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We often see damage around our customers' homes at common wildlife entry points for the unwanted animals and pest problems.
Most of these are on the rooftops where caps, vents and covers can get chewed or ripped out of place.
Even though squirrels, raccoons and skunks might not look that big, they have razor sharp teeth and strong paws, so plastic hardware used on the exterior of homes pose little challenge to these animals trying to get inside.
Larger animals, like raccoons, can cause even more damage. It's not uncommon that we'll find a raccoon has ripped away the soffits and eavestroughs under someone's roof and clawed a hole through the fascia and wooden panels beneath the shingles.
Smaller insect pests aren't as destructive to the exterior of your home, but they can still cause damage to exposed wood.
Their entry points are more often through gaps in window and doors frames.
Some insects, like ants, will target damp or rotting wood sometimes found around older window or door frames and can make these openings bigger, making the problem worse.
It would be bad enough if pests just kind of hung out in your home or business. They’re gross. Nobody wants to live with them. Unfortunately, however, there are even more important reasons to deal with pest infestations quickly and permanently. Pests wreck literally incalculable damage on manmade structures and the natural world alike. Scientists recently estimated that invasive forest insects alone cost the US over $4 billion dollars annually.
Even common pests like rodents or beetles can do a surprising amount of damage to your home surprisingly quickly. Here are a couple of the worst problems pests can make for you if you let them. If you’re worried you have an infestation, take action immediately to save yourself the potentially expensive headache of dealing with stuff like this. Sorry about the scare tactics; we just want to make sure you know what to keep an eye out for.
Inside your attic, animals will rip up your insulation to make a nest.
They can chew their way down into the walls, continuing their assault on the wooden framing and insulation inside your walls.
Once an animal has made an entry point, your home is now at the mercy of both the pest and Mother Nature.
Rain, snow, moisture and wind can get in through the entry holes and cause rot and decay to your home's structure.
This happens on a much longer timeline, but the damage is no less real and can be very expensive to repair if not caught early on.
There's also another risk of fire if an animal does get into your attic or walls.
When they're building nests, animals such as squirrels, raccoons and skunks will use just about anything they can get their claws on, including the plastic insulation around your electrical wiring, which might cause a short circuit.
At best this will trip your circuit breaker, but if the touching wires cause sparks in the presence of flammable materials then this could start a fire.
So in the spirit of getting to know our “roomies” better, I thought it might be fun to gather a Top Ten list of insects (and others) that can affect the value of our homes. Yes, I said affect the value of your home! In fact, I think this list should be required reading for any new home owner. Here we go:
Termites cause over $5 billion of damage to property in the U.S. each year, according to the National Pest Management Association. And damage by termites is typically not covered by homeowner’s insurance. Termite control is not for amateurs. A professional can help you identify the species you are fighting and use an effective control to protect your home. Luckily, tools for termite control have improved and gotten safer over the years. So if you find termites in your home, there’s no good excuse to not call a termite expert.
Powderpost beetles in the subfamily Lyctinae can be a major headache, especially for new homeowners in Texas and throughout the South. Lyctid beetles attack hardwood only, so will not destroy a home; but they can infest molding, flooring, cabinets, doors, and other hardwood furniture. Look for small (1/32 to 1/16 inch diameter) round holes in wood. Active infestations are recognized by the presence of very fine sawdust coming from the holes. Powderpost beetles can affect the sale-ability and price of your home and they are reportable on state wood destroying insect reports required for home loans in most states. Most lyctid beetle infestations occur in new homes (1-5 years old) that have been built with infested wood. Removing infested wood is usually the most economical solution.
Carpenter ants are major structural pests in some parts of the country, especially the Pacific Northwest. While they don’t eat wood, the well-muscled jaws of carpenter ants are fully capable of hollowing out solid pine or fir lumber to make nest galleries. This is not so true in Texas, where our species tend to avoid the hard work of boring into wood, and content themselves living in void areas inside hollow doors, behind insulation and in softer styrofoam insulation panels. Nevertheless, carpenter ants are considered wood destroyers in most states and are reportable on real estate transactions. And even our mild, southern carpenter ants can be quite a nuisance when they forage indoors looking for water and sweets.
