Residential pest control is big business. The annual cost for termite control alone in my part of the country is about $400.00 per year, and the cost of other pest management, such as that for ants and roaches is not included in that figure. If you tack on other pest control costs, like those for outdoor pests and rodents, the cost can skyrocket.

Don’t blame the exterminator

Nationwide, the cost is into the billions, but don’t blame your exterminator. The cost of maintaining a license for a residential Pest Control Operator has grown, and that cost includes not only labor, chemicals, and equipment, but also the ever increasing cost of insurance for those who work in the field of pest control.

The safety of residential pest control

There is another factor to consider when looking at your home pest control needs. That is safety! Most residential pest control operators and exterminators are safe and meticulous about their work, but continuous exposure to insecticides is still a physical hazard. Limiting such exposure can be an important factor in the continued health and well being of your family. Even your exterminator would prefer to limit his exposure, and is required to wear and use personal protective equipment during the mixing and application process. Less exposure means less chance of  pesticide related illness.

Alternative residential pest control options

Home pest control products have made significant advancements in the area of safety, and there are products available for residential pest control which do not contain the nerve damaging chemicals used in standard pest control products used by exterminators. Many of these “green” pest control products are good, but they often lack the residual effect of the standard insecticides. There are, however, other means of pest management which offer excellent results, and can help to limit the need for any type of pest control product and service.

Residential pest control and pest prevention

One of the best ways to limit the need for using pesticides and their attendant cost and safety issues is to practice pest prevention.We have a few tips on using pest prevention as pest management listed below. and links to pest prevention resources on this site and others for a more thorough study of the subject.

1. Don’t plant climbing vines around your vents or windows providing a way for a pests to get into your home. Climbing vines can gradually invade your window openings, spreading them open, and allowing insects to travel through.
2. Don’t allow shrubs and tree branches to touch your homes exterior. Like vines, bugs can use them to get onto, and into your home.
3. Seal around all doors, windows, air conditioning, and plumbing coming into the house. Do this on the inside as well as the outside. Pay close attention to cable inlets, and all inside plumbing inlets.
4. Be sure that your door sweeps are all the way to the edges of the door opening, and that they reach all the way to the floor.
5. Check all weather stripping to make sure bugs can’t crawl through any gaps. Replace if needed.
6. Keep brush and weeds as far away from the house as possible, so that the pests don’t have a staging area near your home.
7. Rotting wood is the roach’s natural food, make sure that your immediate outside area is free of it, and anything else that might hide pests.
8. Move your landscaping mulch away from the edge of your home by a foot or more. Like rotting wood, it can hide insects, and like vines and shrubs it provides an easy cover for travel onto and into your home.
9. Check houseplants before you bring them inside when first purchased or brought in from your greenhouse, or after watering outdoors.
10. Check all shopping bags, fruits and vegetables carefully for insects.
11. It goes without saying, that your home should be clean, with no food sources for pests.
12. Keep your trash can lids on, and the can away from the house as far as possible to keep flies away.
13. If you have indoor pets, check them when they return from trips outdoors, for hitch hikers.
14. Check for wet spots and puddles in your lawn which might become breeding areas for mosquitoes and other undesirables.

Residential pest control resources:

Home and garden pest control

Science: Pests and Diseases: Integrated Pest Management

Pest Prevention Principles and Practices

Before you let insects get the drop on your lawn, there is a method you can use to determine the likelihood of an infestation or invasion. Consider it a sort of low tech radar warning of incoming enemy troops. You can do this simple test with items you already have around your home. It is called a “soap test.”

Why do a soap test?

Many of the little critters that cause lawn damage are already present before the problem becomes obvious. Eggs are laid on the ground or in the thatch, some are laid in the ground by burrowing insects like mole crickets, and they hatch and live much of their early life in the soil. This method will help to bring them up so they can be counted. Why would you want to count them? Well, so you will know if there are so many of them that you can expect an invasion, and do something about it before the major invasion takes place. The soap test gives you the ability to make a preemptive strike.

The purpose of the soap test is to determine the approximate types and numbers of insects in the soil. This will aid in knowing what we have to deal with, and whether the numbers of insects per square foot warrant treatment.

What you will need for a soap test

Material:

Large coffee can with both top and bottom removed.
Dish soap.
Water.

Solution:

Mix 1 ounce of dish soap with 1 gallon of water.

Method:

• Place the can on the ground and push it partway into the ground.
• Pour in the water, soap mix.
• Wait.

