11 Reasons Why You Need Regular Pest Control

silverfish

Regular preventive pest control can reduce the chances you’ll discover termites or roaches inside your house. But prevention isn’t the only reason why you may need regular pest control.    

Think of your house as a car. Your car needs care in the form of oil changes, tire checks, tune-ups, air conditioning checks and the like.

Your house is no different. Here are 11 reasons why regular pest control should be part of your scheduled house maintenance.

1. DIY Pest Control Can Come Too Late

It’s not that do-it-yourself pest control doesn’t have a place in your life. Who doesn’t have a spray can of insect repellent on hand for those unexpected outbreaks of vermin?

But the key to healthy living and residing in an intact dwelling is to be ahead of the game. And as needed as occasional DIY treatments are, they generally treat the problem at a superficial level, leaving the actual infestation untouched.

Bringing pest control specialists around regularly means that a pro who knows what to look for will be on the job. And they will know how to exterminate the pests for good, minimizing the need for DIY treatments.

2. Pests Can Cause Both Health and Property Damage

ant on a leaf
Photo Credit: John Tann / Flickr / CC BY 2.0

Common pests have traveled in the same circles as humans for basically forever. And in that time, ticks, mosquitoes and rodents are among those who have become adept at bringing dangerous diseases into the house. 

  • Ticks are carriers of Lyme disease, which can bring fever, fatigue, headache and rash to the infected human. 
  • Mosquitoes can carry any number of diseases, including malaria, yellow fever, dengue, West Nile virus and the Zika virus. 
  • Rats and mice bring the danger of the sometimes-fatal Hantavirus and monkeypox, among others.
  • Silverfish and carpet beetles are drawn to organic fibers, which means your rugs, couches, blankets and clothing are at risk. Silverfish can get into books, photo albums and storage boxes, destroying things that you value.

Having a regular visit from a pest control specialist or exterminator will help prevent these critters from entering your house, minimizing the health risks. More than that, the repeat service from an exterminator will protect things of value and will minimize the risk to your pets.  

3. Maintenance Works Best When It’s Planned Out

Like dealing with your car by seeing a mechanic or caring for your teeth by seeing a dentist, planning ahead gives you the best chance for positive outcomes.

With regular pest control services, professionals will survey the areas in and around your home, identify pest or problem areas that would invite pests and keep you a step or two ahead of the game. 

Most of these pest issues are not always immediately evident to the naked eye, tucked as they are in cracks and crevices, rotting or pest-infected wood, leaking pipes and faucets, aging roofs, and broken screens.

4. Regular Pest Control Leads to Long-Term Results

Photo Credit: Stockvault

If you see ants or cockroaches, your first reaction might be to grab the pest repellent spray or to set out traps.

Those tools are fine, as far as they go. But what they won’t do is destroy the pests’ nests or deny them entry into your house.

That is exactly what regular pest control can do for you. Regularly scheduled help from a professional will lead to long-term results that allow you not to have to think about pests. And who can argue with that? 

5. The Right Tools for the Right Job

It’s likely that somewhere around the house you have some of the ABCs of pest control, perhaps ant or roach spray or mouse traps.

While those are useful, they are just the beginning of the essential pest control products that lead to success in the war against house pests.

Here are some of them:

  • Vacuum with HEPA Filtration. These specialty vacuums are specifically sealed to collect contaminants, including dust, dust mites, mold, and pet dander. At the same time, they are among the most efficient tools to clean up the residue of pests after they’ve gotten into your house. A HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filter is designed to remove 99.97 percent of all particles that are 0.3 microns in size that pass through it.
  • Inspection Mirror. It allows the trained user to see into hidden spaces and hard-to-reach areas, enabling you to see either the pests themselves or evidence that they’ve been there.
  • Rodent Traps. These handy traps, baited with soft cheese, peanut butter, or even wet cat food, are among the earliest pest-control devices and remain among the most effective.
  • Live Animal Traps. While you’re going to want to make sure that rats, mice, and bats don’t set up shop, there are other animals you’re not going to want around, such as moles, gophers, or opossums. 
  • LED Flashlight. It enables you to see in the darkest corners and hard-to-reach areas where you suspect pests may have invaded.
  • Infrared Temperature Sensor. This handy item can help you discover points of entry and water sources for pests, and in some cases, it may lead to the discovery of hidden nests.
  • Night-Vision Cameras. For larger pests that may have a hankering to set up shop in your attic or garage, these motion-activated cameras can signal when pests like rodents, bats, and squirrels are moving in.
  • Ultrasonic Pest Repellents. These devices, which are growing in popularity, emit short-wave, high-frequency waves that discourage rodents and other pests from making themselves at home.
  • Foamers. These fine-nozzled versions of a sprayer enable the user to apply pesticides and chemicals into tight spaces, reaching the pests where they’re trying to live. It can be used behind cabinets, under floors and in other hard-to-reach spots.
  • Bulb Dusters. These helpful gadgets, which come in several sizes, enable the dissemination of pest control chemicals in powder form. You can pump the bulb duster to get the pesticides exactly where you want them to go in cracks, crevices, and difficult-to-reach spots. This is particularly useful in combating flying vermin and crawling pests and in attacking scorpion infestations and bee nests.
  • Termite-Baiting Tools and Bait Stations. These come into play with the discovery of large termite infestations and have often been shown to be more effective than traditional chemical barrier treatments. The idea behind the system is to lure termites with things like cardboard and paper that termites like to eat that are laced with a slow-acting but lethal poison. Also part of the system are concrete drill bats, concrete plugs, and trench shovels, all of which have a role to play in termite banishment.

