How Much Should You Budget For Seasonal Pest Control?

Suppose you've looked around your home or business and seen a few too many ants, spiders, mosquitoes, or other pests that can cause inconveniences and even health problems. In that case, you may be thinking it's time to call in professional pest control experts. 

While they can likely solve your problem, you'll also have to pay for their services. If you're wondering how much to budget for seasonal pest control, here are some factors to keep in mind.

How Often Do You Need Pest Control Treatments?

First of all, you'll need to decide how frequently your home or business will need pest control treatments. For example, suppose your problem can be taken care of in one visit. In that case, you should budget between $300-$500 since a technician must spend time investigating and diagnosing the problem and providing treatment. 

Whether you’ve had past issues or want to prevent problems in the first place, regular pest control is essential for protecting your home and family. But knowing when to do it is just as important. 

Size of Your Property

If you have a smaller home or building for your business, you usually expect to pay less for pest control services. 

In most cases, an effective pest control management plan involves treating areas inside a home or business and around its outside perimeter. You can visit a site like https://www.pestcontrolexperts.com/aptive/iowa/ to connect with pest control experts who can create a comprehensive strategy tailored to your property's needs.

Should you opt for monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly pest control treatment, expect to pay as little as $40 for monthly treatments to possibly $100 or more for quarterly treatments.

What Types of Pests Are Involved?

Since different pests call for different types of treatments, this will factor into how much you spend. If mosquitoes are your biggest problem, a reasonable amount of money you can expect to pay for these services can range from $100-$500, depending on your problem's extent and the type of treatment plan you select. 

Scorpions, for example, tend to be more expensive and require additional work for pest control companies to handle so consider reaching out to your local pest control pros for details. 

Pros like Skeeter Beater, for example, can share their prices and often bundle different types of pests. Whatever company you go through, consider asking for discounts with annual contracts.

The Type of Treatment Used

As the pest control industry has evolved over the years, much more emphasis is placed on using pest control treatment products that are more environmentally friendly and safe around children and pets. 

Since you will likely want these used in your home or business, you should budget a bit more to pay for these treatments since, in most cases, they cost more than traditional pest control methods.

While you may have to adjust your budget slightly to pay for pest control services, most are affordable to almost anyone. Whether its ants, mosquitoes, or wasps that just won't go away, calling on experts to provide seasonal pest control will soon have your home or business pest-free.

How to Save While Fighting a Rat Infestation

Just the thought of dealing with a rat infestation is enough to turn many people’s stomachs. Once rats have a chance to get a foothold, though, the problem is unlikely to go away on its own. 

The good news is that there are ways to save money while fighting a rat infestation so that you don’t find yourself strapped for cash while trying to avoid nightmares about rats in your home.

Lay Your Own Traps

Due to their larger size, rats are much harder to catch than other pests such as mice or roaches. Fortunately, there are traps that are specifically designed for rats that you can place around your home. 

The downside to laying your own traps is that you will have to dispose of the dead rats yourself once the traps have been successful. If you have a strong stomach, though, this can be a great way to get rid of your rat problem quickly and inexpensively.

Find An Honest Pest Control Expert

If you want someone else to take care of your rat infestation, it’s important to do some homework to find an honest and experienced pest control contractor. A quality pest control expert will explain to you the extent of the problem and help you choose the best solution. This approach will help save you money and ensure that the problem is eradicated.

Work Quickly

Once you discover a rat infestation, it’s important to act quickly. The last thing you want is for one of the rats to reproduce while you delay action, which could leave you with an infestation that takes much longer to get rid of. 

Another word of warning is to act quickly if you lay your own traps. If you don’t remove the rat bodies quickly enough, you could attract scavengers that could also choose to set up shop in your home.

Inconvenience Yourself

In some cases, fighting a rat infestation is most cheaply done when you’re willing to inconvenience yourself. For example, if the infestation is centered on a frequently used room in your home, you’ll want to fight the temptation to use that room so that the traps and other eradication methods can do their work. 

