4 Tips to Avoid Fall and Winter Pests and Bugs
Those bugs know the summer sun is slowly reducing its presence with us in the northern hemisphere. Although there is still some warm weather to come - cool air and hopefully post-COVID football and trick or treating is right around the corner.
Cold weather means bugs and pests get cold too. While it’s still nice being outside, we recommend you use these remaining warm summer days to keep pests out of your home, office, RV, cabin, or anywhere they like to reside in the winter. Here are 4 tips and ideas for preparing your property for fall pests.
Clean up the yard near your building or dwelling.
Piles of Leaves, branches, wood piles, tall grass - and those DIY projects you haven’t finished yet - are havens for bugs in the summer. If they sit within a few feet of your home, office, store, cabin or RV, rest assured gross spiders, ants, bees, wasps, ticks, Asian beetles, and in some regions late summer mosquitoes will use it as staging area for their upcoming cold weather invasion.
Make sure to mow, weed, clear debris, leaf piles, cut back shrubs, and anything else that can be used by those pesky pests.
Organize and clean up basement storage areas and keep boxes off the floor.
Many species of sneaky spiders and fast centipedes love your messes, esp. in your basement and in older homes or neighborhoods. Many don’t know that common centipedes will come up your sewer drain pipes. If they find lots of fun things to hide behind and things to eat, they’ll make themselves at home too.
After you get those toys, tools, and technology off the floor, put some sticky tape face up near your sewer drains in your basement. If you find some freaky friends in your trap after a few days, instead of pouring bleach or chemicals down your drains, visit a local home improvement store for possible earth-friendly solutions to point them to the neighbor’s house instead.
Look for pest nests right outside of your home.
During the summer, around your property there is a lot of food like flowers, its warm, and your bugs don’t think your home is as important. As it gets colder, those outdoor pest nests in piles of wood, leaves, and eaves are not as appealing to them. On that first crisp day, they make plans to move in with you where its warm. Wasp nests, ant colonies, and spiders like to invade your home to mate and get ready for the cold months before they emerge again in the spring.
CAREFUL: Stinging pests like wasps can be especially crabby in the late summer and fall due to lack of food - so make sure to call a professional exterminator if you are unsure how to remove them from your home or dwelling.
Fill gaps, cracks, and entry points in your home or property.
Ants love kitchen windows. Spiders like gaps near the base of your home like exterior doors. Bees like gaps and cracks higher up on your home. Often, you have to caulk these gaps bi-annually, so why not fix it once and use our InstaTrim flexible trim strips instead? Our peel and stick caulking replacement product is long-lasting, paintable, flexible, and patented technology that prevents those buggers from finding their way indoors in the fall. You should fix some common places bugs like to enter with peel and stick caulk strips from InstaTrim. Such as:
- Kitchen window gaps, esp. near pantries
- Kitchen cabinets
- Bathtub gaps that may have mold or mildew
- Basement windows where the caulking has peeled off
- Toilet base, esp. in certain types of basements.
Except for entomologists, most folks don’t like bugs and pests. Therefore, we hope these 4 Tips to Avoid Fall and Winter Pests and Bugs will be helpful for you. For more information on how to install InstaTrim, please see the how to install instatrim pages and feel free to contact us with any questions.
