Prevention

Prevention, structure by structure

Prevention is not a product. It is a walk around and through a house, in a fixed order, doing unglamorous work in the season before the pest arrives. This page is that walk, written for Erie's housing stock — a great deal of it built before the Second World War, on damp ground, under big trees.

Foundation & exterior walls

Grade soil so water runs away from the house; extend downspouts well past the foundation; remove wood, mulch, and leaf litter piled against the sill — termites and carpenter ants both read ground-contact wood as an invitation. Seal penetrations for pipes, cables, and vents with mesh and sealant, screen foundation vents with hardware cloth that rodents cannot gnaw, and keep shrubs trimmed back off the siding so ants and spiders lose their bridge. In September, walk the south and west walls with a tube of caulk: that is the wall the invaders will test in October.

Attic

Screen gable and soffit vents, cap the chimney, and fix the small gaps at eaves where cluster flies and lady beetles enter and where squirrels and bats must be lawfully and humanely excluded — never sealed in. Inspect after storms for the wet insulation that means a roof leak, because damp attic wood is carpenter-ant country. Store nothing up there in open cardboard that you would mind silverfish grazing.

Basement & moisture

The basement decides more pest problems than any spray. Hold humidity near 40–50% with a dehumidifier drained to a line, not a bucket that overflows in August. Lid the sump, cover floor drains, fix the dripping trap, and store paper, books, and clothing in sealed plastic bins off the floor. Silverfish, American roaches, house centipedes, and mould all read the same damp gauge — bring it down and all four decline together.

Kitchen

Seal under-sink penetrations, keep the cabinet beneath dry, degrease behind and under the stove and refrigerator, store dry goods and pet food in hard containers, and rinse recycling — roaches and odorous house ants are both, at bottom, a food-and-water audit. Inspect any second-hand appliance before it crosses the threshold: German roaches travel in refrigerator and dishwasher motors.

Garage, woodpile & yard

Stack firewood off the ground and away from the house, and bring in only what you will burn. Keep bird seed and pet food in lidded metal or heavy plastic, empty standing water weekly in summer, mow the margin where lawn meets woods, and clear leaf litter there — that edge is blacklegged tick habitat, and it is managed with a mower and a rake more than with any spray.

Rental turnover — the extra pass

Between tenants, a rental gets the one inspection a lived-in home rarely does: bed frame and mattress seams, couch seams, under-sink voids, behind appliances, and the baseboards behind the bed. Catching bed bugs or German roaches at turnover — before furniture arrives — is cheaper by an order of magnitude than treating around a household. The full protocol is on the rentals page.

Time this walk by the calendar →

Scope note: this walk covers insects and small pests. Wildlife — bats, raccoons, squirrels — follows different law and a different trade; the desk’s Northwest Pennsylvania wildlife page declares that scope plainly and gives the bat-in-the-house protocol.