If you aren’t willing to put a few parts of your life on hold, you may need to use a more complicated eradication method that is more expensive.

Stop It Before It Starts

Of course, the best and least expensive way to fight a rat infestation is to stop it before it starts. Taking simple steps like keeping your grass cut, closing your trash can, and ensuring all gaps in your foundation are plugged can go a long way toward preventing rats from entering your home and taking over. 

If these prevention efforts fail, though, rest assured that there are economical ways to fight the infestation that will help return your life to normal.

Brooke Chaplan is a freelance writer and blogger. She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She loves the outdoors and spends most of her time hiking, biking, and gardening. For more information, contact Brooke via Facebook at facebook.com/brooke.chaplan or Twitter @BrookeChaplan

Pests: Investing In Getting Rid Of Pests

Throughout most of our adult life, we've worked very hard for everything we have. At times, we didn't really put much thought into our decisions. Now, we are getting to a point in our lives when every decision we make has to be carefully planned and thought through extensively.

Investment

In today's highly competitive real estate market, locating, acquiring and maintaining an investment property is essential to being successful in the industry. With technology today, advertising our properties is as easy as taking pictures and pushing buttons on our mobile phones. If you take a quick look online, many will find an endless number of property listings for rent or for sale. 

Many take a look at pictures of the property, then read the location and amenities a property offers. The first thing that comes to mind when looking for an investment property is location and the age of the property. We then take a look at any nearby popular destinations and attractions that can be of suitable distance to the property. Now, we have carefully decided to invest in a property. 

We take a look around the unit and find that there is some renovating and cleaning up to do. You're thinking, "The property is located in an up and coming neighborhood, but the unit in the building is showing its age. Specifically, pests are a nuisance in a seasoned building. So what do I do?" Pest control is imperative in any type of investment property. Who do you turn to? Services such as https://www.moxieservices.com/can help with pest control.

Pest Control

Pests come in all shapes, sizes, and types. When investing in an aged property, we won't always know who previously resided there and how well they took care of the property. To name a few, pests like ants, mice, roaches, and spiders are most commonly found anywhere inside homes. 

If left untreated or uncontrolled, pest infestation can quickly invade the entire property. For instance, ants can wreak havoc. They deliver painful annoying bites that can leave red itchy bumps all over the skin. Investing in a professional pest control service has many benefits. 




It can prevent the devaluing of an asset, as it will keep your property free and clean of ants, mice, roaches and other pests. When potential tenants come to view the property, we will want to make sure the property is pristine. 

By contracting a pest control service monthly, it will ensure that potential tenants will see and know that we take care of our property. It is an investment that will keep giving back.

How Often

Certain pests cannot be avoided. The reason can be the local weather, the local area, or perhaps because of a neighbor. Regardless of the reason and where the pests are coming from, it is best to subscribe to a monthly pest control service. 

Some pesticides may seem effective at first, but the chemicals will slowly fade and the pests will come back again. By subscribing and hiring a monthly professional pest control service, it will keep the pests away while keeping your property clean and safe. These professionals can also give recommendations in preventive measures against pests. 

An experienced pest control service will be able to reach every nook and cranny of the property making sure no area was left untreated. It is also best to let them know if there are pets living in the property. We would want to avoid any harmful chemicals reaching them, making the property unsafe for pets.

Value

So we've decided to invest in a monthly pest control service. Now it is time to reap the rewards from our investment. Month to month, our tenants comment that they are very pleased with having a monthly pest control company come and visit to get rid of pests. 

They tell us, "I have recommended my friends and family to move here as well. We can see that you maintain your property well and keep our living spaces pristinely clean." We smile back and a call comes in, "Hello. I am calling today to inquire about renting a unit from you. I was referred by Nancy and John. They said that they highly recommend living there."

Pest-Proof Your Home

Few things can ruin your peace of mind as much as finding pests in your home. Whether it’s a mouse running across the kitchen floor, wasps setting up shop in your rafters, or a spider in your bedroom… an unwelcome guest in your home can ruin your month! And exterminating them can ruin your pocketbook, too.

