When you are a homeowner, there are quite a lot of things that you need to get around with in order to maintain your property in good condition. Vermin are a known problem for homeowners, and there is no one way in which you can save yourself from them.
Actually, once you have discovered traces of vermin in your home, or when you actually seen one – a mouse, a rat, or something else – we have bad news for you – it is already too late. In those cases you need to get hold of a good professional company that specializes in killing vermin and other pests. If you do not want to get to this point, you are going to apply some prevention methods that have proven to provide relatively good results.
Keep your house junk free
Rubbish, especially food waste, attracts vermin like light attracts moths. In order to make sure that the pests do not have any reason to enter your property, you will have to make sure that it is an entirely rubbish-free zone. This might turn out to be pretty hard, unless you do not take excellent care of this task on a daily basis. We might recommend hiring a professional rubbish removal company for the job. Most pro-waste removalists apply high-end methods and work on a schedule that is far more frequent than the council-provided services offered in most parts of the country. Furthermore, by thoroughly cleaning up your place you are going to disturb the hiding spots that most vermin need in order to settle down in your home. Make sure that every corner is vacuumed and you will not need to worry about a thing.
Fix all holes and possible hiding place
For this one you are going to need to go on a hunt. Check out every corner of your home and identify which the weak spots, e.g. cracks and holes in the walls which the vermin can use in order to live in are. Have in mind that a mouse can fit even into the smallest most unnoticeable of hole, so you should be very thorough in your search. Once this step is over, you will need to get around to fixing those holes. Plug in and seal all of them. Just remember – you should be more than certain that you have not missed a single spot, otherwise the whole exercise is going to be meaningless.
Cut off the water supply
Now that your home is a hole and crack-free zone, you can move on to eliminating any water source that the vermin can use in order to sustain life. Make an inspection in order to detect any leaks in the plumbing system of your home, and then proceed to removing them. Then go in the yard and check out if there is any stagnated water there – it will also attract vermin if you do not see to it being dumped from your property.
Think about other possible points of entry
Holes and cracks are fine, bur a wide variety of vermin are going to use other possible points of entry in order to infest your home. The air-ducts, the space under the porch or even the windows of the basement are all possible points of entry for a wide variety of vermin, which means that you need to make sure that they are properly safety proofed. Again, check for holes and install new grates on the ventilation system in order to guarantee that the place is secured. It might look like a tedious job at first, but we are more than certain that it is going to help you a lot in many respects in the battle against vermin.
Make an unexpected trap
One method for getting rid of vermin, especially rodents, that has been tested on a number of occasions in the past and have proven to provide great results, is installing one way trap doors in those places in the house where the rodents in questions are usually nesting. Those places are most commonly the attic, the basement or the garage. The principle of the trap door is that it allows for the vermin to get out of the space, but it actually locks from the outside, so that they cannot enter again. The size of these so called trap doors is not big – it should be enough for the vermin to get out. Making one is also not that hard, but you can also look online or in specialized stores, because they are already selling commercially-produced ones.
Some further tricks
There are several green and nature friendly ways to battling infestations. If you want to do the healthy thing in your batter against vermin, you might consider making use of some of the following tricks:
- Ants are not going to cross a line of sprinkled black pepper or cayenne
- Mice cannot chew through steel wool, so that would be the best green material to fill up their holes and the cracks in the walls they are using as points of entry to your home
- Another thing that works perfectly against ants is strong smell. Ants do not fare well in such conditions, so once you find out their point of entry into your home, try wiping it with oil of cloves or eucalyptus. Remember though that even if they stop entering from one spot, you are going to start looking for another – so just make sure that you have covered all possible areas.
- Cheese in mouse traps might work in cartoons, but in reality what is the most efficient way to attract a mouse to entering a trap is the good old fashioned peanut butter.
- Natural powder like Diatomaceous Earth appeals to the tastes of vermin, but it also slowing but surely dehydrates them, thus driving them out of your property. It is also pretty harmless for pets, so your cat and dog would not be put in danger.