Rats and mice. Yes, I know they’re not insects, but rats and mice in your home are some of the most unhealthy and damaging pests around. Ignore these little critters at your own peril. It’s estimated that a single cute little house mouse leaves behind 3,000 microdroplets of urine a day. This urine, which contains a host of bacteria and viruses, ends up wherever the mice travel: kitchen counters, floors, silverware drawers and food cupboards. Their larger rat cousins, the roof and Norway rats, also leave behind feces and urine with pathogens capable of spreading salmonella, murine typhus and other maladies. Even worse for your home, rats will damage and contaminate insulation and chew on attic wiring. They may have been cute in Ratatouillee, and you have to admire their resourcefulness, but believe me when I say you don’t want these guys in your home. While rodenticides can be effective, they often result in animals dying in the attic or walls or other undesirable location. Use snap traps for limited infestations.
Squirrels can also be incredibly destructive to your home. They chew holes in siding and soffits, they start families in your attic, they even damage trees in your yard. And together with rats and mice, these rodents are thought to be the cause of up to 25% of all mystery fires–fires for which the cause cannot be determined with certainty. If you hear the rapid pitter-patter of footsteps in your attic, especially during the day, chances are you have squirrels. Exclusion and one-way doors installed by a professional are effective ways of dealing with squirrels that make their way indoors.
Honey bees are great outdoors, in a hive, kept by a beekeeper; but they become an expensive house wrecker when allowed indoors. Within a few days of finding their way indoors, a bee colony of 30,000 bees can build a several pound hive. As the hive continues to grow, it becomes a sizeable mass of wax, honey, and propolis. If killed by insecticide, a dead hive will leak fermenting honey and melted wax (the bees normally keep wax from melting in hot environments), and dead bees. It will also attract insect scavengers, moths, and rodents. A significant part of the cost of bee extermination is removal of the nest. Make sure whoever you hire has experience and knows what they are doing. BTW, you may be able to get someone to extract the bees alive; but this isn’t always practical and it usually costs you more. Wild honey bees are not endangered in any way, so you shouldn’t feel guilty about exterminating a wild bee nest where it’s not wanted.
Indoor ants may not physically damage your home, but they reduce the pleasure of living there. Knowing what kind of ant you have is an important step in control. Some ants live mostly outside, and some ants are finicky about what baits they will feed on. So find someone who can identify your ants, or use this online guide for Texas ants. It’s generally a good idea to avoid the use of sprays against ants, at least indoors. Baits are a safer and more effective option for most ants. Liquid ant baits are more effective than solid bait pellets inside plastic stations. Place bait containers out of reach of children and wherever ants are seen. Don’t spray around the bait stations because sprays are often repellent. You want the ants to come to the bait and carry it home to share with their sisters.
Fire ants are a major pest in the southern U.S. Besides reducing the aesthetic and recreational value of your home, fire ants can damage transformer boxes, air conditioning and other electrical relay switches, causing power outages. The good news is that fire ants are not that difficult to control. Use the Texas Two-Step method outside your home to reduce fire ant colonies and reduce the risk of damage.
German cockroaches in the home are both repugnant and unhealthy. Research has shown that children growing up in homes with German cockroaches are more likely to suffer from allergies and asthma. Their feces and shed skins are allergenic and can carry pathogens. German cockroaches require a vigorous cleanup effort, and careful use of baits. If you do these two things right, sprays are not usually needed for good cockroach control. For more information, see our free publication on cockroaches.
Bed bugs reduce the attractiveness and livability of any home. While bed bugs are not known to carry disease, their presence is highly undesirable and causes soiling of bedding, home and furniture. I recently spoke to a prospective buyer of a very expensive home who was considering backing out of the deal because she found out the previous owner had had bed bugs. Fortunately, the owner had hired a good company with experienced staff who did all the right things, and had records showing that the problem had been taken care of. If you are unfortunate enough to have bed bugs, I encourage you to hire a good professional. Additional suggestions and information about control can be found here.
If you are rich, just call a pest control service team, cost around USD 3000-4000(Euro 2600-3400) base on different acreage of your garden and house.
If you wannat do yourself, buy drugs, chemical products, using poison or bet smell to kill or keep them away and leaving pollution to environment at the same time.
If you are Environmentalist or you have Environmentally conscious, just follow us, using physical ways to solve these headache problems easily and Safety.
Choose Aosion, Choose an environmentally friendly and safety lifestyle, Choose a comfortable and pest-free home and garden.
Please contact us any time, if you have this kind of pest problems.
Thanks!