Rats and cockroaches are some of the biggest contributors to allergens and disease in the home. Wasps and spiders can threaten our safety. Termites undermine the foundations of your home. Moths and mice ruin food stores and treasured property. 

Bed bugs are just straight-up creepy. Pests also tend to thrive more in houses with elderly residents, since there are big areas that are largely neglected, and so we miss the signs of infestation. 

Luckily, there are measures that you can take to minimize the likelihood of having pests in your house. Not only do these improvements raise your quality of life and safety, but they also have a great ROI on the value of your home. Read on to learn more…

Keep tidy outsides

The best thing you can do to reduce your risk of pests is to keep your front and back yard clean and unattractive to pests. Do regular sweeps of your yard to ensure that you don’t have standing water that can become a breeding ground for mosquitoes. 

Store garbage far away from your house and keep a lid on it so that you don’t attract scavengers and flies. Having stacks of wood by your home can draw termites, especially when it gets wet over the winter. 

Check for beehives, wasp’s nests, and anthills around your yard and in surrounding trees.

Minimize habitats for pests around your yard by installing soffits on your house’s rafters so that birds and wasps can’t build nests there, as this article argues. 

Trim back trees and hedges, especially around the bases, and keep them well-groomed so that pests can’t get comfortable there.

Keep inside tidy too

Don’t feel discouraged: if you have pests in your home, it doesn’t mean that you’re a slob! 

Even a squeaky-clean home can become subject to an infestation. However, careful cleaning can greatly decrease your chances of attracting bugs and rodents.

• Clean all crumbs from the counters and floors. 
• Avoid clutter. The fewer places pests have to hide, the better. 
• Speaking of clutter, raise things off the floor. This can be especially smart for your garage, where letting your boxes and sporting equipment congregate on the floor can create an ideal living space for spiders and raccoons. 
• Keep a cover on your trash can. The smell can attract flies and ants. 
• Seal up your food in airtight containers, even dry goods like cereal and flour, which can be wonderful habitats for moths. 
• Vacuum really regularly. Many professionals recommend once a week, in order to lower the risk of bed bugs, which are on the rise clear across the United States. 

Keep dry

Moisture is one of the biggest siren calls to pests. Termites love wet wood. Cockroaches thrive in moist areas, which accounts for their alternative name, water bugs. 

Flies find breeding ground in wet, warm areas. Simply eliminating reasons for excess water can go a long way in preventing an infestation in your home. 

Take swift action to correct causes of excess water in your home. This might mean checking for leaks in the plumbing, which includes watching for spikes in your water bill and checking creaky floors and stains in the walls and ceiling. 

Look under your sinks regularly to make sure that everything is sealed up tight. Be on guard against leaky sprinklers in the yard, especially if they run the risk of leaking into your house. Install fans in your bathrooms, or crack the windows to let the humidity after a bath or shower dissipate.

Keep all holes sealed and cracks repaired

Sometimes, no matter how clean your home and yard is, insects and rodents will climb into your house, just for the sake of shelter and warmth. You can minimize the entry points that they have, though.

Our homes are riddled with more holes than we realize. Some are tiny cracks in the walls and baseboards that insects creep into. 

Others are large vents and holes that were side effects of a utility installation, perhaps in order to wire in the internet or satellite. In order to keep your house snug as a bug in a rug (excuse the expression) take these measures:

• Put a mesh barrier over ventilation holes and large pipes. 
• Treat cracks with caulking. 
• Weatherproof doors and windows. Install weather stripping around the borders, and a door flap at the base of the door in order to keep bugs from creeping in. 

Call in the pros

Home remedies can’t do everything, which is why we have professionals. A home inspector or pest control technician can notice signs of infestation that you don’t. 

Get regular checks, especially for termites, and if you have a high risk of infestation, or children that could get hurt by stowaways, consider pest barrier treatments around your home. Although it requires regular maintenance, it’s often worth it for the peace of mind.