Constructing your dream house is a milestone, however keeping it in sturdy condition and safe from insects such astermites, carpenter ants and spiders is a task that you can’t afford to ignore. We bring you some pointers to ease your labour in this direction. Read on…
Just picture this. You are relaxing on the couch with a good science-fiction novel one afternoon, and all of a sudden, a swarm of flying insects appears out of nowhere. Guess what? That isn’t science fiction; you’ve got real-life trouble. A swarm of winged insects inside your home probably means you’ve got termites living with you!
How To Get Rid of Termites in House?
In this section you will get to know the following:
- How To Detect Termites?
- How To Prevent Termites?
- Tips To Get Rid of Termites in the House.
How To Detect Termites?
We don’t need to tell you this, but still, here you go – A termite is the most destructive insect that feeds on wood, and dealing with a termite infestation is best left to a professional. But you can try to detect for yourself whether your house has a termite problem. Start your inspection down low in order to know how to get rid of termites in the house; termites are typically found in basements and crawl spaces.
How to detect termites in your home? Well, here are the ways:
- The presence of mud-like ‘patches’ on exposed wood framing
- Pencil-thin mud-like tunnels on basement walls, wood posts or trim boards. These tunnels are the termites’ ‘hallways’
- Buckling paint or tiny holes on exposed wood
- Crumbing or softwood (which could also be due to moisture) … Pick at the softwood with a screwdriver. If you see tunnels running parallel with the grain, that’s an indication of termites.
How To Prevent Termites?
Termites, sometimes also called white ants, breed in moist places. In order to prevent these nasty insects from capturing your home, start planning right before the construction of your house. You can take the help of pest control experts. Use the woods that are resistant to termites. You can prevent termites in your existing house by keeping the humidity low and not dumping scrap, especially in cardboard. Keep a close check of wood furniture, doors and window. You can know more about how to prevent termites in your home by going through our blog.
Tips To Get Rid Of Termites In the House
Contrary to the popular belief that termites LIVE in the wood of your house, the fact is that they WORK there. They live in a nest where a king and queen hold reign and worry about reproducing. Meanwhile, the worker termites march through protective mud tunnels to their wood-munching jobs. At the end of their shift, they come back to the nest and excrete the food they ate. This is dinner for the other termites. Here, comes our role to be played. For the termite treatment at home, spray termiticide (termite poisons), which interrupt this digestion process. The worker termites ingest poison, and excrete it to their buddies, who eat it and die. How to permanently get rid of termites at home? Well, you’ve got the answer. If you want to know some tips and tricks for keeping your home free from germs, you can go through our blog.
Termites Versus Carpenter Ants – Understanding the Difference
Following are some differences between termites versus carpenter ants:
- Winged ants and termites look an awful lot alike, but ants have a narrow wasp-like waist and their wings are about the same length as their bodies. Termite wings are twice as long as these insects’ thick-wasted bodies. Guess its spandex for those curvy ants and an empire waist for those shapeless termites!
- While termites eat wood, carpenter ants set-up housekeeping in it. They establish nests in either rotting or structurally sound wood. The problem is, once they’ve settled down into their ‘house’ the wood member can lose its structural integrity.
- Carpenter ants aren’t as sneaky as termites. They are often visible. They’re big ants that are either black or red. However, just because you see one or two of them in the house doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve established condos in your framing.
How To Get Rid of Carpenter Ants?
In this section, you will get to know the following:
- How To Detect Carpenter Ants?
- Tips To Get Rid of Carpenter ants
How To Detect Carpenter Ants?
Here are few signs of carpenter ants in house:
- Fibrous sawdust-like deposits at the base of wood members are a sure-shot sign of carpenter ants, which like moisture. Hence, their common nesting sites are porch posts and damp basements.
- Signs of tunneling are another indication. Vis-à-vis the tunnels made by termite, those made by carpenter ants are clean and smooth – almost as if they were whittled and sanded down.
Tips To Get Rid of Carpenter ants
Finding and getting rid of the nest is best left to a professional, but there are certainly measures you can take to prevent carpenter ants from getting into the house. Eliminate all woodpiles next to your house and make sure there is adequate ventilation in the moist area.
If you are wondering how to get rid of carpenter ants in walls, then sealing up all cracks and gaps along the foundation with caulk can be the best solution. Sprinkling boric acid powder can also be one solution to get rid of carpenter ants. There are various other home remedies for pest control, such as disposing unwanted things, sprinkling bleaching powder and using oil such as peppermint oil etc.
How To Get Rid of Spiders at Home?
In this section, you will get to know the following:
- How To Detect Spiders?
- Tips on How to Permanently Get Rid of Spiders at Home?
- Ways To prevent spiders in home
How To Detect Spiders
We’ve all gone through the childhood phase of having night terrors about daddy longlegs. Albeit, post growing up and reading tomes of zoology books, we have now come to realize that most spiders are beneficial and help balance nature by feeding on insects. Nonetheless, many folks will still admit to spiders giving them the creeps!
All spiders have venom, but only two types have the fangs and venom to do serious damage to human beings – the brown recluse and the black widow. Things can turn serious after getting bitten by a recluse spider because the lesion often becomes necrotic, meaning the living tissues keep dying. Hence, it’s necessary to get rid of spiders at home.
Tips on How to Permanently Get Rid of Spiders at Home
Spiders absolutely dote on quiet, dark, damp, dusty places. That’s why they’re found in attics, basements, utility rooms, closets, sheds, woodpiles and under roof eaves. Of course, there are sprays that will kill spiders, but if you can handle it, you can avoid using poisons by just catching them and releasing them outside. Glue traps and sticky boards are effective at catching insects and spiders. You can give them a try. Furthermore, with prevention always being better than cure, make sure they don’t find a way inside your home.
Ways To Prevent Spiders From Entering Your Home
Following are the methods to prevent spiders from entering your home:
Most spiders prefer to live outside, so go ahead and sample these methods to keep them there.
- Use tight-fitting window and door screens
- Install door sweeps and seal any openings along the doors, windows and foundation walls
- Destroy webs by vacuuming or knocking them down with a broom. Eliminate outdoor webs by spraying them with a high-pressure garden hose.
- Keep the foundation of your home free of debris (especially those lumber piles!)
- Eliminate clutter in closets, basements and attics. Store items off the floor
- Yes, before we forget, an extremely critical word about cardboard. Apparently, spiders like cardboard. If you’re short on storage space and keep items in cardboard boxes under your bed, switch to plastic containers, or seal the cardboard edges with tape. Trust us, there’s nothing worse than opening a memory box and finding a spider that’s bigger than your head staring back at you unabashedly!
So that’s all from our end on keeping your abode free from the havoc that termites, spiders and carpenter ants can create. Hope you are now aware of how to get rid of termites in house, how to get rid of carpenter ants and how to get rid of spiders at home. If you have any extra tips to share, then please do leave them in the comments section…
Along with your home, you need to take care of your garden as well so that these nasty pests are totally out. Now that you are familiar with the ways to get rid of termites, carpenter ants and spiders, you can also know the ways to keep your garden safe from pests by going through our blog on ways to control common garden pests.
10 Easy Ways to Control Common Garden Pests!
Image Courtesy: Image 5, Image 9
Author Bio
Huta Raval – An English Literature and Journalism Topper, Huta Raval has graduated from the L D Arts College, Ahmedabad. Post serving for 23 years in the NBFC and Public Library Sectors her desire for ‘writing the unwritten’ brought her to the creative field of content writing. Her clientele comprises of NGOs, Blogging Platforms, Newspapers, Academic Institutions, et al.