Aosion Team
Most of these are on the rooftops where caps, vents and covers can get chewed or ripped out of place.
Even though squirrels, raccoons and skunks might not look that big, they have razor sharp teeth and strong paws, so plastic hardware used on the exterior of homes pose little challenge to these animals trying to get inside.
Larger animals, like raccoons, can cause even more damage. It's not uncommon that we'll find a raccoon has ripped away the soffits and eavestroughs under someone's roof and clawed a hole through the fascia and wooden panels beneath the shingles.
Smaller insect pests aren't as destructive to the exterior of your home, but they can still cause damage to exposed wood.
Their entry points are more often through gaps in window and doors frames.
Some insects, like ants, will target damp or rotting wood sometimes found around older window or door frames and can make these openings bigger, making the problem worse.
It would be bad enough if pests just kind of hung out in your home or business. They’re gross. Nobody wants to live with them. Unfortunately, however, there are even more important reasons to deal with pest infestations quickly and permanently. Pests wreck literally incalculable damage on manmade structures and the natural world alike. Scientists recently estimated that invasive forest insects alone cost the US over $4 billion dollars annually.
Even common pests like rodents or beetles can do a surprising amount of damage to your home surprisingly quickly. Here are a couple of the worst problems pests can make for you if you let them. If you’re worried you have an infestation, take action immediately to save yourself the potentially expensive headache of dealing with stuff like this. Sorry about the scare tactics; we just want to make sure you know what to keep an eye out for.
Damage to Your Home, Indoor:
Once inside your home, the damage caused by these animals could continue.Inside your attic, animals will rip up your insulation to make a nest.
They can chew their way down into the walls, continuing their assault on the wooden framing and insulation inside your walls.
Once an animal has made an entry point, your home is now at the mercy of both the pest and Mother Nature.
Rain, snow, moisture and wind can get in through the entry holes and cause rot and decay to your home's structure.
This happens on a much longer timeline, but the damage is no less real and can be very expensive to repair if not caught early on.
There's also another risk of fire if an animal does get into your attic or walls.
When they're building nests, animals such as squirrels, raccoons and skunks will use just about anything they can get their claws on, including the plastic insulation around your electrical wiring, which might cause a short circuit.
At best this will trip your circuit breaker, but if the touching wires cause sparks in the presence of flammable materials then this could start a fire.
So in the spirit of getting to know our “roomies” better, I thought it might be fun to gather a Top Ten list of insects (and others) that can affect the value of our homes. Yes, I said affect the value of your home! In fact, I think this list should be required reading for any new home owner. Here we go:
Termites cause over $5 billion of damage to property in the U.S. each year, according to the National Pest Management Association. And damage by termites is typically not covered by homeowner’s insurance. Termite control is not for amateurs. A professional can help you identify the species you are fighting and use an effective control to protect your home. Luckily, tools for termite control have improved and gotten safer over the years. So if you find termites in your home, there’s no good excuse to not call a termite expert.
Powderpost beetles in the subfamily Lyctinae can be a major headache, especially for new homeowners in Texas and throughout the South. Lyctid beetles attack hardwood only, so will not destroy a home; but they can infest molding, flooring, cabinets, doors, and other hardwood furniture. Look for small (1/32 to 1/16 inch diameter) round holes in wood. Active infestations are recognized by the presence of very fine sawdust coming from the holes. Powderpost beetles can affect the sale-ability and price of your home and they are reportable on state wood destroying insect reports required for home loans in most states. Most lyctid beetle infestations occur in new homes (1-5 years old) that have been built with infested wood. Removing infested wood is usually the most economical solution.
Carpenter ants are major structural pests in some parts of the country, especially the Pacific Northwest. While they don’t eat wood, the well-muscled jaws of carpenter ants are fully capable of hollowing out solid pine or fir lumber to make nest galleries. This is not so true in Texas, where our species tend to avoid the hard work of boring into wood, and content themselves living in void areas inside hollow doors, behind insulation and in softer styrofoam insulation panels. Nevertheless, carpenter ants are considered wood destroyers in most states and are reportable on real estate transactions. And even our mild, southern carpenter ants can be quite a nuisance when they forage indoors looking for water and sweets.
