It’s spring time and the pests are back in force. You know all the traditional ways of keeping them out like keeping doors and windows closed and making sure to take out the trash, but there are some more unconventional ways pests might be finding their way into your home that you might not have ever thought about and don’t know you need to protect your home against:
- Chimney: if you’re lucky enough to have a chimney, you know how much aesthetic appeal it brings to a home and how nice it is to sit around a warm fire on a cold winter night. However, chimneys do come with some down sides. One is that pests could be accessing your home through it. Everything from spiders, roaches, rats and birds could be getting into your home through an exposed chimney.
- What you can do: get a chimney cap. You can find these at some hardware stores or order them online. Also, make sure there are no cracks or holes in your chimney if there are make sure to patch them up. If they are sizeable, make sure to call a professional for help.
- Window screens: we’re sure you know that it’s important to have screens over your windows so bugs can’t fly in when you open them, but how often do you check your window screens? Many homeowners don’t check theirs that often and would be surprised to know that their window screens are filled with small holes that bugs can get through. Window screens aren’t made of the most durable material and Oklahoma storms can be tough on them. After a few years, parts of them may begin to wear thin.
- What you can do: you can replace the screens altogether or patch over the holes. You should be able to find materials at any hardware store for this.
- Plants: plants are a bugs favorite hiding place. For vegetarian bugs, they provide a constant source of food and for carnivorous bugs they provide easy hunting grounds. A nearly constant source of water and almost always located in the sun, it’s easy to see why insects love plants so much. If you’ve got some potted plants or a vegetable garden, this is probably the time of year where you’re doing a lot of planting, getting your seeds in the ground and moving your pots from outside to inside. All this time spend in the garden provides bugs ample opportunity to catch a ride inside on your planning equipment, pots or plants themselves.
- What you can do: try to leave any planting equipment—watering cans, spades, pots, etc.—outside or in a storage area that doesn’t require brining it through the house. For anything that does need to be brought inside, lightly rinse it off before you bring it in to make sure there are no bugs catching a lift.
- Patio furniture: this time of year, you’re hauling all sorts of things out of storage, whether that’s down from the attic, up from the basement or anywhere else you find a place to keep your summer things the rest of the year. That stuff probably has all kinds of creepy crawlers on it (particularly spiders) and if you’re bringing it through the house at all then that gives them a prime opportunity to hop off and find a new home inside your home! This will happen again at the end of the season when critters who have attached themselves over the summer hitch a ride inside as you move the furniture back into storage.
- What you can do: make sure anything being moved in and out of storage is being taken directly outside and then hosed down to get off any bugs. Make sure to do this each time you bring anything from inside to outside.
We hope these tips help you keep your home pest-free* all year long! If any unwanted pests do manage to get inside your home, give us a call or visit our website to get started on your free, no-obligation evaluation. We’ll create a custom pest control plan to get rid of all your pest problems in no time! You can also call our trained pest control experts at any time with questions about pest control methods or pest prevention techniques. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ for more pest prevention tips and tricks.
