Understanding 4 Common Pest Control Techniques

The more you understand about how different pest control techniques work, the more fully you'll understand your pest control expert's recommendations and methods. Take a look at four common approaches to residential pest control.

1. Environmental Modifications

One key step in reducing your pest problem involves getting rid of whatever environmental factors attract pests to your home in the first place. Environmental factors such as temperature and humidity changes, for instance often compel outdoor pests to seek warmth and moisture indoors.

An inspection may reveal several things you can do to control these environmental factors. For instance, you may need to improve your home's drainage system or take extra steps to control moisture inside the home. You may also need to store foodstuffs more securely and adopt different home cleaning practices.

Warmth doesn't always work in a pest's favor, a fact that pest control experts may use to their advantage. Exposing clothing, upholstery, or entire rooms to extreme heat, for instance, can prove highly effective against otherwise-resilient pests such as bedbugs.

2. Entry Point Control

Pests will find it extremely difficult to invade your home if your home offers no easy entry points. Your pest control expert can evaluate your home's interior and indoor and then recommend certain modifications to keep pests out.

Small pests can easily enter homes through tiny gaps in window caulk, door seals, or cracks in foundations. You may need to have these small gaps closed up and periodically inspected. Bear in mind that heavy rains or seasonal changes in temperature may create new cracks or other gaps that require your attention.

3. Pest-Killing Substances

Once you have a serious pest infestation on your hands, you may need to dispose of the entire pest population quickly and efficiently to forestall the next generation of these intruders. To achieve this goal, your pest control service may use any of several substances aimed at killing cockroaches and other nuisances.

Some of these substances work by poisoning the pests. Some, such as liquid or aerosol insecticides, kill individual creatures on contact. However, their success depends on targeting individual pests or hoping that the pests will travel through the substance. Foggers may even drive the pests more deeply into secure hiding places.

Bait systems may prove more effective at disabling entire pest populations. In this scenario, a pest perceives the bait as food and carries it back to the nest, poisoning every member of the nest that consumes it.

If you have recurring problems with pests living inside your walls, you may want to ask about wall injections. Pest control experts install hollow, perforated tubes into the walls, using the tubes to deliver targeted pest control treatment substances.

Not all pest-killing substances involve toxins. One example of the non-toxic approach involves the use of a substance called diatomaceous earth. This white powder, composed of countless tiny fossilized creatures, makes cuts in the insects' bodies and draws out essential internal fluids.

4. Preventative Inspections

Despite the undoubted effectiveness of the techniques noted above, you may find preventative inspections the most powerful pest control strategy of all. When you schedule periodic pest inspections, the pest control team can discover new vulnerabilities or infestations in time to prevent major problems from breaking out.

Since the effects of pest control treatments such as fogging and baiting do not extend indefinitely, give serious thought to scheduling a pest inspection at least once per quarter. These quarterly inspections and (if necessary) fresh treatments should suffice to handle seasonal spikes in pest migration and reproduction.

American Pest Professionals uses a wide range of advanced, environmentally-friendly pest control methods to keep your home as pest-free as possible. Contact us today to schedule a pest inspection or get rid of a nagging pest problem.