While all of these are useful, most homes aren’t going to have these tools lying around. But pest control specialists will have all these tools and more, and with regular use can help keep your home pest-free.

6. More Effective Results

A legitimate and immediate reaction to discovering a pest infestation is a one-time call to an exterminator. And that work the pest control expert puts in, including traps and chemicals, usually works to get rid of the problem in relatively short order. 

While that’s good, most of the best and strongest products have a 60- to 90-day span of effectiveness. At that point, if they are registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), they are designed to biodegrade and break down to become part of the natural environment.

That normal breakdown of the chemicals working to keep pests in check underscore the need for regular visits from a pest control expert. That’s the one way to ensure you will get rid of the pests for good. 

7. Minimize Property Damage

Photo Credit: Jean and Fred Hort / Flickr / CC BY 2.0

Termites and their cousins, carpenter ants, are particularly adept at destroying the wood your house is constructed with; termites by eating the wood, and carpenter ants by burrowing through it and setting up nests in the wood.

And they do almost all their damage out of eyesight. That means the best way you can battle them and keep property damage to a minimum is to regularly have commercial pest control specialists inspect your home to ensure those pests don’t get a foothold. 

8. Keep Your Food Supply Safe and Hygienic

In your pantry, pests like ants, meal moths, beetles, weevils, spiders, cockroaches and such like to set up shop. In a restaurant or other food service business, rodents and cockroaches have been a problem since the first restaurant set up shop.

And for the gardener, pests like aphids latch onto the fruits and vegetables you bring to serve family and friends.

Regular pest control visits can help prevent these intrusions from occurring in the first place.  

9. Increase Your Home Value

While you may not be considering selling your home any time soon, that time may one day come. And when it does, you’ll want the best possible home evaluation as you go through the process.

One way to do that is to have a pest- and vermin-free home and garden. It’s not something you’ll have on the forefront of thought; but having a regular pest control service come by can help minimize the damage and ultimately maximize your home’s value. 

10. Get a Pest-Free Guarantee

Photo Credit: Pxhere

One last thing: now matter how much DIY pest control you do on your house, you can’t guarantee the results.

A pest control specialist can. And if the pests come back, which sometimes they will, a regularly scheduled pest control expert will return too, making it a point to gain ultimate victory over the pests.

So, while pest control work may seem to be an only-when-needed service, the reality is that regular pest control can result in peace of mind. 

11. Advice from the Experts

Prevention, as they say, is better than the cure. Regular pest control visits can save you mental energy and may be less expensive over the long term. A pest control technician is the equivalent of a personal pest consultant. They will be able to identify where and how the pests are getting into your house and what actions you need to take to keep them from getting back in and nesting.

Terminate Termites and Banish Bugs

If you need immediate pest control care, the pests will probably let you know. You have to hope that doesn’t happen; no one wants to wake up to a house dealing with ants, bugs, rodents or the like

If you want to make sure that you are best prepared for long-term pest control, then regular pest control service should be your answer. Regular care will keep pests at bay.

Main Image Credit: Judy Gallagher / Flickr / CC BY 2.0

John Hickey

John Hickey, contributing writer at Pest Gnome, has been around sports as a writer and blogger since the earth was young. He's worked at the Oakland Tribune and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, for AOL/FanHouse and Sports Illustrated. As he writes this, he looks out his window and sees a lawn badly in need of mowing.