Sealing your Home against Pests

If your house has pest problems, sealing cracks and crevices around your house can help to prevent them from entering your home. It’s also one of the best ways of deterring them from entering your property and a vital step to complete pest extermination. Here’s how you can do it:

Identify the pests

It may not be obvious but you may have more than one type of pest in your home and it’s important to know as much as you can about them. While no one wants to be familiar with pests in the first place (particularly the disgusting ones), it’s important to be knowledgeable so you know the best steps to take to get rid of them.

Find where they’re coming from

These pests can usually enter your home through cracks, crevices and holes in your home but worst of all, their favourite entryways may be hidden or hard to reach. Some pests are easier to spot though, for example, you can easily see where the ants are coming from but for others pests like cockroaches, it may be too difficult as they can practically fit into anything. You should take note of places they frequent and consider locations where they are likely to pass through. The presence of droppings in a particular location may indicate a favourite place for a specific pest.

Seal the entrance or exit

If you find where they are coming from, apply pest control solvents to get rid of them and then seal the entrance/exit off with a sealant. Use weatherproof sealants if the entrance is outside to prevent it from being washed-off.

Look at the space between doors and the floor

Since most pests are small, they can simply pass beneath the door or even the windows. Most of the time, sealants are not an applicable solution here but you can use door weather strips to keep them out if the door is closed. As a bonus, it also lessens the problem of water getting in whenever it’s raining.

Use other pest control methods as well

Sealing won’t do you any good if the pests actually live inside the house, so it’s often best to use pest control methods, together with sealing to maximise their effect. Sealing alone may not be enough to get rid of them because they can just find another route.

If all else fails, call a professional

In worse case scenarios, there’s no choice but to hire a professional to do it for you. It may be expensive but it’s worth it if the problem is too much for you to handle.