Pest Control in Red Bank, NJ
Challenge
Recently, we went on a service call for a homeowner in Red Bank, NJ, who was having a serious issue with ants crawling along the exterior of her home and making their way into her laundry room. As we started our inspection in the laundry room, we discovered ants trailing along the back door of her laundry room and identified them as pavement ants. Pavement ants commonly nest under pavement — hence their clever name. These dark brown to black ants are as small as 1/16 of an inch. They often make their way inside our homes to feed on sweets, proteins, and even dead insects.
Now that we’ve found them in the house, it’s time to find where their colony was. How do we find that out? We followed the ant trail! The ants that you see inside your home are worker ants foraging for food. Once they find food they’ll lay down a strong pheromone trail and follow that trail to and from their colony. As we were following the ant trail, we noticed they were coming from the homeowner's crawl space. When inspected we were shocked to discover that the crawl space was flooded. Continuing our inspection we found out that the sump pump was malfunctioning and there was a small colony of pavement ants gaining access into the crawl space through an exterior vent.
A neglected crawl space can even be the source of health issues for a family. Approximately 40% of your home's air comes from your crawl space. Poor air quality can increase allergies and negatively affect any family members with asthma or weak immune systems. Also, crawl space air can affect the temperature of your home and increase your utility bills. If the crawl space is normally cold, your air conditioning/heating system will have to work extra hard to heat the home. Finally, as this homeowner found out, many pests are naturally drawn to places that are moist and warm.
Solution
We reported our findings to the homeowner who was shocked that her sump pump malfunctioned and that her crawl space was flooded. I informed her that Cowleys offers a variety of services beyond pest control, including crawl space encapsulation, which seals crawl spaces from the outdoor elements and keeps this area clean and dry. Crawl space encapsulation with dehumidification will prevent dangerous mold growth that can spread throughout the home.
I’m happy to say that she called our main office and scheduled an appointment with one of our encapsulation specialists. Now to address the pavement ants! We treated both the crawl space and the exterior of the home with a light liquid non-repellant application, and inside, applied a gel bait to the crack, crevices, and baseboards in the laundry room. When ants come into contact with either the outdoor application or the indoor gel bait, they will transport it back to their colony to share with the other colony members, including the reproductive queen. Within a short period of time, the entire colony will be eliminated!
Over the long-term, it was even more important to identify the crawl space issues so they could be corrected before more serious problems developed like mold and mildew growth.
