas, they are going to need to refog your property every two to four weeks. It’s quick and easy work for them, and it pays really well too. Do your wallet a favor and just remove the breeding areas and then show those folks the door.
You may get some mosquitoes flying over from your neighbor’s yard, but there’s nothing that you can do about that, and it’s the same for the pest controllers as well. Fogging your yard is not going to do anything to stop mosquitoes from flying over from your neighbor’s yard.
6. Termite Tenting Isn’t a Permanent Fix
Any pest control company worth their salt will tell you if you have dry wood termites, then the best way to get rid of them is to fumigate your house. What they often do not tell you is that the gas that they use to fumigate your house has no residual action whatsoever. You can get reinfested literally the moment the tent comes down.
While it is true that some pest control companies will give you a one or perhaps a two-year warranty, there are some states that mandate that they give you a one or two year warranty. This does not ensure that you will not get reinfested.
Most people do not realize that they have been reinfested until they start to see those swarmers, those flying termites that come in, and so they don’t know they’re there. It takes dry wood termites four to seven years before the galleries can mature to the point where they will produce those swarmers.
You may well be infested for two or more years after the tent comes down, and you will never realize that you have the problem again. While a one or two year termite guarantee may give you a lot of Peace of Mind, the truth is those guarantees are totally worthless.
After the fumigation is completed, you may get infested with carpenter ants, and that is because carpetent ants like to feed on termites. They may be attracted to all those dead bodies that are now laying around inside your walls and your attic in places like that.
Not only do those dead termites provide a nice tasty source of food for the coffee dance, but the termites already did most of the work tunneling out the wood for them. All the carpenter ants need to do is just have a feast in your walls and breed. Now that they have gotten into your home, there’s a very good chance that they are going to build a satellite colony in your home, and they’re just going to stay there.
You would think that it would be common courtesy for pest control companies to disclose this information to you, right, but many of them do not. The good news, though, is that these potential problems can be prevented by treating the outside of your home every three months with a pesticide. It’s super easy to do.
7. Trenching Isn’t Always Needed for Termites
You do not need to trench around your house to treat for subterranean termites, and you don’t need to waste your money on expensive baiting systems either. If you have a problem with subterranean termites, then there is a good chance that you can treat it yourself for about fifty dollars and about an hour’s worth of your time.
Most pest control companies are either going to try to sell you an expensive baiting system or an expensive treatment where they dig a trench around your entire home and then bore a bunch of holes through your concrete slabs like patios, driveways, and they’re going to inject a tomato side into those holes.
Both of these treatment plans are certainly effective, they are also expensive and usually not necessary. If you have dirt around most of your home, then you can simply use a granulated to miticide to sprinkle around the perimeter of your home and just water it in with a common garden hose. Using granules to treat your subterranean termites is going to work about 95% of the time, and it’s going to save you a ton of cash.
Pest controllers are going to say that it will never work. This has been used since the mid-1990s and it has never failed. Since it’s only fifty dollars, why not give it a try? If it doesn’t work, then you can either hire a pro or go ahead and trench the house yourself.
Another little fact that the pest controllers do not want you to know is that subterranean termites are fairly slow eaters. They will do very little damage in the amount of time it takes to figure out if the granules have worked for you. Using the granules is not recommended for for motion termites because they have the ability to colonize inside your home like in your walls in what we call cartons.
It will not work for dry wood termites either because those guys aren’t even subterranean. For the rest of the termites in the United States though, which accounts for about 90 percent or more of the termite damage, then the granules are definitely the way to go first.
8. German Cockroaches: A Persistent Problem
Pest controllers do not want you to know that they have no idea how to eliminate a German cockroach infestation. It doesn’t matter what Pest Control you hire, they are all going to tell you that they can get rid of your German cockroach infestation. Unfortunately, they are not telling you the truth. All they are doing is selling you a service to control your cockroach infestation. They are not actually going to get rid of the problem entirely.
If you don’t believe this, just ask anyone who has hired a pest control company to treat their German cockroaches. All these companies are going to do is keep the Cockroach population knocked down to the point where you seldom if ever notice any cockroaches. That is the reason that they must continue to come back every month to treat for these things. If they had actually eliminated the problem, there would be no reason for them to return.