What you will learn:

If there are any pests in the ground, this soapy solution will irritate them, and they will begin to rise to the surface where you can count them and determine whether an infestation is present. This will be determined by what levels of each type of pest are considered acceptable. These rates are usually expressed in terms of numbers of pest per square foot. Specific data on individual pests is available from county agents, various university horticulture and agriculture departments, and other places on the world wide web.

Aquatic weeds can be a huge problem for the property owner. If you use your lake primarily for recreational activities, lake weeds can put an end to your fishing, and other water sports in a matter of weeks if the wrong conditions exist. A lake weed invasion can also cause other problems, like pests in general, and mosquitoes in particular.

What is the best way to handle lake weed problems?

That depends on the nature of the problem. If the problem is an overly fertile body of water, you will need to lower the fertility.

Too much fertilizer

Excess fertility can be caused by nutrient runoff ending up in your lake. These nutrients can come from agricultural sites like adjacent farms and ranches existing upstream from your lake, or from over fertilized lawns in your area, which could even be your own.

Low fertility.

Low fertility means that the pond or lake is not getting the nutrients it needs to produce plankton. If plankton is not produced in sufficient quantity to tint the water enough to keep light from penetrating to the bottom, light will reach the bottom, and plants will grow up from it. This includes the filamentous algae that is often seen floating on a lakes surface.

Shallow lakes

Is your pond or lake so shallow that lake bottom gets light, weeds will grow. The best way to solve this problem is by either raising the water level if possible, or dredging.

Weed types

You should also know which category your lake weeds fall into. Are they submersed, emergent,  floating, or algae. There is a difference when it comes to treating them. There is a great tool from Texas A & M to help in the identification process. It is called Aquaplant. Aquaplant is also an excellent example of what a website should be!

Methods of aquatic plant control

Prevention:

This is the very best method for controlling any situation. If you can prevent it, you won’t have to control it or manage it in other ways. It just makes sense.

Biological control:

Most environmentally aware individuals prefer biological controls to chemical controls. There are some problems with that idea. Biological controls can be unpredictable, and run the risk of getting out of control if conditions should change. After all, you are adding another invasive predator into the mix!

Mechanical control:

Mechanical controls are great for some aquatic weed work, but not for all. Many aquatic weeds can reproduce from fragments at rates higher than fifty percent!

Unless you are resigned to mowing your lake as you do your lawn, it is a bad idea to fragment the living plants. If they can be cut smoothly, without much fragmentation causing vibration, and completely collected , that is great, but the problem will return from the roots.

Chemical Controls:

Sometimes, in fact, most of the time, the best weed management method, the most eco friendly method after prevention, is chemical lake weed control. It can, and should be, selective.

Aquatic weed control chemical types

Chemicals for controlling and managing aquatic weeds, fall into two categories:
Contact, and Systemic.

Contact Herbicides

Contact herbicides, work quickly, and kill all the vegetation they touch.

Systemic Herbicides

Systemic herbicides, work more slowly, but travel to the root of the plant to kill all parts of the plant.
Which one should you use? That depends a lot on the conditions, and the plant you are trying to get rid of. For more information on lake weed control types see:

Lake Weed Prevention

Biological Lake Weed Control

Mechanical Lake Weed Control

Chemical Lake Weed Controls

Prevention is always the best means of control, and with mosquitoes, prevention offers the only control that is remotely successful for home mosquito control.

Pesticides offer only limited control for a limited time, mosquito misters are falling under increasing scrutiny, repellents are only moderately successful, and are often dangerous for the user, mosquito magnets and other types of mosquito traps are limited to the ones that are already hatched, and do nothing to stop the larvae, nets and screens are also limited in scope.

There is nothing wrong with any of these methods, they are all helpful in their own way, but they all fall short because they do not deal with the problem at it’s root. To ultimately win the battle against mosquitoes, and the diseases they transmit, attrition will not work. They can always reproduce faster than we can kill them! To win, we need to keep them from becoming a problem to begin with.

Home mosquito control through prevention

Mosquitoes, like any other type of pest, prefer certain habitats. In the case of the mosquito, they need:

• Water for larvae to hatch and grow.
• Cover to avoid predation.
• Blood for reproduction.

Eliminating any of these, will stop reproduction in your area.

Water:

If you have puddles of standing water, buckets, tubs, or any other receptacle for water on your property, mosquitoes can find it, and use it against you. If receptacles are the problems, dump them, and make sure that they can no longer hold water. If the problem is standing water in low spots or puddles, provide a way to drain the water either through surface drainage, that is, fill the low spots and holes, or sub surface drainage, such as a french drain, or a pipe drain with a catch box. If you use the catch box and pipe drain, make sure that the grade on the system is consistent, so that water doesn’t accumulate in the pipe. This could cause mosquitoes to use it as a basin, and become a home for other pests.