Rats and mice. Yes, I know they’re not insects, but rats and mice in your home are some of the most unhealthy and damaging pests around. Ignore these little critters at your own peril. It’s estimated that a single cute little house mouse leaves behind 3,000 microdroplets of urine a day. This urine, which contains a host of bacteria and viruses, ends up wherever the mice travel: kitchen counters, floors, silverware drawers and food cupboards. Their larger rat cousins, the roof and Norway rats, also leave behind feces and urine with pathogens capable of spreading salmonella, murine typhus and other maladies. Even worse for your home, rats will damage and contaminate insulation and chew on attic wiring. They may have been cute in Ratatouillee, and you have to admire their resourcefulness, but believe me when I say you don’t want these guys in your home. While rodenticides can be effective, they often result in animals dying in the attic or walls or other undesirable location. Use snap traps for limited infestations.
Squirrels can also be incredibly destructive to your home. They chew holes in siding and soffits, they start families in your attic, they even damage trees in your yard. And together with rats and mice, these rodents are thought to be the cause of up to 25% of all mystery fires–fires for which the cause cannot be determined with certainty. If you hear the rapid pitter-patter of footsteps in your attic, especially during the day, chances are you have squirrels. Exclusion and one-way doors installed by a professional are effective ways of dealing with squirrels that make their way indoors.
Honey bees are great outdoors, in a hive, kept by a beekeeper; but they become an expensive house wrecker when allowed indoors. Within a few days of finding their way indoors, a bee colony of 30,000 bees can build a several pound hive. As the hive continues to grow, it becomes a sizeable mass of wax, honey, and propolis. If killed by insecticide, a dead hive will leak fermenting honey and melted wax (the bees normally keep wax from melting in hot environments), and dead bees. It will also attract insect scavengers, moths, and rodents. A significant part of the cost of bee extermination is removal of the nest. Make sure whoever you hire has experience and knows what they are doing. BTW, you may be able to get someone to extract the bees alive; but this isn’t always practical and it usually costs you more. Wild honey bees are not endangered in any way, so you shouldn’t feel guilty about exterminating a wild bee nest where it’s not wanted.
Indoor ants may not physically damage your home, but they reduce the pleasure of living there. Knowing what kind of ant you have is an important step in control. Some ants live mostly outside, and some ants are finicky about what baits they will feed on. So find someone who can identify your ants, or use this online guide for Texas ants. It’s generally a good idea to avoid the use of sprays against ants, at least indoors. Baits are a safer and more effective option for most ants. Liquid ant baits are more effective than solid bait pellets inside plastic stations. Place bait containers out of reach of children and wherever ants are seen. Don’t spray around the bait stations because sprays are often repellent. You want the ants to come to the bait and carry it home to share with their sisters.
Fire ants are a major pest in the southern U.S. Besides reducing the aesthetic and recreational value of your home, fire ants can damage transformer boxes, air conditioning and other electrical relay switches, causing power outages. The good news is that fire ants are not that difficult to control. Use the Texas Two-Step method outside your home to reduce fire ant colonies and reduce the risk of damage.
German cockroaches in the home are both repugnant and unhealthy. Research has shown that children growing up in homes with German cockroaches are more likely to suffer from allergies and asthma. Their feces and shed skins are allergenic and can carry pathogens. German cockroaches require a vigorous cleanup effort, and careful use of baits. If you do these two things right, sprays are not usually needed for good cockroach control. For more information, see our free publication on cockroaches.
Bed bugs reduce the attractiveness and livability of any home. While bed bugs are not known to carry disease, their presence is highly undesirable and causes soiling of bedding, home and furniture. I recently spoke to a prospective buyer of a very expensive home who was considering backing out of the deal because she found out the previous owner had had bed bugs. Fortunately, the owner had hired a good company with experienced staff who did all the right things, and had records showing that the problem had been taken care of. If you are unfortunate enough to have bed bugs, I encourage you to hire a good professional. Additional suggestions and information about control can be found here.
How to get rid of these dangers?
If you are rich, just call a pest control service team, cost around USD 3000-4000(Euro 2600-3400) base on different acreage of your garden and house.
If you wannat do yourself, buy drugs, chemical products, using poison or bet smell to kill or keep them away and leaving pollution to environment at the same time.
If you are Environmentalist or you have Environmentally conscious, just follow us, using physical ways to solve these headache problems easily and Safety.
Choose Aosion, Choose an environmentally friendly and safety lifestyle, Choose a comfortable and pest-free home and garden.
Please contact us any time, if you have this kind of pest problems.
Thanks!
Aosion Team