There is a way that you can totally eliminate your German cockroach infestation, and you can do it yourself. There probably aren’t a dozen pest controllers in the entire world that know how to do this, but you can learn how to do it by watching a video.
9. Fogging for Cockroaches Is a Bad Idea
A common practice that some Pest Control is used to control German cockroaches, mostly done in apartment buildings, is they fog. This is a process where they literally use a machine that creates a pesticide fog that fogs the whole apartment. It’s like spraying a can of raid with all the fog coming out. This is going to produce a lot of dead bodies, and it’s really going to impress the landlord.
It is also going to drive thousands of cockroaches into the adjoining Apartments, and it’s going to make the overall problem even worse. The landlords like this because the Cockroaches will not return to the fog department for at least a couple of weeks, which will give the landlord time to rent it to some unsuspecting tenant who will not know that they are about to enter into the Twilight Zone of Terror by being infested with these German cockroaches.
If a pest control suggests to you that you fog Apartments, please know that this is the very last thing that you want to do. You would be much better served to use other treatment methods such as baiting insect growth regulators, permanent pesticides such as boric acid and boron, and things of that nature.
10. Most Pesticides Won’t Kill Bees
It’s no secret that the bee population has been declining over the past few years, and it sure was easy to blame the problem on pesticides. Besides come in two basic flavors. There are repellent pesticides and there are non-repellent pesticides. If you spray plants with a non-repellent pesticide, then the target pests do not know that they are being poisoned, and they will happily take the pesticide back to the Colony or back to the hive.
The non-repellent pesticide will get spread around to the other insects, and the entire Colony or the hive will completely die out, hence all the hype around killing bees with pesticides. In the case of repellent pesticides, the insects, including bees, have a way of knowing that the pesticide is actually a poison, and they are going to avoid it.
That means they will not take it back to the Colony or the hive. In fact, they generally will not go near it, so the bees are not going to take it back to the hive and kill off all the other bees. As long as you use a repellent pesticide, the bees are perfectly safe.
The pros use it all the time on your lawn and ornamental plants, so if it’s okay for the pros to do it, then why have lawmakers in some states and some other countries ban those products for purchase by non-licensed people? Why not just ban the non-repellant pesticides?
11. Pesticides Don’t Harm the Environment
Modern day pesticides are formulated to stay where you put them. If you treat your lawn, those pesticides are not going to run off into the drainage systems whenever it rains and somehow find their way into the ocean or your drinking water. Also, they will not leech deep enough into the ground to cause any harm whatsoever to the aquifer.
The truth is that pesticides will not run off or leech into the ground after they dry, and they dry very quickly. Unless you are applying this stuff directly in the rain or just before it rains, the environment is going to be perfectly fine. Of course, you don’t want to be applying this stuff in lakes ponds and such as that.
There are paint products that are more hazardous than most of the pesticides that are on the market today. If most people are not going to throw paint into ponds and lakes, then why would they do that with pesticides? People are just not that stupid. Nobody wants to purposely kill off the fish and all the wildlife by polluting our waterways.
12. Prices Vary Between Companies
When most people call a pest controller, they usually just hire the first one that they call, but this is a huge mistake. Prices can vary greatly from company to company, so it pays to shop. Prices for a termite treatment, for example, that would vary as much as a couple of thousand dollars between companies.
Naturally, a lot of pest control companies do not want you to know this. If you find yourself in a position where you must hire a pest control company, always call at least three to six companies in order to get the best price. Keep in mind that not all pest control companies treat the same way. Just because you’re getting a better price does not mean necessarily that you are getting a better service or the same service as the other pest control company.
Always ask the pest control company for the specific species that they that they are going to treat for and exactly what the treatment plan is going to be. You should always get this information in writing. It’s your house, and you have a right to know exactly what pesticides they are planning to use and exactly how they are planning to use them.
Some pest control companies will use high pressure sales tactics like telling you that the price is only good for today. The price is going to be good tomorrow as well, and in fact, the price may even go down tomorrow.
Conclusion
From DIY ease to cost savings, safety insights, and targeted treatments, understanding these pest control secrets empowers you to protect your home effectively. Remember to compare prices, question techniques, and consider doing it yourself to maintain a pest-free environment while saving money and ensuring your family’s safety.