Don’t just look at the ground, there are other areas which might hold enough water to encourage mosquito populations such as home gutter systems, which should of course, be cleaned and maintained frequently.

If the water problem is a pond or lake on your property, the problem is not only water, but also cover. In fact, it probably has less to do with water, than with cover.

Cover:

If ponds or lakes exist on your property, you obviously do not want to drain them to get rid of mosquitoes, but you can reduce the amount of cover available. High weeds, and shallow water around the shallow edges of a pond should be removed. If filamentous algae, or pond scum as it is commonly called cover a large part of the body of water, the mosquitoes have a perfect habitat. They have water easily available for producing young, they have blood available from the animals that come to the water to drink, and they have cover in the water for protection from the fish who would otherwise dine on them! Skimming off the algae, or otherwise eliminating it will remove the cover, and and allow the fish to do their job.

If mosquitoes are exposed to natural predators, the predators work very well as a biological mosquito control method. If the predators can’t get to them, they can’t eat them. If you have brush and weeds around your home, it gives mosquitoes a place to hide from the things that like to eat them. It also gives them a place to find small animals for the blood needed for reproduction. If you eliminate hiding places like brush, weeds and high grass, you will drastically lower the population by exposing them to predation by their natural enemies.

Blood:

The female needs a blood meal to produce offspring. That may often come from you! Sometimes it comes from small animals. Reducing the availability of water and cover, reduces the numbers of small animals present to feed the hungry female.

Off site mosquito problems

If you paid attention to the mosquito prevention information above, and followed the suggestions, most of your problem with mosquitoes is gone. There are however, other circumstances that can allow mosquitoes to be a problem for you and your family, and some of them may not be within your means to control. This could include such problems as swampy areas on adjacent properties, or ponds and lakes that exist nearby, and are not properly maintained.  Even if this is your situation, you should still use the home mosquito control methods mentioned above, which will still eliminate most of the problem, and then concentrate on the things you can do about your off site problem.

Neighbors and Officials

Talk with the people who own the adjacent property about the problem. Do this before contacting public health officials. See if there is something that can be done by the owner before involving officialdom. If not, that is your next step. Encourage them to practice long term control rather than short term controls like pesticides. It will cost them less in the long run. If they are reluctant or obstinate, explain the health and public safety issues involved.

Prevention is the most natural of home mosquito control methods because it denies them what they need to thrive and reproduce, and exposes them to natural predators like birds, bats, and fish. These natural predators are the next step in our mosquito control system, biological control.

Biological mosquito control

Biological mosquito control is the next best step in home mosquito control, after we have used the best prevention methods. You have modified the habitat to work against the mosquitoes, now, you should modify the habitat to work in favor of their predators. This can be done by providing shelter and other encouragements for such predators as birds and bats. This can mean providing food sources like natural, native plants that birds enjoy, and a source of clean water like a fountain, or a well maintained, non stagnant bird bath. Bats require the same things. Bird and bat houses differ, but are fairly easily attained.

Other home mosquito control measures

In small areas where water cna not be drained immediately, a light spray of mineral oil over the surface of the water will prevent mosquito reproduction.

There are botanical products available which are effective in killing the mosquitoes that find their way to you. These, used in conjunction with a sound prevention program, work well as a backup.

Mosquito misting systems with plant oils offer a usable tool when used with prevention.

Prevention is where pest control should start, management is what we do for the ones that get by our prevention measures.

The first step in pest management is to be sure that the pest prevention measures we have taken are adequate and appropriate. If there are problems with this, they should be solved before any chemicals are used.

Pest management other than pest prevention

The progression should be from least hazardous to most hazardous, of course starting with:

• Pest Prevention.
• Soaps. It is possible to kill most insects with insecticidal soap, even dish soap and water will work in limited circumstances.
• Some botanical products consisting of various plant oils also work well, but may have a slightly overwhelming fragrance when used in tight quarters.
• Traps can be very effective when used properly, and are available for insects and rodents.
• Commercial chemicals.

Pest control, other than pest prevention should always be approached cautiously, and with safety in mind. It should be remembered that when it comes to pesticides, the label is the law. Pay special heed to the warning found on each and every EPA registered pesticide label:

“It is a violation of federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with it’s labeling.”

Keep in mind that the label instructions are not written solely for safety, but also for effectiveness. There are many cases where using more than the proper amount of a pesticide will result in lower product effectiveness. An example of this is the improper use of  glyphosate, the active ingredient in “Roundup”. If too much is used, it will result in the dessication of the top of the plant, without allowing time for the chemical to reach and kill the root.