Pest Control Should Be Part of Your Routine Home Maintenance Program

Pest control inspection can pay for itself with the savings you reap. While the pest specialists focus on pests, they identify cracks that require sealing to prevent pests, but at the same time, it also covers an area where heat escapes and the outside temperature-or even rain-can enter as well. This provides an immediate savings in your utility bill, prevents bugs and vermin that can cause damage and may even prevent wood rot from rain, a problem most usually being underestimated.

There’s an old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and a regular inspection from a pest control expert is just that. While he may not find any infestations, he may find a damp area on wood that would be a great place for carpenter ants to build a nest. Of course, when you find the source of the moisture and eliminate it, you’re not only preventing a potential problem with carpenter ants, you’re also preventing future water damage to the wood on your home.

Not every pest control professional uses a preventative system, such as an IPM—Integrated Pest Management—system, but you want one who does to do your routine pest control inspections. IPM uses prevention methods first and mechanical means to eliminate or prevent pests before getting out the big guns-pesticides-which can harm beneficial insects that help crops and flowers to grow. IPM is an ecologically safe practice limiting man’s interference with Mother Nature’s delicate balance by limiting the amount of pesticides used. Rather than spray pesticides every year-regardless of the problem-IPM trained pest control professionals identify any problems and the pests causing them, first looking to preventative and mechanical cures and finally, if the problem’s bad enough, using pesticide specifically geared to eliminating that particular pest problem without creating as much impact on the environment.

When you include regular pest inspections in your maintenance, you’ll stop problems before they drown or bury you. While you might require some pesticides to control a bug problem, you won’t require as much, primarily because it won’t get too big to handle. In many cases, you’ll save money on repairing damage from bugs and vermin, lower the cost of treatment and reap some savings on your utility bills from caulking open areas. You’ll probably find that regular inspections save you large amounts of money and are far less expensive than doing repairs or fighting a full-blown infestation.