When ants overrun your kitchen, mice frolic on your floors, or termites come knocking at your woodwork, you want the problem solved swiftly and inexpensively. It is also true that many homeowners look for DIY solutions available online or from friends, hoping for a quick fix. However, these kind-hearted efforts often backfire and make pest issues even worse.
An estimated 84 percent of homeowners try out DIY pest control before contacting a professional, says experts like saelapest.com. In this article, we will be explaining five common DIY pest controls that often make things worse than better.
DIY Pest Fixes That Make the Problem Worse
1. Sealing Entry Points Without Removing Existing Pests
If you have a live pest problem and you seal all the cracks and holes in your building, you are going to create new problems. Rodents or insects that become stuck in your home are in a state of desperation, chewing through walls and wiring, looking for food or an escape path.
Pests that are caught may burrow further into your property’s structure, and it might be that you miss them, and that is only if they are even caught.
2. Placing Cheese on Mousetraps
Contrary to what cartoons would have you believe, cheese is not the best bait for mouse traps. In reality, mice much prefer to eat sugary, fatty, or protein-rich types of food. Ineffective bait results in fewer catches and provides the mice enough time to breed and figure out how to sidestep your traps altogether.
Worse yet, inconsistent trapping produces “trap-shy” mice, which learn to fear the traps.
3. Using Dish Soap For Bed Bugs
Several online sources recommend using a diluted dish soap spray to kill bed bugs. Soap can kill bugs on contact by breaking down their exoskeletons, but it misses bugs in mattress seams, behind baseboards, in electrical outlets, and in furniture cracks.
Bed bugs can deposit 5 to 10 eggs a day, and can survive for up to 2 months without feeding on a host. Half-measures offer an illusion of safety and compound the problem. And in the meantime, you are still getting bitten, and bugs are moving throughout your home.
4. Vinegar for Ants
Homeowners often spray vinegar on the trails of ants to kill the bugs. Acidic content kills ants on contact and disrupts scent trails, but also acts as a repellent discouraging visitation. But this very rarely gets to the heart of the issue.
Vinegar kills only the ants you can see, meaning many more will come back soon. The queen and a majority of worker ants remain safely in the nest, continuing to breed. Disturbing their scent trails while leaving the critical mass of the ant hill alone can encourage them to spread over new parts of your house as they forge new trails to food.
Why You Should Talk to a Pest Control Company
Expert pest control professionals have in-depth knowledge of pest biology, habits, detection, treatment, and prevention. They can recognize the type of pest infesting your home or in your yard, find nests or colonies, and suggest and complete effective treatments that will solve not just the symptoms you can see, but the whole problem.
In addition, some of these are commercial products that are simply more effective than consumer-level options. Professional treatments are 2-3 times more effective than do-it-yourself methods of pest control for getting rid of pest problems that would not go away.
You can also have pest control companies custom-create a prevention program for your home and situation. They can spot risk factors you might not notice and help guide you in long-term prevention that saves you money as opposed to doing it yourself several times.
Professional extermination services may seem like an expensive avenue, but when you consider the costs of a series of ineffective and ongoing cycles of DIY options, it may be the most cost-effective route when you factor in the overall damage to your property and peace of mind.
